Hongye's 170 Site

Monday, April 25, 2011

iTunes cloud streaming coming before Google?

Apple Inc has completed work on an online music storage service and is set to launch it ahead of Google.

Apple's plans will allow iTunes customers to store their songs on a remote server, and then access them from wherever they have an Internet connection.

Apple has yet to sign any new licenses for the service and major music labels are hoping to secure deals before the service is launched.

Amazon.com Inc launched a music locker service earlier in April without new licensing agreements leading to threats of legal action from some music companies. At the time, Amazon argued that its so-called Cloud Drive service does not need licenses, and said uploaded music belongs to the users.

Last week, however, Amazon held talks with some labels to reach agreements for a new, more sophisticated locker service.

Apple, Amazon and Google are battling for control of new digital media platforms through which everyday users will access their music and videos.

Google originally wanted to launch a basic locker service and an 'iTunes-like' store. In recent weeks it has suggested exploring licensing for a subscription service, which causes delay of its project.

Amazon Cloud Failure Takes Down Web Sites

Last Thursday morning, a widespread failure in Amazon.com’s Web services business caused many sites being inaccessible for hours, which highlights the risks involved when companies rely on so-called cloud computing.

The Web companies use Amazon’s cloud-based service to serve their Web sites, applications and files. Amazon, which is a leader in this business, lets these companies rent space on its servers and take advantage of its big data centers and computing power.

But at the same time, cloud service gives the companies little control if the servers fail, so many people start to think whether the cloud is enterprise-ready.

Monday, April 18, 2011

Google's Anti - "Content Farm" Move

Google is making its biggest move yet to ensure its search results are not overridden with low quality articles from so-called “content farms.” The company says it has made a “pretty big” adjustment to its algorithm in order to “reduce rankings for low-quality sites” and provide higher rankings for sites “with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.” Google says the changes impact 11.8 percent of the queries on its search engine.

Google notably does not say in its blog post on the move that “content farms” are the target of the change , instead saying it is penalizing “low-quality sites,” which it defines as those that provide “low value-add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful.”

Get in the Cloud with Microsoft Office 365

Microsoft's cloud-focused Office 365, a subscription service that brings online Office apps and other Web tools to small businesses, has opened up to public beta testing today, the company announced this morning.

Office 365 is built to entice small and large companies that want to stop handling many IT chores in-house and instead entrust the heavy lifting to Microsoft's servers. This bundle of always-on online services ties in to Office software and is meant to enable access to work, contacts, and calendars from your desktop and mobile devices, including Windows Phone 7, Android, and BlackBerry smartphones.

In addition to letting you collaborate live on documents simultaneously with other users, Office 365 offers shared storage space online, and tools for managing sites and intranet pages.

Office 365 is not a collection of online counterparts to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Microsoft released just such a collection last June as Office Web Apps, to accompany the new desktop Office 2010. Office Web Apps are a part of Office 365, however, and both integrate with Office software on your PC. Microsoft says that its cloud tools will work with Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari on the Mac.