Personal cloud storage is all the rage these days. Dropbox continues to be one of the most buzzed-about startups and its enterprise-focused counterpart Box is making moves toward the consumer market as well. For music files, Google, Amazon and Apple all offer cloud-based storage lockers and iOS allows syncing of other types of content via iCloud.
iPhone owners not satisfied with the available options now have a new one in Microsoft's SkyDrive, which launched its first iOS app today. The four-year-old service has been available to Windows users on the desktop and Windows Phone platform for some time. Today, it starts to branch out onto other platforms.
Before the tablet wars were in full affect, the tablet rumors wars raged on the Internet. Primary topics of conversation in this pre-iPad era were what Apple was doing with tablets (and what it would be called), the TechCrunch Tablet and the dual-screen Microsoft Courier. The CrunchPad, as it was going to be called, was usurped by Fusion Garage and turned into the JooJoo, a more or less terrible device that will live in infamy in the graveyard of devices gone by. Apple, as we know, has taken over the world with the iPad. The Courier? Abandoned by Microsoft before ever seeing the light of day.
Two developers miss what the Courier could have been. Together they started a group-funded Kickstarter project called Tapose to bring the defunct-Courier to the iPad. The app is expected to go live later this week. Check below for exclusive screenshots.
Tomorrow, Microsoft will push out a huge update to its XBox Live platform, adding a host of new content options, including both Web-based video and live broadcast TV. It marks a significant step in the device's evolution from a gaming console to an all-in-one entertainment hub, which Microsoft hopes will be the digital heart of every family's living room.
The update also brings improved voice search capabilities to the platform, which allows viewers to simply ask for a given TV show, movie or video game and have it pop up on the screen. It's not unlike what many people think Steve Jobs was dreaming up for the upcoming Apple HDTV, and indeed it's something a few developers have already started to cobble together by hacking Siri.
The mobile platform wars are in full swing. Android and Apple dominate the landscape but a new report from VisionMobile says that there will be no clear winner in the battle for supremacy over the mobile market. Android controls the numbers, Apple controls the profits and everybody else is fighting for scraps and third place in the ecosystem.
Developers are the front line soldiers of the platform wars. "iOS and Android are winning not only by virtue of technological sophistication, but primarily by the strength of their application ecosystems," the VisionMobile report states. The "network effect" drives the ecosystem, more sales equals more developers and more applications which in turn drives more developers. We take a close look at the platform wars through VisionMobile's report below.
Some large technology companies frown upon developers hacking and reworking their products. On the far opposite side of the spectrum, lies an unexpected organization called Microsoft. After some initial hesitation, the tech giant is now actively encouraging developers to tinker with its Kinect hands-free user interface accessory for the XBox 360.
Until now, those hacks have been encouraged for non-commercial purposes only. But the company took things to the next level this week when it announced the Kinect Accelerator, a program for startups who want to build creative uses for the Kinect into their businesses.
The next version of Microsoft's still dominant PC operating system, Windows 8, "represents an incredible opportunity to bring the benefits of the personal cloud to billions of PC users." That's according to a blog post written by the Group Program Managers for SkyDrive, Microsoft's consumer cloud product.
When it was launched back in August 2007, SkyDrive was described as "a personal 'harddrive' on the internet". It's now a major player in the consumer cloud market, competing with other big guns like Apple's iCloud and Amazon Cloud Drive. Also SkyDrive competes with innovative startups like Dropbox and SugarSync. The Microsoft blog post presents some statistics about the consumer cloud market, along with big claims for its future.
VideoSurf, a search engine for online video content, has been acquired by Microsoft, it was announced today. The service's sophisticated, multi-source video search technology will be built into Microsoft's XBox Live platform, which will see several new entertainment media partnerships in the coming months.
The acquisition, which cost Microsoft a reported $70 million, brings facial and object-recognition video search to the XBox, so it no longer relies solely on descriptions and other meta data when conducting searches. It works across services, so a search for "Lady Gaga" will return results from Netflix, Hulu and a variety of online video sources.
There is an epic battle taking place before our eyes, in our pockets and in our wallets. Smarthones have come to dominate consumer behavior and the headlines of media. What is the newest development with the iPhone? What are the newest and hottest Android devices this week? Can Microsoft make a dent in the mobile market? What kind of tricks does Amazon have up its sleeves? Does Facebook have a plan to tap into consumers' wallets through mobile devices?
Make no mistake, the pipeline between users' bank accounts through smart devices is what each one of these companies is looking to tap. Each one of these five major American technology companies is taking a different route to this one goal. Yet, each one of these companies is taking a different route to the same goal. Let's break down the roads that each one of these companies is taking in the quest to win the Mobile Platform Game of Thrones.
Users can now make Facebook-to-Facebook calls within Skype. This new feature is available for Mac users with Skype 5.4 Beta and Windows users with Skype 5.7 Beta. If users chat one-on-one, they'll be able to share screens.
This new announcement is the inverse of the initial Facebook deal with Skype back in July, which let Facebook users make Skype-powered video calls within Facebook.
Is this the best of both worlds, or is this just another Facebook-Microsoft move?
Research firm Gartner has come out with its third quarter global mobile sales numbers and overall, the industry grew 5.6% from the same period last year. About 440.5 million cellphones were sold, with 115 million of those being of the smart variety, a 42% growth rate from Q3 2010 but only 7% growth from Q2 2011. The feature phone market is being buoyed by emerging markets while most of the smartphone growth was in Russia and China. Many other markets have stalled in smartphone growth.
Gartner says the slowdown of smartphone growth in markets such as the United States and Western Europe was due to consumers waiting for flagship devices to be released, such as the newest iPhone, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and the HTC Rezound. Nokia is still No. 1 in the world in overall sales while another study shows that the best selling single devices in the U.S. are Apple's variety of iPhones.
