cloud

Physical music formats were so 20th century, so we put our music on computers. But even that was too much of a burden, so music is going up, up, and away, into the cloud and streaming. The iPod Classic is firmly rooted to the ground, and I like it that way.

I can live without Siri, iCloud, a camera, iOS 6, a Lightning connector, Bluetooth, AirPlay, or any of that jazz to keep the Classic's 160GB storage capability, and the Classic's "classic" 30-pin connector that still works with gazillions of docks and accessories. Is there another … Read more

Reports from Internet monitoring services show that recent news of a cyber attack so big that it made the Internet slow to a crawl around the world was a bit dramatic.

The New York Times reported about spam-fighting nonprofit Spamhaus and a distributed-denial-of-service attack on the Dutch group's site that became the "largest computer attacks on the Internet" and caused a "widespread congestion and jamming crucial infrastructure around the world."

Matthew Prince, the CEO of CloudFlare, the company enlisted to fight the attacks for Spamhaus, told CNET today that the attacks -- which ceased yesterday … Read more

I'm a cloud-computing, Chrome OS fanboy for the most part. But today was one of of those days I was glad to have old-school Mac and Windows PCs lying around my home office.

I'm no power user, but Google Docs suits me for word processing, while Google Sheets works fine for creating spreadsheets. However, when it comes to importing and editing files from the incumbent power, Microsoft Office, Google just isn't meeting even my low-end needs.

Google handles such documents -- in either the older .doc and .xls formats, and the newer .docx and .xlsx formats -- … Read more

Apple is currently in the lead when it comes to the domestic cloud storage wars, according to a new survey produced by Strategy Analytics.

The real strength here for the Cupertino, Calif.-based corporation was digital entertainment, which tends to require a lot of space anyway.

Thus, the combination of iCloud and iTunes Match was said to account for 27 percent of cloud storage usage in the United States during the third quarter of 2012.

Ed Barton, director of digital media at Strategy Analytics, highlighted in the report how music has become a "key battleground in the war for … Read more

Apple took a big step in helping Apple ID users in securing their accounts this week with offering two-step verification.

Two-step verification (or authentication as it's commonly referred to) adds an additional barrier of security between would-be hackers and your account. The extra barrier comes in the form of a four-digit code, which will be sent to a device of your choosing via the Find My iPhone app or SMS, after you've entered your password.

Step one: To add the extra layer of security to your account you'll need to visit the Apple ID settings page on … Read more

Photo Stream is a great way to view photos across your various iOS devices. Snap some shots on your iPhone and -- boom! -- thanks to Photo Stream, they can be viewed in full on your iPad. That's how I have been using Photo Stream to date, but I've overlooked a feature that makes it easy to share a Photo Stream album with anyone, Apple and non-Apple folk alike. From either your iPhone or iPad, Photo Stream includes a feature that will create a quick Web site with your photos, whose link you can share as you wish.… Read more

Online storage provider RapidShare is expanding what it offers for its free service -- but it's also scrapped its earlier unlimited plan, even for customers who paid in advance for a longer-term period.

The Swiss company, with more than 50 employees, more than a thousand servers, and the capacity to store several petabytes of user data, announced the change March 12. Paying customers get a choice between a 250GB plan costing 10 euros ($12.96) a month and a 500GB plan costing 20 euros a month. The previous unlimited-storage option vanishes Wednesday.

The change reflects a reality for cloud … Read more

The shift by Adobe Systems toward its Creative Cloud subscription plan looks to be popular with customers, a Jefferies survey of some of them shows.

Adobe is making its entire Creative Suite of software available for an introductory price of $30 per month for annual commitments, with a regular $50 monthly price to kick in later. The subscription also includes services, software that's not part of the CS products, and early updates that traditional perpetual-license customers won't get until CS7.

Jefferies asked customers about their sentiments in a follow-up to a 2012 survey with CNET.

"The majority … Read more

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