A list released today reveals that there are nearly 2,000 applications for new internet names like “.baby” and “.love.” Book giant Amazon has applied to control dozens of the new names and is in competition for several of them including “.app” and “.cloud” Read more at paidContent »
Once a Google Android exclusive, Amazon released an iOS version of its Cloud Player app for iPhone and iPod touch devices. The free software provides streaming and download access to audio files on Amazon servers either purchased from Amazon’s music store or later uploaded by customers. Read more »
The adoption of tablets, social media and new interfaces and the changing nature of the TV itself mean the digital living room will continue on its path of rapid change, thanks to new ways of creating, viewing, bundling, distributing and selling content. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Although the majority of API attention has centered on consumer Web services, an emerging cadre of startups are focused on infrastructure and business processes. Robin Vasan, managing director at the venture capital firm Mayfield Fund, gives an overview of the potential infrastructure categories and disruptive companies. Read more »
Cloud collaboration startup Huddle is gearing up for a significant push, with a $24 million round of funding that CEO Alastair Mitchell says can help turn the company into a billion dollar business. Read more »
The WSJ says iCloud will get new photo and video syncing capabilities, which will be announced at WWDC in June. It’s remarkable how quickly Apple has moved to build up iCloud, particularly for a company that previously hasn’t had much success with networked services. Read more »
Farmeron isn’t your typical software-as-a-service business — it’s based in a small town in Croatia, and its customers are dairy farmers, not tech-savvy startups. Still, founder Matija Kopic’s just raised another $1.4 million to help take its big data services to farms around the world. Read more »
German service Boxcryptor allows you to protect sensitive data on popular cloud services — and now tweaks made to its Android client pave the way for the app to support Box.net as well as Dropbox. Read more »
This quarter saw Amazon Web Services finally relaxing its public-cloud-only stance and launching services to support hybrid-cloud deployments. Meanwhile, Hadoop players moved to make their platforms more accessible to mainstream BI analysts and database administrators. A new quarterly report analyzes these trends and provides a near-term outlook. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Less than a month after being acquired Zynga, OMGPOP is on its way to being integrated into the giant game maker’s technology roadmap, says Jason Pearlman, CTO of OMGPOP. Some of the new Draw Something features released today were made using Z Cloud resources. Read more »
In the first quarter of 2012 all eyes were on the screen, both big and small. Apple’s new Retina display pushed video streaming, and broadcast-TV streaming service Aereo’s launch was quickly followed with litigation. These events and more are discussed in a new quarterly report. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
UK-based Notion Capital has announced a new fund focused on European cloud and software-as-a-service startups. So what will happen to it? We found out where — and how — that money is likely to be spent. Read more »
Google take notice: Amazon Web Services is now pushing a “fully managed search service” for web or mobile app developers. CloudSearch promises to ease the provisioning headaches of web developers who need to build search into their commerce or other sites. Read more »
DVD sales may not be what they were, but the road to Hollywood riches still goes through Walmart’s Bentonville, Ark. headquarters. Fortunately, to see a demo of the retailer’s new UltraViolet cloud service, we only had to drive to Rosemead, Calif. Read more at paidContent »
Amazon Web Services Storage Gateway is the company’s first foray into the on-premises cloud-storage space. But a number of vendors are attacking the on-premises cloud-storage gateway market too. Do these offerings signal the death of the cloud gateway as an appliance or simply validation of the market? Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Infrastructure is the underpinning of the web, and as the cloud continues to attract VC funding and more infrastructure pros join the investment community, it’s worth knowing which people and which firms are the best prepared to understand your deal. Our list should help. Read more »
Amazon’s popular S3 storage service shows no sign of slowing down. At the end of the first quarter, it was home to more than 905 billion objects, up from 762 billion for the previous quarter, according to the company’s Amazon Web Services blog. Read more »
Mark Ayzenshtat, once a top Google engineer and the co-founder of TellApart, is joining Evernote to lead that company’s data product push. Evernote which makes it easy for users to collect and store notes, video, audio, is about to launch an enterprise push. Read more »
Cloud computing is at the top of virtually every CIO’s interest list and is expected to grow 126.5 percent over the next two years. A new report on GigaOM Pro details each sector of cloud computing and forecasts a shift toward hybrid models in the enterprise community. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
If you spend a lot of time writing in the margins of reports or filling out endless forms, there’s something you should know: You should be using a tablet for all of these things. Here are four iPad apps to get you on your way. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Five key technology sectors are enabling the smart city: smart grids, smart transport, smart water and waste management, smart building systems, and the enabling ICT platforms for the smart city. Key players like IT companies, telcos and utilities must learn how to harness those technologies, and quickly. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Cloud computing, mobile computing and the consumerization of IT combine to create another force that overwhelms IT departments: complexity, including complexity of devices and applications, physical and virtual computing environments, and related challenges for IT staff. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
French startup Jolicloud has spent the last few years trying to do ambitious things with cloud-based computers, operating systems and portable desktops — but it’s failed to get much mainstream traction. Can its new service for centralizing your data change all that? Read more »
Moving to the cloud and SaaS is simpler than many executives believe and can deliver significant business gains relatively quickly, says Zohar Gilad, executive vice president at Precise. Gilad shares the two key decisions that a company should make when considering its cloud strategy. Read more »
Cloud computing consultancy Cloudscaling is realigning its business around the open-source OpenStack framework, and it has a message for the world: If you want to use open-source software but operate like Amazon Web Services, we’re your man. Read more »
This year’s CES was the biggest in the show’s 44-year history. It boasted 15 miles of exhibit hall aisles, 3,100 booths and 153,000 attendees. It is easy to be jaded by the endlessly repetitive products, but the thousands of innovations point toward a future of connectivity. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Apple CEO Tim Cook said iCloud “is not just a product, it’s a strategy for the next decade.” What will that mean for a company trying to lead us all into the post-PC world? We look at possible future applications of cloud-based services from Apple. Read more »
Amazon’s Kindle Fire is the latest example of a growing trend to move traditional computer activities to tablets and smartphones. AlwaysOnPC, a $25 mobile app, connects the Kindle Fire to a cloud instance of Fedora Linux with Open Office, Firefox, Chrome and integrated Dropbox support. Read more »
OnLive’s game service is already available for Android devices, but there’s an iOS version in the works. Here’s a hands on demo with the beta client on an iPad, along with the OnLive wireless controller, which I think brings a much better experience than the touchscreen. Read more »
The fourth quarter may have lacked a dominating big-event product announcement like Q3’s Facebook platform extension or Q2’s unveiling of Google+, but the NewNet world continued to buzz along. In the battle for mind share, everyone wanted to be a platform. Meanwhile, consumer and social technologies continued to gain momentum, and new vehicles for content and service discovery presented both challenges and opportunities for NewNet companies. And it is hard to ignore the overcrowded but growing world of daily deals. This quarterly report analyzes these trends and others, and it also provides a near-term outlook of trends, technologies and companies to watch in 2012. Companies mentioned in the report include Amazon, Facebook and Socialcast. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The cloud is looking pretty good to software developers this year, according to new Zend Technologies’ research. More than half of the 3,335 developers surveyed said they expect to use a public cloud for their work in 2012, with AWS being the top draw. Read more »
Demand for cloud computing continues to increase exponentially as consumers, businesses and government agencies seek to defer the expense of acquiring, operating and maintaining infrastructure and applications to third-party service providers. Likewise, software publishers are finding the cloud computing model an efficient and effective mechanism for delivering their products as a service and as an operational expense to their customers. For independent software vendors, cloud computing is opening up new markets and making their applications more accessible and affordable to scores of new customers. For a multitude of reasons, many ISVs are choosing to forego data center development and are partnering with hosting providers that have the infrastructure, resources and expertise in managing and delivering cloud services. This report provides ISVs with guidance on partnering with hosting companies, establishing criteria for selecting a hosting service, metrics for measuring hosting performance as it relates to cloud services delivered and an understanding of the responsibilities they retain even when outsourcing a large part of their services functions to a third party. Companies mentioned in this report include Microsoft, Google and Salesforce.com. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
A recent survey suggests that “mobile computing appears to be a driving force behind cloud adoption in enterprises.” While the cloud clearly plays a role in making mobile devices as valuable to the enterprise as they are, it may be too much to suggest that mobiles ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
If it seemed on late Wednesday like Apple’s rollout of iTunes Match to basically every international iTunes market was too good to be true, that’s because it was. Apple is telling customers on Thursday that beyond Brazil and the U.S., Match “will not function.” Read more »
Apple is apparently in the process of setting up iTunes Match for international customers. According to reports, users can now access the iTunes Match sign-up page from this direct link. As of this writing, it was working here in Canada, where Match costs $27.99 annually. Read more »
Something as simple as Smartsheet’s cloud-enabled spreadsheets can greatly improve communication in the workplace, allowing everyone to see how different steps in a project relate to manpower, timing, and other resources. The Oshkosh, Wisconsin School District provides a useful example of Smartsheet’s capabilities. Read more »
Advocates of the public cloud tend to dismiss private cloud deployments within individual companies, arguing that they are too small to deliver the cost or flexibility advantages of the public cloud. But recent developments in the UK refute that argument. The University Modernization Fund’s Cloud Pilot, ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
When will we stop talking about the cloud? If history is any guide, eventually the idea of the cloud as something that is separate from the web will disappear as more people get used to it — although when that will happen is anyone’s guess. Read more »
Here’s something fun from London design consultancy BERG: a social printer that connects to a variety of online services and runs off a ticker of news and information from the world around you. Read more »
Hewlett-Packard continues to struggle with fallout from the decision to nix its webOS-based tablets, a less-than-stellar mix of IT services, and its newly completed acquisition of Autonomy. The question is how long those reverberations will impact the company’s profitability and growth prospects. Read more »
