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Remember life before cellphones? It’s hard, because they are so ubiquitous and essential. iCloud marks a similar turning point, a transition from an old way of doing things. It makes computers easy for everyone, by making computing disappear. More »

The man on your left is Dr. Peng Ning — a computer science professor at NC State whose team, along with researchers from IBM, has developed an experimental new method for safely securing cloud-stored data. Their approach, known as a “Strongly Isolated Computing Environment” (SICE), would essentially allow engineers to isolate, store and process sensitive information away from a computing system’s hypervisors — programs that allow networked operating systems to operate independently of one another, but are also vulnerable to hackers. With the Trusted Computing Base (TCB) as its software foundation, Ping’s technique also allows programmers to devote specific CPU cores to handling sensitive data, thereby freeing up the other cores to execute normal functions. And, because TCB consists of just 300 lines of code, it leaves a smaller “surface” for cybercriminals to attack. When put to the test, the SICE architecture used only three percent of overhead performance for workloads that didn’t require direct network access — an amount that Ping describes as a “fairly modest price to pay for the enhanced security.” He acknowledges, however, that he and his team still need to find a way to speed up processes for workloads that do depend on network access, and it remains to be seen whether or not their technique will make it to the mainstream anytime soon. For now, though, you can float past the break for more details in the full PR.

Continue reading NC State researchers team with IBM to keep cloud-stored data away from prying eyes

NC State researchers team with IBM to keep cloud-stored data away from prying eyes originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 07 Oct 2011 09:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Are you a Windows user in need of yet another cloud storage option? Lucky for you, after a long-running beta, Canonical’s Ubuntu One client has officially debuted on Microsoft’s platform. First introduced with Ubuntu 10.10, the service offers 5GB of free storage, with file syncing across multiple machines, ala Dropbox. Android and iOS clients are already available. If you need more space, how about 20GB for $29.99 a year or $2.99 a month? And if portable tunes is your game, you can have that same 20GB along with music streaming apps (similar to Google Music Beta) for $39.99 a year or $3.99 a month. Click the source link to engage in some cross-platform storage.

Filed under: Storage, Networking

‘Humanity toward others’ extended to Windows with Ubuntu One cloud storage originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 03 Oct 2011 04:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Part of Amazon’s new Kindle Fire pitch is its promise of Amazon Silk — a “split browser” exclusive to the tablet that gets the heavy lifting done on its EC2 cloud servers and promises faster access as a result. Dubbed Silk to represent an “invisible, yet incredibly strong connection”, it takes advantage of Amazon’s existing speedy connections, and that so many sites are already hosted on its servers to speed up web access. Another feature is its ability to learn from previous web surfers and use their data to determine how to render a page, and which sites to precache on the device before you even select the next link. While mobile browsers like Skyfire and Opera have offered speed boosting proxies before, Amazon thinks its AWS prowess and the addition of “dynamic decisions” about what to render locally or in the cloud takes it to another level. Read our live blog of the event for more details, or check out the video explanation and press release after the break.

Continue reading Amazon Silk browser spins a faster mobile web, courtesy of cloud servers (video)

Amazon Silk browser spins a faster mobile web, courtesy of cloud servers (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 28 Sep 2011 10:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You think your finger grease does bad things to your smartphone’s touchscreen? Just imagine the horrors it would wreak on some ancient documents. As promised, Google has saved history the heartbreak of succumbing to your grubby paws by digitizing the Dead Sea Scrolls. Like pretty much everything else these days, the software giant has added the oldest known biblical manuscript to the cloud. Five scrolls are now available as hi-res images, which really you give the feel of their long-dead animal skin parchment. Google is also offering up English translations of some of the documents and is letting users add comments, because apparently historians weren’t too keen on letting people pencil in the margins of the real thing.

Continue reading Google puts the Dead Sea Scrolls in the cloud, promises they won’t dissolve when you touch them

Google puts the Dead Sea Scrolls in the cloud, promises they won’t dissolve when you touch them originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Sep 2011 12:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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