Hasta La Gadget!

We reported back in July that Microsoft had settled with UK’s BSkyB which had sued it for infringing on its “Sky” brand by calling its cloud storage service SkyDrive. Microsoft has spent considerable resources in building up the SkyDrive brand in the particularly competitive cloud storage niche, however since it opted to settle the lawsuit, it meant that the company will have to rename SkyDrive. BSkyB had agreed to let Microsoft use the brand for a “reasonable” time so that the transition could be made easily. If latest reports are to be believed, Microsoft might be close to picking out a new name. SkyDrive might be renamed to “NewDrive,” according to a connected Windows blogger named Paul Thurrott.

A website called LiveSide recently reported that the www.newdrive.com URL has already been picked up and that it was redirecting visitors to SkyDrive, however as of this writing, the link appears to be dead. For all we know though, NewDrive could only be a placeholder until Microsoft stumbles upon a brand that it feels is right for its cloud storage service. The company has used this tactic before, its email service Hotmail was codenamed Newmail internally before it was rebranded to what we now know as Outlook.com.

Microsoft Might Rename SkyDrive To ‘NewDrive’ original content from Ubergizmo.

Microsoft has added automatic photo upload to its SkyDrive app for iOS, with the new Camera Backup feature pushing shots directly to the cloud once they’re snapped. The updated SkyDrive iOS app makes Camera Backup an option, naturally, and the uploads can be set to take place over WiFi and cellular data, or only when […]

Windows Phone owners have long had the option of backing up their photos to SkyDrive, but Microsoft hasn’t extended that courtesy to other platforms so far. The company must be feeling a little more generous today, as it just introduced automatic camera backups to SkyDrive for iOS. The update lets snap-happy users preserve both pictures and video, while the bandwidth-conscious can limit connection types and image sizes. There are a few welcome improvements to the app whether or not you plan to safeguard your gallery, including an iOS 7-themed makeover and the choice of opening documents in either Office Mobile or OneNote.

SkyDrive’s web client is getting a smaller, Facebook-oriented tune-up at the same time. Sharers can now get a preview of what their photos will look like on the social network, upload to existing albums and set permissions before the transfer begins. While the web upgrade isn’t quite as helpful as the new iOS app, it should minimize the chances of any SkyDrive-related social mishaps.

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Storage, Internet, Mobile, Microsoft, Facebook

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Via: Inside SkyDrive

Source: App Store, SkyDrive

Today Microsoft gets serious about SkyDrive for cross-platform access to media of all types. Not that they didn’t plan on the service being taken seriously before, but here in integrating SkyDrive with the Xbox One, Microsoft makes a big play for the gamers and living room media players of the world. Here gamers galore will […]

This article was written on November 11, 2009 by CyberNet.

I love the fact that Microsoft gives users a free 25GB of storage for files through SkyDrive, but I think they’re able to do that because they don’t provide an easy way for people to upload things. That way most people will never come close to hitting their 25GB limit, but that may change with the free SkyDrive Explorer app.

As the name implies this will make your SkyDrive account accessible right there in Windows Explorer… exactly what I’ve been wanting. From there you can drag-and-drop files into any of your SkyDrive directories, or copy down files that you’ve already uploaded. Once you’ve uploaded a file or folder you can then right-click on it to grab the URL that can then be used to send to other people you want to share it with. This is perfect for sharing music or photos with friends and family! It’s fast, simple, and makes it so that you never even have to visit the SkyDrive site.

Here’s what you can do with SkyDrive Explorer:

• View the structure and contents of folders in SkyDrive
• View files information (type, size, creation date in GMT format)
• Create new root folders and subfolders
• Copy files into the storage
• Delete files and folders
• Copy files from the storage to the computer
• Copy folders and subfolders from the storage to the computer keeping their structure
• Use Drag & Drop for files operations
• Rename files and folders
• Create links to SkyDrive folders on your computer
• Copy URL of the selected object(s) to the Clipboard

The one downside is a limit of the SkyDrive service itself… and it’s that you can’t upload files larger than 50MB. What would be cool is if a future version of SkyDrive Explorer would automatically split files up into 50MB chunks! It’s an awesome app even without that functionality though.

SkyDrive Explorer Homepage (Windows only; 32-bit or 64-bit; Freeware)

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