cloud

This month marks the sixth anniversary of my Google Drive account. I've been aware since the beginning that the thousands of files I have uploaded to the service are stored unencrypted on Google's servers.

That hasn't prevented me from uploading plenty of sensitive information to Google Drive, including dozens of invoices that list my address and the amount of money I was billing for, although the invoices do not include any bank-account or Social Security numbers.

I could have easily encrypted the files using any number of free services. In last May's "Free services make Gmail, Google Drive, and Google search more private,&… Read more

Dropbox is one of the more popular cloud-based syncing and storage tools, and offers Mac users a convenient way to transfer files from one system to another, or share files with colleagues. Dropbox can sometimes give you errors, saying that it cannot transfer something because it does not have permission to access some of the files being copied.

If this happens, then it could be because of an improper permissions setup with the Dropbox configuration files in your account, or with the files currently being copied.

If a permissions error such as this occurs, then the first thing that might … Read more

Today, Bitdefender released the 2014 version of its flagship Bitdefender Total Security product, replete with an interface redesign, adaptive technology, and noticeably absent version-number attribution.

With this year's release of Total Security comes the debut of Bitdefender Photon, an adaptive technology that aims to optimize the speed and performance of your PC as it adjusts to your computer.

Photon was actually introduced earlier in Bitdefender 2013, but since then the company has made major improvements while minimally impacting performance. Now, Photon officially becomes its own product component.

Bitdefender Total Security also introduces an online credential aid called Wallet. Not … Read more

Big news in enterprise land today: sometime-rivals Salesforce.com and Oracle announced Tuesday morning a nine-year partnership to integrate their clouds.

The deal encompasses all three tiers of cloud computing: applications, platform, and infrastructure.

For Salesforce.com's part, the company plans to standardize on the Oracle Linux operating system, Exadata engineered systems, the Oracle Database and Java Middleware Platform.

For Oracle's part, the company plans to integrate Salesforce.com with Oracle's Fusion HCM and Financial Cloud, as well as provide the core technology to power Salesforce.com's applications and platform. Salesforce.com will also implement Oracle'… Read more

Microsoft and Oracle announced a lot of piece parts with their June 24 partnership around Azure and Oracle databases and middleware.

Here's your Cliff Notes version: Oracle apps are now certified to run on Windows Server, Hyper-V, and Windows Azure. Up until today, they were only certified to run on Windows Server. Oracle Linux also gets added to the list of Linux varianst supported in Azure's VMs, too.

Microsoft already has been certifying its own applications on Windows Azure, including its SQL Server database. (Here's a list of which versions of various database, security and other enterprise … Read more

Adobe's Creative Cloud platform, which moves its Creative Suite applications from "perpetual license" to subscription-based payment plans, was designed to reduce piracy. Unfortunately for Adobe, that effort doesn't appear to have succeeded.

According to tech site PetaPixel, a torrent link was uploaded to The Pirate Bay on Wednesday, allowing users to illegally download Adobe's Creative Suite applications included in Creative Cloud for free. Those who have downloaded the software from The Pirate Bay say that it appears to work just fine.

Adobe's Creative Cloud platform was deployed earlier this week. The company had hoped … Read more

Shantanu Narayen, chief executive of Adobe Systems, just took a big step through a difficult transition.

The company is moving from selling perpetual licenses to Photoshop, After Effects, Illustrator, and other members of the Creative Suite to selling the $50-per-month Creative Cloud subscription that grants access to the whole collection and to some online services. There's plenty of disgruntlement from customers who prefer the old sales approach, which now only works for the old CS6 incarnation of Adobe's software, but Adobe showed on Tuesday that there's significant support for the new way, too.

That support came in … Read more

Adobe Systems beat analysts' profitability expectations by 3 cents per share in the second fiscal quarter, ratcheted its Creative Cloud subscriber total up 221,000 to 700,000, and is considering new measures to mollify those who don't like the subscriptions, the company said Tuesday.

For the company's fiscal second quarter, which ended May 31, the company reported net income of 36 cents per share on a non-GAAP basis that excludes various charges, a notch better than the 33 cents average expectation of analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters. Using generally accepted accounting principles, the company's net income … Read more

It's been a bumpy few weeks for Adobe since announcing its controversial decision to move all its "perpetual license" Creative Suite applications to a subscription-only plan -- almost 32,000 people have signed a petition against the move and our own survey with Jeffries indicates that "Creative Suite users loathe Adobe's subscriptions" -- but as of Monday night it's officially here.

If you've bought into or opt to buy into the plan, you'll get a host of interesting application updates, settings sync via the cloud, and access to all of Adobe'… Read more