Microsoft Adds URL Shortener to SkyDrive
Last Updated on Thursday, 17 May 2012 08:57 Written by Alan Thursday, 17 May 2012 08:57
SkyDrive, which received a long-anticipated update from Microsoft just a couple of weeks ago, got another new feature today – URL shortening. Microsoft has positioned their cloud storage service to be a great way to share files like photos and documents. This can be done via email, which is great for photos since it provides thumbnails of the images, or by sending a direct link to a file.
Sending a link has been popular, as Microsoft claims more than 13 million have been created since the introduction last year. Popular enough that Microsoft has decided to improve the process by building in a link-shortening service. These links can not only be emailed, but posted to services like Facebook and Twitter.
- We’ve shortened our regular URLs by 40%. Our previous URLs didn’t even fit inside a Tweet! Oh the shame!
- You can shorten them even further thanks to our new partnership with bitly and the new domain for shortened SkyDrive URLs: http://sdrv.ms
- We’ve added OpenGraph support to our URLs so that when you paste them into places like Facebook, a nice thumbnail preview gets generated
Two of our favorite features are that you can get stats on the links you send out so you can see how much traffic a link gets and you can also get QR Codes for your links.
To get the full details you can read the announcement over at Inside Windows Live blog.
Box to Release Windows 8 Metro App
Last Updated on Friday, 11 May 2012 12:15 Written by Alan Friday, 11 May 2012 12:15
Box, the popular cloud file sharing and storage service, is getting ready for Windows 8 with their own Metro style app for the upcoming operating system. Windows 8 is currently available as a Consumer Preview (Microsoft-speak for beta) and is expected to be released this coming fall. The new Windows Store is part of the Consumer Preview and many companies are beginning to design their Metro apps so they will be ready in the store at final release. Some, like Amazon’s Kindle app, are already available in the store.
Box showed off a beta version of the new Metro app at the recent CTIA show. Reportedly the demo showed an app that was clearly in the early stages of development and appeared buggy and even crashed several times.
Box claims the final version of the app will be released with Windows 8 Final, but there could be a public beta to go with the Windows 8 Release Preview, which is due in June. Microsoft has already built and released a Metro app of their SkyDrive cloud storage. Box will be the first major competitor for that service to launch on the next-gen OS.
Image Credit: Time
HP Launches HP Cloud Beta
Last Updated on Thursday, 10 May 2012 11:47 Written by Alan Thursday, 10 May 2012 11:47
Today HP announced the first public beta of their HP Cloud Services. Before you get too excited about competition for SkyDrive, Dropbox, and the others, you should know that this is more about competition for things like Amazon Web Services. In other words, it’s more for the corporate world than the home user.
The HP Cloud consists of several different parts. There is HP Cloud Compute which allows for the deployment of virtual machines on demand. ”Customize instances to handle changing workloads, and add new instances to quickly scale.” HP Cloud Object Storage lets users store files as well serve static content for apps. This works with HP Cloud CDN, which serves the data through both HP and Akamai networks. This can include audio and video serving. There is also HP Cloud Block Storage, Cloud Relational Database for MySQL, and Cloud Identity Service.
“HP’s full suite of public cloud services will enable developers to create the next generation of web services to be built, run and scaled on a global basis, backed with a broad selection of analytics, tools and services.”
HP states that already nearly 40 companies have announced their support for HP Cloud Services. You can get more information and sign up for the beta by visiting HPCloud.
