cloud

Netflix wants to make the cloud a sunnier place for its members.

The video distribution powerhouse today unveiled the Netflix Cloud Prize, a competition with a total of $100,000 to award to developers who come up with better ways to deliver computing resources over the Internet. Those "resources," of course, would include streaming video from the likes of Netflix itself.

As the company points out, "every piece of the Netflix experience" for its 33 million worldwide members is delivered over the cloud, from browsing TV shows to watching movies on a variety of devices to … Read more

Dropbox updated its desktop client for Macs and PCs yesterday, bring added functionality to the Dropbox window you access either via your Mac's menu bar or your PC's task bar.

The old desktop client was good for getting you quickly to your Dropbox folders or the Dropbox Web site, but it wasn't good for much else. With the Dropbox 2.0 desktop client, you get easy access to your folders and the Web site, along with the ability to initiate sharing a file and accept or decline invites without needing to visit the Dropbox interface. Meanwhile, the … Read more

Cloud storage became the latest trend in mobile computing due to the lack of extensive storage on small mobile devices. Wyse PocketCloud for Android handles cloud storage quite well, allowing the user to access home computer files from a mobile device or another PC. This app also has an interesting feature rarely seen in mobile devices: remote control of the desktop of your home PC from anywhere.

Wyse PocketCloud for Android installs surprisingly easily. After the Android application is downloaded, the program requires registration using Google credentials. Then you download a small, self-installing program to the desktop you wish to … Read more

This app takes your home PC and turns it into personal cloud storage. While this idea may sound interesting, in reality xCloud doesn't offer a real cloud-based service, but rather enables you to connect your mobile device to your PC remotely. This app has many issues that need to be addressed: security is weak and the execution leaves much to be desired.

Downloading the application seems easy enough, but the whole setup takes time. In addition to a mobile client, you must also download a companion server to your PC and register both pieces of software. xCloud requires a … Read more

If one of your resolutions for the new year was to get your hundreds (or thousands) of pictures gathered up in one place and organized for easier browsing, you'll want to check out Everpix.

The service, which started two years ago, can be connected to your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Flickr, Picasa Web Albums, and Gmail accounts and will pull in pictures from those sources and collect them together in one interface.

It can also be connected to Windows or Mac computers and iOS devices (Android support is in development). Once pictures are uploaded, Everpix analyzes your shots so you … Read more

Microsoft announced today that it had acquired MetricsHub, a cloud monitoring startup that automates cloud performance management.

The Bellevue, Wash.-based company, which was a participant in Microsoft's three-month-long Accelerator program, helps customers interpret application data points to determine how and when to scale their application. Financial details of the acquisition were not revealed.

Microsoft's program provides 10 startups developing in the cloud with a $20,000 investment, office space, technical training and support, and mentorship from entrepreneurs. At the conclusion of the program, participants have the opportunity to pitch their product to Microsoft executives, investors, and the … Read more

Web security service CloudFlare was offline for about an hour this morning due to a systemwide failure of its edge routers.

The outage, which began around 1:47 a.m. PT, removed the security layer for 785,000 Web sites, including 4chan and Wikileaks, according to TechCrunch. CloudFlare said the outage occurred while it was trying to defend one of its customers from a distributed denial-of-service attack.

The outage affected Juniper routers running the Flowspec protocol, which allows customers to broadcast router rules to a large number of routers efficiently. CloudFlare uses the protocol to update the rules on routers … Read more

Just last month I shared a deal on one year of Bitcasa unlimited cloud storage for $69.

This is less.

Through this weekend, as part of a Cheapskate exclusive deal (woo!), you can get a year of Pogoplug unlimited cloud storage for $39. No file size restrictions, no limits on uploading or downloading, just an endless supply of virtual-hard-drive goodness.

Granted, Bitcasa and Pogoplug are, to a degree, apples and oranges. The former works more like Dropbox on steroids, syncing selected folders and even letting you migrate data off your hard drive and onto your cloud drive.

Pogoplug doesn't … Read more

Apple's iCloud had a major outage this morning, but things are slowly but surely returning to normal.

The outage was reported this morning on Apple's Status page, showing that 11 percent of users were affected. All of iCloud's services, including Mail support, Notes, and sign-in weren't working. Since then, the services have made a comeback and fewer users have been affected.

As of this writing, just Photo Stream, Documents in the Cloud, and Backup are not working. Apple says that it's affecting "less than 1 percent of users."

Apple's iCloud is no … Read more