Posted by The Blogging Desk on Wed, Apr 06, 2011
Amazon:
Amazon Cloud Drive is your hard drive in the cloud. Store your music, videos, photos, and documents on Amazon's secure servers. All you need is a web browser to upload, download, and access your files from any computer. Get more details about using Cloud Drive
Your Cloud Drive comes with 5 GB of free storage—enough space to store up to 1000 songs. This space is yours to use as you like and you will never be charged for it.
Use your Amazon Cloud Drive as the go-to location for all your important files. At work, at home, during your commute or while on vacation—you'll always have access to everything you've uploaded to your Cloud Drive through your Amazon account.
Both Apple and Google have been flirting with the idea for some time to allow for storage and streaming in a way that it out-of-mind for the consumer. It looks like Amazon beat them both to the punch, however.
If you're a Dropbox user, you'd find Amazon's service familiar but with a few choice differences. For me, the big dealbreaker is that Amazon Cloud Player has no iOS app. In fact, when you load the website for Cloud Player inside of Mobile Safari, it suggest that you use Internet Explorer. Burn.
Also, there is no desktop version of Cloud Player. As a heavy Dropbox user myself, the ability to drag and drop files into Dropbox folders is a huge reason for using their services. The Dropbox website is a nice Plan B. However, the Cloud Drive website is Plan A, as there is no desktop version of the app.
The Cloud Drive pricing is very appealing, though. 5GB free as opposed to Dropbox's 2GB free per month. And if/when you buy an album from Amazon, it automatically upgrades you to 20GB/per month free for a year. Not too shabby. That's a big difference w/ Dropbox. Many people use Amazon to buy and rent movies as well as purchase music and services. It may be a perfect fit for most folks.
You're not able to share folders, however. This is another great reason to have Dropbox. You can share multiple folders with family and friends or ever co-workers. My wife and I share a folder for our son's pictures. Whenever we snap a new picture of him on our iPhones, we'll upload them to his Dropbox folder to share them with each other. Also, it's the ultimate backup for those photos.
In terms of streaming media, Amazon has definately beaten Apple and their iTunes service to the punch. But will the consumer be able to see through the famous Apple Reality Distortion Field when iTunes streaming is announced?
Posted by The Blogging Desk on Thu, Dec 02, 2010
Engadget:
According to networking company Level 3 Communications, Comcast just couldn't wait for its NBC deal to go through before getting all jerky with the access to online video, telling Level 3 on November 19th that it would need to pay a fee to deliver video to Comcast customers. Level 3 delivers videos from many companies over its networks, but the timing is particularly notable since on November 11th it signed upbandwidth-chewing Netflix as a major customer.
At first glance, this seems like the sort of thing that would signal the end of days. Well, the end of net neutrality, anyway. Looking back, it can't get much worse than realizing that 95 of the candidates backing net neutrality lost on election day. I'm mentally prepared for Verizon to add a streaming video cost to my internet package any day of the week. I'm sure it will be worse on the Comcast end of things, since they now pretty much own TV networks. Good luck with that, friends!
But, hold the phone! Things may not be what they seem. Comcast has responded via their SVP of External Affairs. Seems like a made up job, but I digress;
Until Level 3 fomented this dispute, Comcast and Level 3 exchanged Internet traffic as part of a commercial interconnection agreement, under which Comcast paid Level 3 for interconnection facilities. Although the parties exchanged traffic at a ratio of about 2:1, with Comcast terminating more of Level 3's traffic, this was well within the industry's established bounds for "roughly balanced" traffic, and they exchanged their on-net traffic on a settlement-free basis. At some point, we are told, some of the traffic sent by Level 3 to Comcast came from CDN services operated by Level 3. Because this traffic was within the traditional industry criteria for "roughly balanced," this did not raise any issues for Comcast.
Now, Level 3 has decided to reinvent itself as a major CDN, in competition with other
commercial CDN players, all of whom pay for transmission of their traffic on Comcast's and others' networks. And in so doing, Level 3 would more than double the amount of traffic it sends to Comcast -- which would result in a traffic imbalance that could be in the range of about 5:1.
Phew. So it seems like it's not as bad as we feared. It also looks like Level 3 needs to relax with their streaming of data. BUT, this is helpful. it keeps the net neutrality issue in peoples minds. I don't want to live in a world where I need to pay my ISP an email tax just to check mail. Do you?
Twitter your congressperson!
Don't fret, though. Trigon won't approach Comcast levels of destroying your hopes and dreams. In fact, we can help those dreams happen! Just so long as those dreams involve creating a solid IT Infrastructure, and a heaping helping of security. Sweet!
Posted by The Blogging Desk on Tue, Nov 30, 2010
- by Jon, "Too Tall", Pentecost
I am sure by now you have heard of Netflix and Blockbuster. If not, then you can check them out at www.netflix.com and www.blockbuster.com.
They are movie retailers that you pay a monthly fee and can have DVDs shipped to your house or allow you to watch online. Most cable and satellite providers are also getting into the game of providing content online for subscribers. The newest member to the online content provider – Microsoft.
According to PC World's website, Microsoft is planning on releasing streaming TV content onto either an Xbox 360 console or a Windows 7 mobile phone. The plans are still about a year out, says the article, but wouldn’t you love to be one of the first ones to have this service? Just think about it – you can be anywhere there is 3G service and you can be streaming your favorite Simpsons episode right to your phone. Or you can be in your living room watching the latest game on ESPN (already has a deal signed with Microsoft for the service) through your Xbox 360.
So, after starting out with an Operating System that is on the majority of computers around the world, entering the gaming console era with the Xbox, and adding its market share to the mobile phone market, do you think Microsoft will succeed with its latest idea? If it does, you can be sure that IT Support companies like Trigon Technology Group will be looking into it for their clients.
Have no fear, True Believer, Trigon is on the cutting edge of what's new and what can help YOUR small to mid-sized business. Contact us!