Hasta La Gadget!

The 300,000-server-strong Xbox LIVE cloud for the new Xbox One will share processing duties with the console, Microsoft has detailed, responsible for “latency-insensitive computation” like filling in background detail or figuring out complex lighting effects. The split crunching had been broadly outlined before, but Microsoft shared some specifics with Ars Technica, including how the system would amount to roughly three virtual Xbox One consoles per the one in your living room, and what visual impact it would have for gamers without a persistent internet connection.

According to Microsoft’s Matt Booty, General Manager of Redmond Game Studios and Platforms, the remote processing works because not every element of gameplay is “latency-sensitive” and so doesn’t need to be handled by the local console. While elements like collisions and attacks might need to happen instantly, others – such as cloth motion for characters’ clothes, fluid dynamics, and physics modeling – are no less compute-intensive but don’t have the same urgency.

“Let’s say you’re looking at a forest scene and you need to calculate the light coming through the trees, or you’re going through a battlefield and have very dense volumetric fog that’s hugging the terrain. Those things often involve some complicated up-front calculations when you enter that world, but they don’t necessarily have to be updated every frame. Those are perfect candidates for the console to offload that to the cloud—the cloud can do the heavy lifting, because you’ve got the ability to throw multiple devices at the problem in the cloud” Matt Booty, Microsoft

That sort of work can be handed over to the cloud, Microsoft has decided, though there’ll be a balancing of local and remote handiwork depending on when the results are needed. For instance, the Xbox One will likely do the initial processing when the scene changes, Booty explains, before the cloud takes over and begins feeding data over the internet connection.

For those without a persistent connection – or with an unstable one – it will likely mean a reduction in some of the visual gloss, or at the very least the Xbox One’s 8-core processor working harder to catch up. Booty wouldn’t be drawn on what Microsoft’s exact policy is in that case – saying only that “the game is going to have to intelligently handle that” – but presumably there will be a minimum level of detail that gamers can expect.

Microsoft’s approach to the cloud is markedly different to that of Sony and the PS4. There, the new PlayStation will use cloud processing to enable backward-compatibility with PS3 games, since – like the Xbox One – the next-gen console introduces a change of core architecture and so won’t work directly with old discs.

Sony will use its Gaikai acquisition to do that, with the cloud in effect creating a virtual PS3 and then communicating the gameplay over the PS4 owner’s internet connection. The Xbox One, meanwhile, will not place such a priority on backward compatibility, with Microsoft recently arguing that only around 5-percent of gamers play last-gen games on their new console.

Instead, there’ll be lingering support – and new games – for the Xbox 360, with a fresh batch of titles promised for E3 2013 alongside more details of the line-up for the new Xbox One. Microsoft is yet to detail the Xbox One release date, or indeed to confirm what will happen to the Xbox 360 when the new console hits store shelves.

Xbox One gets trio of ‘cloud consoles’ for extra crunching Microsoft explains is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
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Box just recently snapped up Crocodoc to improve the web component of its cloud storage, but what about tuning the native apps? It’s addressing that side of the equation by acquiring the technology behind Folders, a third-party cloud storage app for iOS. Box loves Folders’ code and design enough to want both of them inside the next generation of its iOS client. Folders creator Martin Destagnol (pictured here at center) has already been working on this for weeks, Box says. While there’s no word on a similar treatment for Android, we should see the iOS partnership bear fruit in updates spread throughout the year.

Filed under: Cellphones, Storage, Internet, Mobile

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Via: TechCrunch

Source: Box

While Amazon Cloud Drive has been on quite the world tour as of late, Canadians have had to watch as seemingly everyone else gets the storage service first. Thankfully, Canucks can now do more than just twiddle their thumbs now that Cloud Drive has gone live in their country. Pricing is virtually on par with what Americans know, with a 5GB free tier and multiple paid tiers that start at $10 per year for 20GB. All the Cloud Drive-focused desktop and mobile apps are now available as well. Cloud Player isn’t an option when Amazon MP3 is still missing, but the expansion should otherwise give Canadians at least a small taste of what they’ve been missing in Amazon’s online world.

Filed under: Storage, Internet, Amazon

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Via: MobileSyrup

Source: Amazon

I’ve often wished that I could combine the speed of my cable Internet connection with my phone’s data connection to form one supercharged slightly above average connection. If you’ve been wishing for the same thing my wish buddy, take a look at Switchboard. It’s a subscription-based cloud service that will let you tap into multiple Internet connections at once.

The Switchboard service is currently being developed by a company called Connectify. The company claims that its servers can spread the packets that you upload or download across multiple Internet connections. All you have to do is link your computer to these connections; the Switchboard software and Connectify’s servers will do the rest.

Switchboard is actually similar to one of Connectify’s other apps called Dispatch. Dispatch can also send data to and from your computer through multiple Internet connections. The upside to Dispatch is that it doesn’t need to pass through a server. That means you only pay once – just for the client software. But Connectify says that Dispatch is only good for applications or processes that use multiple sockets at once, such as web browsing or peer-to-peer connections. Programs that use single sockets like Netflix and Hulu will gain nothing from Dispatch. Also Dispatch doesn’t have a Mac client, whereas Switchboard will have one.

Pledge at least $60 (USD) on Kickstarter to be one of the first to try out Switchboard. But with great speed comes great expense. Not only is Switchboard a subscription service, its plans also have data caps. The limits range from 10GB to 2TB per month depending on your plan. I’m not saying that’s unreasonable, but now I have another wish: I wish that future computers had this functionality baked in.

[via Tom’s Hardware]

If you’re attending Google I/O this week, you will be a part of an experiment from the Google Cloud Platform Developer Relations team. On its blog today, the team outlined its plan to gather a bunch of environmental information happening around you as you meander around the Moscone Center.

In the blog post, Michael Manoochehri, Developer Programs Engineer, outlines his team’s plan to place hundreds of Arduino-based environmental sensors around the conference space to track things like temperature, noise levels, humidity and air quality in real-time. This was spawned due to a fascination with wanting to know which areas of the conference were the most popular, so it will be interesting to see what the information the team gathers actually tells us.

At first glance, this seems a little bit creepy, but it’s no different than a venue adjusting the cooling system based on the temperature inside at any given moment. As with anything that Google does, this could have implications for tracking indoor events or businesses in the future, as Manoochehri shared:

Networked sensor technology is in the early stages of revolutionizing business logistics, city planning, and consumer products. We are looking forward to sharing the Data Sensing Lab with Google I/O attendees, because we want to show how using open hardware together with the Google Cloud Platform can make this technology accessible to anyone.

Notice the wrap-up of wanting to show people how open hardware combined with Google’s Cloud Platform benefits everyone. Ok, sure. What could data like this mean for businesses, though? Well, a clothing store would be able to track how many people came in and browsed, which areas of the store were hot-spots for interest and then figure out how their displays converted. It’s like real-world ad-tracking. It makes sense, but still seems a long way off.

What will be interesting is not each dataset that is collected, but what all of them tied together tell us about our surroundings:

Our motes will be able to detect fluctuations in noise level, and some will be attached to footstep counters, to understand collective movement around the conference floor.

Of course, none of this information is personally identifiable, but the thought of our collective steps, movements and other ambient output being turned into something usable by Google is intriguing to say the least…and yes, kind of creepy.

If this particular team can share all of the data it collects in an easy to digest way, then businesses will be clamoring to toss sensors all over their stores and drop the data on whatever cloud platform that will host it the cheapest. Google would like to be that platform.

During the event, the team will hold a workshop on what it calls the “Data Sensing Lab,” so if you’re interested on learning more about what the team is gathering as you walk around, this would be the place to go. You’ll also be able to see some of the real-time visualizations on screens set up throughout the conference floor.

We’ll be covering all of the action as we’re being covered by Google.