NewsSteam Cloud to Launch with Left 4 Dead, Takes Your Saves Online
Posted 11/03/08 at 06:29:27 PM by Alex Castle
A press release from Valve has heralded the imminent arrival of the Steam Cloud; the ability to access your Steam savefiles and controller configs from any computer. Left 4 Dead will be the first title to have the Cloud functionality, and Valve has said they'll be retrofitting their back catalog with the feature.
According to Valve, the Steam Cloud will "just work." By this they mean that gamers won't have to do anything to get their saves and options into the Cloud; it will all happen automatically. Similarly, when a user logs onto their account on a new computer their data will be downloaded for them by default.
Valve president Gabe Newell explained the philosophy behind the Steam cloud, saying "For some time now, Steam has allowed gamers to log on from any computer in the world and access their applications ... Steam Cloud is a natural extension of the portability Steam affords gamers and developers, and we intend to expand its feature set as it is used in Left 4 Dead and other games coming to Steam."
Left 4 Dead launches on 18th, with the demo (which includes Steam Cloud) coming later this week. Are you psyched? Let us know after the jump.
NewsMicrosoft Looks for Blue Skies Ahead with its Azure Cloud Computing Platform
Posted 10/29/08 at 02:49:54 PM by Mark Edward Soper
It was called "Project Red Dog" during development, but this week Microsoft revealed its favorite color for its cloud computing development platform is actually blue - Azure, in fact.
Windows Azure Services Platform was introduced at this week's PDC, and includes the following key components, according to eWeek:
- Windows Azure (service hosting, management, low-level scalable storage, computation and networking)
- Microsoft SQL Services (databases and reporting)
- Microsoft .NET Services (.NET Framework workflow, access control, and so forth)
- Live Services (file and media synchronization between PCs, phones, apps and website)
- Microsoft SharePoint Services and CRN Services (business content, collaboration, and rapid solution development)
To learn more about the Azure platform, and what it might mean for the future of Microsoft, join us after the break.
NewsNext Microsoft Office Will Have Browser-Based Word, Excel, and PowerPoint
Posted 10/28/08 at 02:16:53 PM by Alex Castle
In another bit of cloud-computing-related news out of Microsoft’s PDC, the Redmond giant has announced that the next generation Office suite will include browser based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. The apps won’t be fully-featured, but they will be competitive with Google’s online office offerings, according to Microsoft.
The online Office apps will be called “Office Web Applications,” and will be available in ad-supported and subscription-based flavors over Office Live. It looks like the apps will work with IE, Firefox, and Safari. Support for Google’s browser has yet to be confirmed.
It’s shaping up to be a big couple of days for cloud computing. We can expect to hear a lot more from Microsoft during the rest of the PDC about what this technology’s going to look like in the future.
What are you the most excited about? Hit the jump and let us know.
NewsRackspace Acquires Two Startups to Challenge Amazon's Cloud Venture
Posted 10/27/08 at 09:16:00 AM by Pulkit Chandna
Rackspace Hosting has made two acquisitions in a bid to establish itself as a major player in the lucrative cloud computing market. It has acquired Slicehost and Jungle Disk to bolster its Mosso cloud service. The acquisitions are said to be worth $28 million. Rackspace’s Cloud Files, scalable file storage service, will most probably be integrated into Slicehost, according to the Slicehost website.
Jungle Disk, which offers a cloud storage solution for multiple users, uses Amazon’s Simple Storage Service, but will begin offering Rackspace’s Mosso service as well. The two acquisitions will help Rackspace Hosting compete more fiercely with its more accomplished rival Amazon Web Services.
NewsGmail Outage Exposes Curse of Cloud Computing
Posted 10/21/08 at 03:08:05 PM by Pulkit Chandna
Last week’s Gmail outage, which lasted for about 28 hours, has once again highlighted a major shortcoming of cloud computing and web-based services. The incidence exemplifies cloud computing skeptics’ greatest concern that unheralded disruptions in cloud computing services might cost businesses’ and individuals dearly.
Some Gmail users – including paying Google Apps subscribers - couldn’t access their accounts between 16 and 17 October. Incensed users expressed their indignation across the internet, while Mark, a Google Apps adviser, provided regular updates on the status of the issue, as long as it lasted.
“We know how important Gmail is to our users, so we take issues like this very seriously, and we apologize for the inconvenience,” Mark wrote in a Google Groups post.
Earlier this year, Amazon’s Simple Storage Service remained unavailable for 8 hours. That particular episode had also spawned similar questions regarding cloud computing. Companies will have to come out with ways to keep outages to a negligible count.
NewsThe Google Cloud Hiccups, do we have the Right to Complain?
Posted 10/19/08 at 08:59:08 PM by Justin Kerr
A Google Apps malfunction was reported on Thursday leaving education edition users without access to various services, including Gmail. It turns out the loss of access was tied to an unannounced change in the layouts of start pages which redirected to a non functional iGoogle address. Google spokesmen Andrew Kovacs stated that "this was an isolated bug". "I don't want to minimize this, but was this an issue where people could not access their data? No." Google hasn’t publically stated how many of the over one million businesses and 10 million users were impacted by the bug, but apparently it was only reported by a handful of users. Kovacs went on to state that "Basically, the broader perspective with an approach to communication is to be transparent. With these hosted applications we are held to a higher standard since we are so transparent with our communication." This made me wonder. With all the negative back lash companies like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon receive when cloud services crash, is all the bad press really fair? Do we really have the right to expect 100% uptime?
Hit the jump and let us know what you think.
NewsMicrosoft’s Long Rumored Cloud OS May Finally Have a Name
Posted 10/09/08 at 05:15:33 PM by Alex Castle
Microsoft’s upcoming internet-based OS, heretofore known only as Windows Cloud, might finally have a name: “Strata.” On the website for their Professional Developers Conference, Microsoft briefly listed a number of cloud computing session under the heading “Windows Strata.” The listing was quickly taken down, but not before observant bloggers picked up on the slip.
Of course, the Strata name is far from a sure thing. Beyond Binary reports that as of Wednesday morning, no trademark had been filed for “Windows Strata,” and that a Microsoft representative said, via e-mail “As you know, Microsoft uses internal code names for pending technologies and from time to time they make their way to the public. We’re looking forward to talking more about our cloud services platform at the Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles.”
In the mean time, what do you think of the name “Windows Strata?” Tell us after the break.
NewsCloud Wars II: Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud Envelops Windows Server, SQL Server
Posted 10/03/08 at 09:42:30 AM by Mark Edward Soper
Amazon's much more than the "world's biggest bookstore" - its Amazon Web Services division has been offering flexible hosted application development for some time. And this week, Amazon Web Services launched what ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley calls a "pre-emptive strike" against Microsoft's forthcoming "Windows Cloud" operating system by adding Windows Server and Microsoft SQL Server to its product portfolio.
Amazon's move to provide access to Windows Server and SQL Server is significant because it enables developers to have their choice of Linux-based or Windows-based development resources on what Amazon calls its "cost-effective, pay-as-you-go pricing model." Essentially, Amazon's Elastic Computing Cloud service (also known as Amazon EC2) lets developers rent a virtual machine with varying amounts of disk space and transfer capabilities on an as-needed basis without the need to carve out space in a crowded server room or spend long-term dollars on a short-term requirement.
To learn more about why Amazon Web Services has added Microsoft vehicles to its "rental fleet," join us after the jump.
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