Hasta La Gadget!

At some point, competition and catch-up should iron out many of the differences between rival cloud storage platforms. For now though, each option focuses on slightly different things, and Stream Nation’s main specialism is private video streaming, which it has just made accessible to users in the US, UK and elsewhere. Unlike Flickr Pro or Dropbox, for example, there’s no limit to the length or file size of a video clip that can be streamed to someone else’s browser. The service’s founder, Jonathan Benassaya, who also co-founded Deezer, says he originally designed it to help him share vacation videos with his family.

Then again, there are few hold-ups to consider: you need to install an uploader application to store photos and videos, unless you’re grabbing them from Dropbox or elsewhere on the web, and from our experience the whole process is rather slow — it took a good 20 minutes to encode a 90MB clip we brought over from Dropbox. Furthermore, you can only share a video with people who are also registered on Stream Nation, and you have to pay for anything over 2GB (or suffer the indignity of inviting all your Google contacts, which nets you a bonus 8GB). So yeah, this won’t suit everyone, especially if they need unlimited space or if their friends and family are savvy enough to know what to do with a Dropbox link, but it might just come in handy.

Filed under: Misc, Storage, Internet, HD, Mobile

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Via: LA Times, The Verge

Source: Stream Nation

What was once a private beta meant only for developers is now trickling out into the public. For those who signed up to be invited to the public beta of iWork for iCloud should be getting them now. Apple originally unveiled the new cloud-based office suite at WWDC last month, and now the software is ready for a public chewing as the company looks to get feedback before an official launch.

As expected, iWork for iCloud is Apple’s version of Google Drive and Microsoft Office 365. The software offers users cloud-based versions of Pages, Numbers, and Keynote, which provide a word processor, spreadsheets, and PowerPoint-like presentations, respectively. Users will be able to access the software via the web browser of their choice (as long as it’s either Safari, Chrome, or IE).

If you received an invite, all you have to do is sign in to iCloud on any computer and then click on either Pages, Numbers, or Keynote to get started drafting up your first iWork for iCloud document. From there you can save a document and it’ll automatically be saved to the cloud where you can access it on another computer. iWork for iCloud can be accessed on either a Mac or Windows PC (no word on Linux, specifically, but we’re guessing that works too). Mobile devices will have support as well.

Essentially, it works just like the traditional version of iWork, where you have access to Pages, Numbers, and Keynote, only this time it’s available in cloud. However, it comes with a bit of caveats. For starters, collaboration is pretty much out of the question. Unlike Google Drive, users won’t be able to share documents with other iCloud users.

Apple still has a lot of work to do to make iWork for iCloud a true competitor, but the company knows that. They’re working on adding several more features in the future, including the ability to print documents. As for collaborative editing, Apple hasn’t mentioned such a thing yet, but it’s certainly a feature that iWork for iCloud will need if it wants to compete with Google Drive and Office 365.

iWork iCloud public beta rolling out today: here’s what you’ll get is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.

With the recent fiasco with the NSA and PRISM program, concern for user privacy has skyrocketed tremendously, and now that the word is out on tech companies, they have no choice but to make things better for their users. Google is doing its part, and it’s said that the search giant is secretly testing encryption methods for Google Drive files for protection against the NSA.

According to CNET, sources say that Google is experimenting with encrypting Google Drive files in order to prevent the NSA and other government agencies from digging into users’ files. While a small number of files are already encrypted, it seems Google wants to encrypt every file that goes through its Google Drive servers.

PRISM collects data that the companies are required to provide under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. However, encrypted files don’t fall under FISA (as long as the government doesn’t know the password to get in), so it seems that companies are heading in this direction with their user files, Google Drive being one of the first cloud services to begin the process.

Of course, companies use HTTPS as a form of encryption in order to protect the communications of files while they’re being transmitted over the interwebs, but cloud companies rarely encrypt files that are simply just sitting there in the cloud. This is mainly because it’s a complex thing to do and it ups the cost of server computing power.

However, in a time where users are becoming more and more wary of tech companies and the data they have on users, these companies can’t become stingy, and they need to start taking action to protect users’ files and information, even if that means going out of their way to include encryption and other security benefits.

SOURCE: CNET

Google Drive encryption tipped incoming for NSA protection is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.

BitTorrent Sync Alpha isn’t ready to equal rivals like Dropbox or Google Drive without a mobile component. It’s a good thing that BitTorrent just launched Sync Beta, then — the more polished release includes an Android app that syncs with computers and shares files with fellow Android users. The update also brings versioning through SyncArchive, which stores previous file iterations in a folder. Sync Beta is available on both Android and the desktop today, and BitTorrent promises that an iOS equivalent is coming in the near future.

Filed under: Storage, Internet

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Source: BitTorrent Labs, Google Play

Tech firms say they aren’t giving the NSA direct access to their servers, but that might not even be necessary. The Guardian reports that Microsoft, at least, is making it easy to snoop on services from the outside. Documents provided by Edward Snowden claim that Microsoft helped the NSA bypass Outlook.com chat encryption, even before the product launched; reportedly, it also simplified PRISM access to both SkyDrive and Skype conversations. The company denies offering any kind of carte blanche access, however, and insists that it only complies with specific, legal requests. Whether or not that’s true, we can only know so much when Microsoft is limited in what it can say on the subject.

Filed under: Storage, Internet, Microsoft

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Source: The Guardian