Hasta La Gadget!

Google has announced that it’ll be changing the way it does cloud storage across Gmail, Google Drive, and Google+. Instead of each service having it’s own allotted amount of space. All three will be joined together and will share a pool of 15GB of cloud storage space, allowing Google Drive users to essentially have more free space than the previous 5GB that was originally offered.

This is essentially part of an ongoing effort from the search giant to further streamline all of its services and integrate them with one another, creating a seamless ecosystem of Google services. Instead of 10GB in Gmail for attachments and email messages and 5GB for documents and other media in Google Drive, the two are coming together to share amongst each other, as well as Google+ Photos joining the party.

This is good news for users who need more storage for one service more than the other. For example, I store a lot of photos and documents on Google Drive, but my Gmail bin is barely full. With the unified storage, I’ll now have more room in Google Drive for more photos and documents without sacrificing space in Gmail.

However, this means that Google is getting rid of one of its storage plans. You’ll no longer be able to grab 25GB of extra space for $2.50 per month. If you currently have that plan, Google will allow you to keep it until you cancel or change to another plan. After that, you won’t be able to opt for the 25GB plan any more. The cheapest plan now is an additional 100GB for $4.99 per month, which is half the price that Dropbox charges currently.

If you’re a Google Apps user, these changes will also take affect for you, but instead of 15GB of shared storage, you’ll receive a 30GB pool of storage to share amongst the three Google services. To make sure that you know how much storage you’re using for each service, Google will include a handy pie chart that breaks down the amount of storage your using for either Gmail, Drive, or Google+ Photos. Frankly, we’re not too surprised by this move, and we’ve been wondering when Google would finally make a move like this. It’s always been a shame that we could never use our Gmail storage for Google Drive, but finally, that’s changed.

SOURCE: Google Drive Blog

Google unifies 15GB of shared storage for Gmail, Drive and Google+ is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Amazon has launched its Cloud Drive Photos app on iOS today, joining the Android app as a solution for avid mobile photo snappers to automatically have their creations uploaded in the cloud and organized for sharing and viewing. The app looks to take on Apple’s Photo Steam iCloud feature, as well as Google’s and Dropbox’s solutions.

The new app from Amazon can automatically upload photos that you take with your iPhone directly to your Amazon Cloud Drive, and within the app, all your photos will be organized and ready to browse or share. However, just like with Dropbox’s automatic photo upload feature, it only works when the app is open due to limitations within iOS.

The Android version of the app launched back in November, and unlike iOS users, the app is able to upload photos directly to Amazon’s Could Drive whether the app is open or not. However, unlike Apple’s Photo Stream, you can view the photos in a web browser from any computer, just like with Dropbox and even Google Drive, which begs the question: Is Amazon’s cloud offerings good enough to take on Google and Dropbox?

Amazon offers users 5GB for free to start out with, and paid options are available for those who need more storage space (plans start at 20GB for $10 per year). With Google Drive, you also get 5GB free, with paid options starting at just $2.49 per month for 25GB). As for Dropbox, you start off with a measly 2GB for free, but can upgrade for $10 per month, which will land you 100GB. So, all of these options clearly offer different paying schemes, but if you’re already invested in Amazon’s ecosystem, the addition of Cloud Drive Photos will be a welcomed.

VIA: PC Mag

SOURCE: iTunes App Store

Amazon Cloud Drive Photos for iOS takes on Google, Dropbox and Apple is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The one caveat to mobile gaming is that a lot of smartphone games don’t come with the ability to save your progress across multiple devices, leaving gamers to start over on a game if they end up buying a new tablet. However, Rovio looks to solve that issue in Angry Birds with a new feature called Account.

The new feature basically allows gamers to create an Account and save game progress to the cloud, with the ability to resume gameplay on another device that has the same game installed. It’s a feature that most games should have in this day and age, but many mobile games sadly don’t come with cloud support, so those who do include it in their games are a step ahead of the crowd.

Currently, Rovio Account is only available in the company’s new The Croods game, as well as in the classic Angry Birds title on iOS in Finland and Poland. Of course, Rovio will gradually be rolling this new feature out in more regions around the world, as well as introduce more features, but the company hasn’t given a timeline on that yet.

As for what this move does for Rovio, it could be a good business move for the mobile game developer, as it makes it easier to converse with users when they have a dedicated Rovio account. Plus, it’ll make it easier to begin playing new games when the company releases new titles or sequels in the future.

[via Android Community]

Rovio Account is your cross-platform solution to Angry Birds is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

While there’s an abundance of cloud storage services, few of them have dedicated conferences to help developers exploit that online space. Dropbox could well be a vanguard on that front, then — it just announced its inaugural developer conference, DBX. The initial event takes place on July 9th at San Francisco’s very familiar-sounding Fort Mason Center. Along with providing help straight from the source for the Sync API and other coding tools, DBX will serve as the launch platform for “new products.” There aren’t any clues as to what that entails, but we suspect that’s enough of a tease to have some Dropbox diehards booking their flights.

Filed under: Storage, Internet, Software

Comments

Via: Dropbox

Source: DBX

This morning the teams at Dell and Enstratius (also known as enStretus pre-name-change) have announced that the former has acquired the latter in a bid to increase the power of the company’s Cloud Computing sector. Enstratius is a company known as an “early cloud pioneer”, working with cloud management for enterprise groups and delivering services for both single and multi-cloud setups for businesses. This company has made it clear that their “cloud agnostic” abilities make them unique – though how they’ll be working inside Dell’s fold is not yet crystal.

Dell’s acquisition of Enstratius is said to be made to compliment the company’s purchase of Gale Technologies. That particular exchange was made back in November of 2012, Gale Technologies having been folded into Dell’s Active System Manager and added to Dell’s Enterprise Systems and Services group therein.

Enstratius will help provide multi-cloud management from the get-go, adding application configuration capabilities to Dell’s services as well as management tools for multi-component applications across multi-cloud setups. Tom Kendra, vice president and general manager, systems management, Dell Software, spoke up on the acquisition earlier today.

“Dell, together with Enstratius, is uniquely positioned to deliver differentiated, complete cloud-management solutions to enterprise customers, large and small, empowering them with the efficiency and flexibility in the allocation and use of resources.” – Tom Kendra for Dell

This acquisition is one of several in the works with Dell, the most recent being an axed situation in which Blackstone stepped away from a deal back on the 19th of April. In that case it was a possible purchase of Dell, not a Dell purchase. It was also tipped then that Michael Dell wanted his job guaranteed if a Blackstone buyout were to be considered.

[via Dell]

Dell acquires Entratius for multi-cloud computing is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.