Hasta La Gadget!

The cloud storage provider MediaFire has finally launched its Android mobile app, and to commemorate the occasion, it is offering users 50 free gigabytes of storage space. The service already offered an iOS app for Apple users on top of its desktop app, both of which also offer the free 50GB. The app offers a handful of features that simplify using the cloud storage service.

The MediaFire Android app includes ads if the user is under a free account, although they can be eradicated with a cheap monthly subscription at $1.50 per month. Still, one can’t complain too much considering the very large amount of free storage the service offers. MediaFire does have a limit on how long it will store files on inactive accounts, however, though users will receive ample time and notifications before the files are purged.

As notes PC World, the app does have some downsides that might make it less than ideal for certain types of users, including those who often batch upload. The MediaFire Android app does not support multi-file uploading, nor does it integrate to allow direct uploading from the handset’s camera. In addition, free users are limited to a maximum file size of 200MB, although those who upgrade to a monthly subscription can upload file sizes up to 1GB.

The app is currently available in version 1.0.1, and can be used on handsets running Android 2.2 and higher. The app is free to download, and is 6.8MB in size. According to Google Play, the app has access to the camera, network (including communication), and storage. While it generally has good reviews, some users are reporting issues getting it to run properly.

[via PC World]

MediaFire launches Android app, offers 50GB for free is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Amazon has publicly apologized for the outage that stopped Netflix users from spending Christmas Eve slumped in front of How It’s Made re-runs while slurping egg nog, blaming human error for the server downtime. According to Amazon, a developer inadvertently deleted part of the “ELB state data” which handles load balancing – which servers deliver content to each user across different locations – and it took several hours of testing and troubleshooting to figure out what had gone wrong.

“The service disruption began at 12:24 PM PST on December 24th when a portion of the ELB state data was logically deleted. This data is used and maintained by the ELB control plane to manage the configuration of the ELB load balancers in the region (for example tracking all the backend hosts to which traffic should be routed by each load balancer). The data was deleted by a maintenance process that was inadvertently run against the production ELB state data. This process was run by one of a very small number of developers who have access to this production environment. Unfortunately, the developer did not realize the mistake at the time. After this data was deleted, the ELB control plane began experiencing high latency and error rates for API calls to manage ELB load balancers” Amazon

Unfortunately, the initial efforts to take a snapshot of the system configurations prior to the accidental deletion – a process which took several hours – did not work. A second method was cooked up, which was more successful; however, installing it and bringing all of the systems back online was not so straightforward as simply overwriting the patchy section of data.

Instead, Amazon’s AWS team had to merge the new ELB state data with the old – a process which took almost three hours alone – and then spent a further five hours gradually re-enabling all of the service workflows and APIs in a way which did not affect any correctly running process. Amazon says the system was operating normally by 12:05PM PST.

“Last, but certainly not least, we want to apologize. We know how critical our services are to our customers’ businesses, and we know this disruption came at an inopportune time for some of our customers. We will do everything we can to learn from this event and use it to drive further improvement in the ELB service” Amazon

As well as the apology, Amazon says it has implemented new policies to make sure the same problem doesn’t happen again. The ELB state data is now harder to delete without specific approval, rather than under blanket permissions for the small number of developers with access, and Amazon has updated its data recovery policies with the new skills it was forced to learn. “We are confident that we could recover ELB state data in a similar event significantly faster (if necessary) for any future operational event” the company’s data team says.

In fact, Amazon plans to make some lemonade from the Christmas Eve lemons, building new server systems that can automatically recover data rather than wait for human intervention. “We believe that we can reprogram our ELB control plane workflows to more thoughtfully reconcile the central service data with the current load balancer state” the AWS team suggests. “This would allow the service to recover automatically from logical data loss or corruption without needing manual data restoration.”

[via Bloomberg]

Amazon: Sorry for Netflix downtime, here’s what we got wrong is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

If you’ve been having issues retrieving your Xbox 360 saves from the cloud, you’re not alone. As it turns out, Microsoft is experiencing some problem with Xbox Live at the moment, which is causing a couple of different headaches. The first (obviously) is that Xbox Live cloud storage is currently inaccessible, while the second involves Xbox.com going down for some users.

The Xbox service status page shows that all systems are go except for Xbox Live Service itself. Microsoft has put a little alert on the status page, telling affected users that it has engineers working on the issue. The big M doesn’t disclose what kind of problems its specifically having, but assures that a fix should be implemented soon.

There’s no workaround for this issue – Microsoft simply instructs those who are experiencing problems to check back with the status page for updated support messages, which should be coming in every 30 minutes. It sounds like Microsoft isn’t anticipating that Xbox Live cloud storage will be down for very long, which is good news for people trying to get a little gaming in on this Friday afternoon.

After all, if your saves are all stored in the cloud, this outage means that you can’t continue any of your games. We’ll be watching the Xbox Live status page and will update you if anything changes. In the meantime, are any of you having problems retrieving saves from the cloud?

Xbox Live cloud storage currently down, Microsoft working on a fix is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Sony Ericsson has announced that the partnership between Xperia and Box has been extended for another year, lasting until the end of 2013. This comes after 2011′s year-end announcement of the initial partnership, which lasted one year and was scheduled to end of the 31st of this month. Now Xperia owners who sign up for Box by the end of next year will get 50GB of free lifetime storage space.

Box is a file sharing and cloud storage provider, that, like all other cloud storage providers, allows users to upload files and access them from any location and device with Internet access. Videos, music, documents, pictures, apps, data files, and anything else you can think of can be stored. The Box Android app is available from the Google Play Store.

Back during the initial partnership in 2011, Box’s CEO Aaron Levie had offered this statement. “As more people bring their personal devices in to work to take full advantage of mobile computing, it is essential that they never have to worry about storage limitations. By partnering with Sony Ericsson we are bringing the full power of Box®’s cloud content management and sharing to those users.”

The free 50GB of storage space is not available with the Xperia X10 mini, Xperia X10 mini pro, and any stone age Android device running pre-2.1 versions of the mobile operating system. According to the announcement, more details and a discussion with Box will be available via the Sony Mobile blog in the relatively near future. In the meantime, don’t forget to score your free Box cloud storage if you own an Xperia or receive one during the upcoming holidays.

[via Sony Mobile]

Xperia extends its partnership with Box into 2013 is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

YouSendIt, a cloud-based collaboration platform, has announced the launch of its Windows Phone 8 app, which is presently available exclusively on Nokia’s Lumia 820 and 920 handsets. With the YouSendIt app, Nokia users can perform a variety of cloud collaboration actions from their phone. As a bonus, the app supports NFC, allowing users to share files with a quick gadget-tap.

According to the press release, the near field communication feature is available exclusively on the Lumia phones for “the next several months.” Other features include the ability to invite other users to collaborate with content via a shared folder. Files, including shared files, can be viewed and tracked by users via the app.

Users can sign files that they receive, and then send the files off again to other users. YouSendIt files can be opened in third-party applications, although the announcement doesn’t specify what these apps are. Those with enterprise authentication can manage a centralized file policy, as well, which controls the files regardless of what device they happen to be on.

Never heard of YouSendIt? The company was founded in 2004, originally functioning as a means of sending files that were too large to be attached to emails. Since then, the company has grown into a cloud-storage service with 37 million users scattered amongst 193 countries. This feature gives the service a new level of functionality, although there’s no word on when it will be available on other WP8 devices.

YouSendIt provides Windows Phone 8 app exclusively on Nokia devices is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.