Cloud Storage

"If you let those people that own those joints have an inch, they'll steal the whole state... It looks like they already got a leg up on it." – Buford, "Walking Tall," Bing Crosby Productions, 1973

Without much fanfare, NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) recently turned the lights off on their last remaining mainframe computer.

It's not like they're shutting down their whole operation; but it's a great example of the way the traditional IT model has changed.

They still have a lot of desktop computers – probably as powerful as the room full of hardware that went dark. In addition they (and we) are using more and more mobile devices – smartphones, tablets, notebooks (soon ultrabooks) -- and mobile services.

So many devices are out there, so many services, so many options, it's tough to know:

• what's right for you
• what does what it says it does
• what does what they don't want to mention, but does
• who's gonna' last

A fresh example of the switch is Apple's latest Mac OS (Mountain Lion). It didn't slip by many folks that it shares a whole lotta' iOS features, capabilities.Read more

"Why, anybody can have a brain. That's a very mediocre commodity. Every pusillanimous creature that crawls on the Earth or slinks through slimy seas has a brain. Back where I come from, we have universities, seats of great learning, where men go to become great thinkers. And when they come out, they think deep thoughts and with no more brains than you have. But they have one thing you haven't got: a diploma." – Wizard, The Wizard of Oz, MGM (1939)

Maybe the computer never delivered on the promise of the paperless office, but it did open the floodgate on one thing … data.

The result has been a data explosion:

• 1,203 Exabytes of digital info was created, replicated around the globe last year
• 1 Petabyte of new info has been produced every 15 seconds this year
• The annual growth in information is 59 percent

All of this is because people want to do it themselves (O.K., maybe companies "encouraged/pushed us a little") with ATMs, self check-in/check-out, email/video/tweets, online tell your life story, personalized TV/video/music entertainment, online travel/banking/paying/shopping.Read more

January 9, 2012 –Onkyo has announced that it will include access to the MP3tunes.com's music Locker with its 2012-model network-capable AV receivers. Onkyo is believed to be the first AV receiver brand to incorporate MP3tunes access in its network operating system.

This will allow MP3tunes subscribers to use an Onkyo network capable receiver to play personal music collections stored their MP3tunes' Lockers, which is what the company calls their cloud servers. MP3tunes allows subscribers to maintain up to 2 GB, or about 400 songs, for free, with fee supported accounts starting at $39.95 per year for 50 GB, or the equivalent to about 10,000 songs.

Paul Wasek, National Marketing and Product Planning Manager, believes this a great new feature for any Onkyo customer. "MP3tunes Locker is an easy and secure means to maintain this data, while providing easy access through an Onkyo receiver, computer, smart phone, or any of the many network capable devices that support MP3tunes."

MP3Tunes capabilities will be included as standard on new Onkyo network capable receivers beginning in the first quarter of 2012.

SOURCE Onkyo

More than at any other point in the year, the holiday season is a time for creating and preserving memories, particularly photos and videos. A new study* from Carbonite, a provider of online backup solutions for consumers and small and medium sized businesses, found photos are considered the most valuable files consumers have on their computers.

Despite the importance of these digital photos, many people may not be backing them up to protect them. In order to keep these most precious memories safe this holiday season, Carbonite offers the following tips:

• Download memories off of all your devices: The Carbonite study shows digital cameras remain the top device for taking photos, with 78 percent of those surveyed using them. However, cell phones or smartphones are increasingly being used by consumers (used by 59 percent). Two-thirds of people who take pictures with a phone simply leave the photos on the device without backing them up. Among camcorder users, half leave their videos on their device and do nothing else with them. During this busy season, it is easy to lose a phone—or drop it in the egg nog—and lose all the photos stored on its internal memory. A camcorder may be harder to misplace, but it can be just as easy to damage.Read more

"When I was a kid, all I wanted was to be able to afford to eat in restaurants like this." – Nick, "Flashdance," Paramount (1983)

This year, the industry will ship more than $25 billion worth of servers and more than 800 million smart devices (desktops, laptops, netbooks, tablets and smartphones). But only the big iron and IT folks care much about the servers.

If you listen to HP's Apotheker and Wall Streeters, there's no reason to care about laptops, less about desktops. Leo is washing his hands of the messy business. But when it comes to tablets and phones, everyone wants to take center stage so people can do their social media stuff, mobile transactions and digital content creation/consumption.

Tablets are projected to enjoy a 123+ percent compound annual growth rate from this year's 31 million iPad and "other" units.

Next year, it's estimated that about one billion smartphones will be sold worldwide (more than 4 billion phones overall).

But in 2014, 291 million notebooks (52% of the computing market) will be sold with China leading the demand curve.

All those devices "you can't live without" let folks create, produce and replicate a whopping 1.8 Zettabytes (1.8 trillion Gigabytes) of content.

Store it…Somewhere
Of course, it's all for nothing without the lowly stagehand…storage.

The way we're using our devices – computers, laptops, smartphones -- content volumes will grow by a factor of nine in the next five years.Read more

Advancements in mobile computing and lower hardware costs have literally moved people out of their offices and into airports, remote offices, customer facilities, conference rooms, libraries and home offices. Because of the migration, people work differently than they did years ago and require increased data mobility. Today, users are more likely to have access to a variety of computers; and, like their mobile phones, they want to take their data with them wherever they go.

The Internet has been pivotal in the growth of solutions that enable mobile users to transfer and share any type of digital data. Many inexpensive file transfer solutions (some are even free) have given users the freedom of having access to their data without having to carry their laptop with them. Email, FTP sites, CDs/DVDs, USB drives and cloud-storage services can all be used to transfer and share files. However, as we hear almost daily, they all have security, privacy and other issues that need to be considered.

Their limitations have underscored the compelling need for a better, cost-effective solution that doesn't trade-off data security for simplicity of access, doesn't limit the capacity of file transfers and doesn't have hidden, long-term fees. Read more