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Google Music brings MP3 store, free cloud storage for your tracks
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Corporate News, Google, Music, Storage,
Google on Wednesday officially unveiled its music product, dubbed Google Music, which will let users store songs in the cloud for free and buy tracks directly from the Android Market.
Google's Jamie Rosenberg, director of digital content for Android, said Google Music is an expansion of Google Music Beta, introduced earlier this year, making it a "full end-to-end service."
"It's about the cloud, about the Web and about mobile," he said.
Google Music, accessible via music.google.com, is open to everyone in the U.S. now on the Web and will roll out to mobile users in the coming days. Users can store and stream up to 20,000 songs in the Google cloud for free, and add any selections they don't have by buying them from the Google Music store.
Google Music will allow users to share songs with friends, who will be able to play that song in its entirety once.
Google said it has sealed deals with more than 1,000 music labels, including Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and EMI, as well as indie labels, like those from Merlin. In all, Google promised access to 13 million tracks, 8 million of which are available now.
Click to continue reading Google Music brings MP3 store, free cloud storage for your tracks
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Amazon Kindle 3.3 update details
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Handhelds, Software,
While Amazon prepares to ship out the Kindle Fire, it has quietly released a significant software update to the Kindle Keyboard, which expands cloud storage support for personal documents.
The Kindle Keyboard Software Update, Version 3.3, adds four key features:
- The ability to store personal documents to your Kindle, for viewing anytime and on any supported Kindle app or device.
- Whipersync for personal documents. This automatically synchronizes your last page read, bookmarks and annotations for personal documents, not including PDFs.
- Kindle users can now purchase, view, and redeem AmazonLocal deals straight from their Kindles.
- A Voice Guide shortcut: you can now quickly turn on Voice Guide, which reads aloud menu options and content listings, by holding the Shift key and pressing Spacebar.
Click to continue reading Amazon Kindle 3.3 update details
Leaked video shows new Xbox 360 fall 2011 dashboard update
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Kinect, Microsoft, Xbox 360, Xbox Live,
What's not new: The Xbox 360 is likely getting a Fall update that contains significant graphical updates and a few new features, like enchanted Kinect motion and voice navigation, Bing integration, and, ultimately, live television streaming.
What is new: A freshly leaked video that shows just how some of the different components of the new Xbox interface are shaping up.
An unknown source has leaked a full video that shows off a lot of the simple menu navigation and new user interface elements allegedly arriving on November 15 as a part of Microsft's fall Xbox 360 dashboard update. What's missing, however, are all the juicy bits: A preview of the voice-activated search, for example, or any kind of mention of an integrated live TV service or promised social connectivity, like the ability to fire off news of one's achievements to a connected Facebook account.
Click to continue reading Leaked video shows new Xbox 360 fall 2011 dashboard update
Pogoplug Mobile lets you create your own cloud storage solution
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Accessories, PC / Laptop, Storage,
Cloud Engines on Thursday announced Pogoplug Mobile, the first mobile-focused hardware product.
Pogoplug Mobile is a small, black box onto which you can attach a USB drive or SD memory card. Once you do, you can see all the files and media stored on the devices and access them remotely or share them by activating an account at my.pogoplug.com.
Users can stream unlimited amounts of multimedia files—including photos, music, and videos—from their home network to their iPhones and Android-based smartphones, as well as the iPad. Apple iOS users receive the benefit of instant streaming of media libraries. For Android users, Pogoplug Mobile provides a unified streaming and sharing service and enables automatic backup of all multimedia files and other content. Cloud Engines said this was a "kind of iCloud for Android users, but in your home."
Click to continue reading Pogoplug Mobile lets you create your own cloud storage solution
Apple iCloud storage upgrade pricing revealed
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Internet, Storage,
Apple offers 5 GB of storage for free with any iCloud account, which they say should be fine for most users. However, if you've got more storage needs than that paltry 5 GB can handle, Apple has a few extra options on the table:
- 10 GB for $20 per year
- 20 GB for $40 per year
- 100 GB for $100 per year
Do note that these are in addition to your free 5GB of storage. In other words, if you opt to pay for 10 GB a year, you will actually have 15 GB total--the 10 GB that you are paying for, plus the original 5 GB that's included. If you're a developer with an iCloud account, you can purchase your additional space starting now.
Tip: Use Dropbox to replace discontinued iDisk
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Internet, PC / Laptop, Software,
We've been hearing from quite a few disgruntled MobileMe subscribers who are wondering what the heck they're supposed to do now that Apple will seemingly be discontinuing the iDisk service with the launch of iCloud. As awesome as iCloud is, we do agree that iDisk is definitely a nice feature, and it's a shame to see it go away. However, Dropbox is a great alternative, and we've actually found that it often works better than iDisk does. You can sign up for free and you'll get 2 GB of space right off the bat. If you want more, you can upgrade...but it certainly doesn't hurt to try it out. Dropbox integrates right into your Finder, similar to iDisk, and gives you updates on syncing across all your devices, plus you can access your files from through the Dropbox mobile apps as well.
Read More 
| Dropbox
Google set to announce Cloud Picker storage service
Posted by Patrick Lambert Categories: Google, Rumors,
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According to some reports around the web, it would appear Google has a new cloud storage service called Google Cloud Picker in the works. The service would allow people to store images and documents on the web, and would tie into Google services like Docs, Apps and Sites. The service was found by some bloggers who saw the login screen, and Techcrunch has reached out to Google and heard that this was some code pushed prematurely, hence a yet to be released system. It makes sense too, since with the company's focus on cloud-only computing, with ChromeOS coming soon, people would need an easy way to keep their data on the web as well as their applications. The details such as how much storage will be offered and whether it will be free or not are still unknown, but we'll keep an eye on this one.
Read More | Techcrunch
Facebook acquires Drop.io
Posted by Patrick Lambert Categories: Acquisitions, News, Social Media,
Late Friday afternoon, the Drop.io blog posted an announcement saying that they had sold most of their technologies and assets to Facebook. Included in the deal is the fact that the site's creator Sam Lessin will also move on to Facebook. This most likely means that Facebook is looking into easy file sharing for one of its future services. The site allowed users to create an account, and freely store data on the web where they could then share it with other users.
Of more interest to us, however, is the part where the actual Drop.io service will be shutting down on Dec 15, and all data deleted. This means everyone who used the site will need to download their data if they need it. This is a chilly reminder that any cloud-based service can shut down at any point, taking all your data with it. Just earlier this year Yahoo! shut down Geocities and they simply went ahead and deleted decades worth of user data.
As we rely more and more on web services, it's worth keeping in mind that no one cares about our files more than we do.
Read More | Drop.io blog
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