cloud

We previously looked at the official SnapCrowd app heading to Windows Phone, with a planned March release. We're now happy to announce that the app is finally available on the Marketplace and has been since April 10th. The digital media sharing service enables users to upload, view and stream media and even add subusers to the account. Sporting robust security, including SSL / TLS and HTTPS protocol layers, SnapCrowd also keeps data relatively secure. 

The service supports video, music, contacts, photos, contacts and documents. As mentioned above, streaming is a feature that can be used for digital media, including videos. An interesting part of the service itself is the subuser functionality, allowing other users to connect and stream media and files under one account with a single paid plan.

There are three plans that are fairly affordable compared to competitors, a free option boasts 10GB of storage (for a limited time) with one subuser, then the price goes up to $59 for 50GB of storage and finally $99 for 100GB of storage with increased subusers.

Check out the quick video below for more information.

You can download SnapCrowd from the Marketplace for free, and sign up for the available plans on the website (snapcrowd.com).

In September of last year we wrote about the startup created by two ex-Microsofties called Buddy.

Buddy is a cloud platform that has support for all the major mobile Operating Systems (and HTML5), and makes it really easy to integrate web services into your app. With a few lines of code you could add a high score list, or get push notifications and Live-Tile updates out to all of your users, and that is just the basic stuff. There is support for a wide range of other usage scenarios which you can checkout in their documentation.

Here is the basic flow that they provide for a global high-score list:

Up until now there were different price tiers based on your usage, starting at a free account which provided enough API transactions for most small apps. But to celebrate reaching 5000 signed-up developers, the service is now totally free until August!

Check out the newsletter below:

Buddy Announces 5000 Developers
... and a pre-v1.0 launch gift!

We have great news that we want to share - but first, since our launch in beta last September we've been THRILLED with the support we've received from the mobile app development community the world over.

In fact, we're pleased to announce that we now have 5000 developers on the Buddy Platform - so thank you to every single one of you for your support, your feedback and your contributions so far!

The Buddy team has been working super hard (in fact so hard, that we need more people! Click here to learn more about opportunities to join our team), and we're in the final prep stages before we emerge from beta and release our v1.0 product.

To celebrate, we want to give our developers FREE access for all accounts consuming less than 2 million API calls per month - and we're going to continue doing so until August! So if you've been thinking about building an app on Buddy - there's never been a better time to get your feet wet.

To get started, download our free full code samples for iOS, Android and Windows Phone - these are full apps that will compile and execute - and tinker away from there!

Thanks again for your support, and we look forward to sharing more info on our post-v1.0 launch pricing shortly!

So if you aren't looking forward to forking out for Azure (or learning it for that matter), now is a great time to jump on board. Hit the source below to sign-up.

Source: Buddy platform

We'll be honest---we had no idea what Trello was till just a little while ago. Evidently it's another free cloud-colloboration service that allows your group of co-workers, friends or colleagues to work together on a project. In short, you create boards, people can add notes and media to said boards and you get a timeline of those changes and who made them.

Now that we think about it, that does sound useful. So it's nice to know that (a) if you already use Trello or (b) you think Trello could be useful to you, there is an app for that.

Trellizzo, by Intertouch Media Technologies, is a free Windows Phone app that will access your account and evidently allow you to continue your collaboration via your WP7 device on the go--or at they very least, track those changes. The app is a little rough for a v1.0 with no Mango support...yet. But the devs are actively looking to update the app and are looking for user feedback (done through the app) which sounds good to us. Plus it is fast and nice looking.

You can sign up for Trello here on their site (or watch the video after the break) and pick up Trellizzo for your phone here in the Marketplace for free.

SnapCrowd is a popular cloud-sharing/hosting service for digital media that was introduced late last year. What makes SnapCrowd different though from say Dropbox or even Skydrive is the ability to upload content unaltered/resized, support for 300 different photo formats (including RAW), resume of uploads, streaming of video and music and the best part in our opinion--subusers for your account. What that last part means of course is that you can have multiple users share and access the same account which is certainly unique feature for many. Finally, the service also has some of the best security around including SSL / TLS and HTTPS protocol layers, for you privacy gurus.

So we're quite excited to see an official app headed to Windows Phone with a planned release date of March. The app features all the main aspects of the cloud service including video, music, photos, contacts and document support in addition to streaming of media.

What makes SnapCrowd great, from our perspective, is how robust and feature-rich their service is--it's not just file storage, but the playback ability, the generation of album art, the option to stream whole movies, share with multiple users, etc. that seemingly makes it a good sell. The service is free for 10GB of storage (for a limited time) and one subuser account and then goes to $59 for 50GB of storage and $99 for 100GB of storage with increased subusers.

We will keep you posted on its progress. Read more on SnapCrowd at their website: Snapcrowd.com

Back in early September, LiveSide ran a story about the recent SkyDrive update. Specifically, Wave 5 was to offer a hefty helping of unlimited storage for your photos and Office documents that you've stashed away. The idea seemed reasonable, after all they were limiting it to specific media types, so why not?

Well, it turns out the SkyDrive team is not so confident in that new feature. When asked about it directly on Twitter they said flat out that's it is a rumor:

"We don't offer unlimited photos and docs. Unless it came from our official blog, it's a rumor."

Okay, we suppose we can angle it that they never said it wasn't coming later on. But at least for now that terse wording is leading us to believe that this whole idea of unlimited storage for pics and docs just ain't true. Maybe next time? For now, you'll just have to suffer with your free 25GB of storage. /sarcasm

Source: @SkyDrive; Thanks, Edwin, for the tip!

Dropbox is conducting a poll to see if there is enough interest to develop a Windows Phone application. Dropbox recently upgraded their mobile website and is now looking into building a Windows Phone app.

Dropbox's mobile website received a hefty facelift in early September that brought new features into the mix such as,

• Search: You can search your Dropbox for that e-book that was such a pain to browse to.
• File quick actions: Whether you are browsing or searching for files, now in addition to downloading a file, there is also a quick action menu dropdown that gives you access to additional things you can do to your files. For now, that means sharing and deleting.
• Share: Dropbox will generate a link that helps you quickly share a file or folder with your friends. Simply copy a link to your device clipboard or email the link on.
• Delete: There's a new delete functionality and clean up your Dropbox.
• Account settings: New account settings tab has been added to make it easier to view or modify your account settings.
• Internationalization: Dropbox now supports 5 different languages: English, Spanish, French, German, and Japanese.

You can visit Dropbox's mobile interface by pointing your Windows Phone to http://www.dropbox.com/m. And if you agree that Dropbox should develop a mobile app, head on over here to Votebox (you have to register with Dropbox to vote).  Last time I checked, the yes voted totaled 5,765.

Thanks goes out to Leonal for the tip!

Here's some interesting news surrounding SkyDrive. The growing service has seen increased usage through Windows Phone, Office and soon-to-be apps for iOS and Android. Microsoft have been continuously pushing it to rival competitive storage solutions and are now reported to be planning unlimited storage.

Before we all lose our minds with the whole "OMGWTFBBQ?!" emotion, let's take a quick gander at the proposed storage features:

• Unlimited storage space for all Office documents
• Unlimited storage space for all photos
• 25 GB of free storage for everything else

What's good? Unlimited storage for Office documentation and photos taken on our Windows Phone handsets, but unfortunately we'll have capped space for music and all other files. Still, 25GB worth of storage is more than what the average user requires. With apps for OS X, iOS and Android as well as native integration with Windows and WP I can see myself converting along with many more.

This may also confirm the integration of the 5GB "SkyDrive synced storage" for Windows Live Mesh with SkyDrive for devices added to accounts. We'll have to see when the roll out happens.

Source: LiveSide

European Parliament members are up in arms after a recent admission by Microsoft that they may be required by the Patriot Act to secretly give U.S. authorities access to European data stored in Microsoft's cloud.  The controversy stems from the EU's Data Protection Directive, which dictates that companies must notify users if/when their data is handed over to another party.  If Microsoft is forced to follow Patriot Act guidelines, then that would mean the U.S. law would trump European law.  Some parliamentarians have taken up the cause to prevent that from happening.

Sophia In't Veld, a member of the Parliament's civil liberties committee, urged her colleagues to consider the matter:

"Does the Commission consider that the U.S. Patriot Act thus effectively overrules the E.U. Directive on Data Protection? What will the Commission do to remedy this situation, and ensure that E.U. data protection rules can be effectively enforced and that third country legislation does not take precedence over E.U. legislation?"

Currently, the Safe Harbor act, which allows companies like Microsoft to transfer data from European storage facilities guarantees users reasonable security and enforcement.  However, if the Patriot Act is allowed supersede that, then it renders that guarantee useless.  Theo Bosboom, IT lawyer with Dirkzager Lawyers, had this to say:

"I'm afraid that Safe Harbor has very little value anymore, since it came out that it might be possible that U.S. companies that offer to keep data in a European cloud are still obliged to allow the U.S. government access to these data on basis of the Patriot Act..."

The struggle for data protection extends beyond the issue of sovereignty of state.  Should the matter remain as is, it opens the floodgates for other companies' data to be secretly put in the hands of U.S. officials.  Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. could all be affected.  European Parliament members have taken up the cause for their constituents, but until it is fully resolved, Bosboom says that, "Europeans would be better to keep their data in Europe. If a European contract partner for a European cloud solution, offers the guarantee that data stays within the European Union, that is without a doubt the best choice, legally."

Source: PCWorld

The other day we mentioned an openly available tool, Dropbox Reader, that is designed to circumvent security measures on your DropBox account. We are now hearing that over the weekend, no tool was needed to access DropBox accounts.

For a brief period of time, users could log into accounts using any password. Just type in an email address and wing it with a password and you were in. DropBox has confirmed this breach and states it left everything vulnerable from 1:54pm PDT to 5:46pm PDT this past Sunday (06/19/2011). The fix only took five minutes to put into place once DropBox became aware of things.

In a statement on DropBox's blog, the cloud storage service reports,

"We’re conducting a thorough investigation of related activity to understand whether any accounts were improperly accessed. If we identify any specific instances of unusual activity, we’ll immediately notify the account owner. If you’re concerned about any activity that has occurred in your account, you can contact us atsecurity@dropbox.com.

This should never have happened. We are scrutinizing our controls and we will be implementing additional safeguards to prevent this from happening again."

If you're a DropBox client, you may want to check your account to see if any files were accessed during the time frame or have gone missing. Changing your password might not be a bad idea either.

Glitches in security happen but it sure does seem like DropBox has been snake bitten here lately. 

source: TechCrunch via: Gizmodo