Hands On: Amazon wants you to trust it with your photos

Amazon's cloud storage service for photos isn't just for Kindle HD users anymore. The company made its Cloud Drive Photos app available for most Android devices today. Signing in with your Amazon account will net you 5GB of free space for your pictures.

Android phone and tablet users have yet another option for cloud-based storage, though this time it’s specifically for photos. Amazon has made its Cloud Drive Photos app, which is already integrated into the Kindle Fire HD, available on most Android devices. This app looks like a service that will serve constant photo-snappers quite well.

The app initially asks for users to sign in using an Amazon account. You’re going to want to sign up for an account if you don’t already have one, because this app is completely useless if you don’t. The point of a cloud drive service is to save space, not take it up. Once you’re signed in, you’ll be greeted with the app’s home screen, or the “Cloud” tab. This simply explains to you how to access your drive online and add content from your computer that can then be viewed on your phone or tablet.

There is a second tab atop the display in this app called “Photos.” This is where you will actually be able to see the photo content that is currently saved on your device. Your camera roll, screen captures, Draw Something drawings, Instagram images, and all other photographic data is displayed. These are displayed by category, which can then be explored to see what each album holds. Pressing and holding on an album or an individual picture will allow you to manage the selection, prompting you to either remove it from the device or upload it to the cloud. These are very contrary choices, so make sure you select the one you want. The app also doesn’t appear to automatically sync and there is no option to do so in the settings, so you’ll have to manually update your sync after every snapshot, making this app annoyingly out of date compared to options from Google+ and others. 

All users of Amazon’s Cloud Drive Photos get 5GB of free storage. That can be upgraded to 20GB of space for $10 a year. Everything you upload is accessible right from your Amazon account, making it easy to manage from your phone or your computer. The app isn’t exactly feature rich, but it does the job it claims. An auto-sync feature would be nice, but it looks like we’ll have to wait until the next update to see if it’s there.

you can download the Amazon Cloud Drive Photos app on the Google Play store or Amazon’s Appstore.

Source : http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/hands-on-amazon-wants-you-to-trust-it-with-your-photos/

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Google Play Music unveiled with iTunes beating Scan and Match feature

Google Play Music enables sharing with friends via Google Plus

Google has beaten its cloud rivals to the music punch by allowing users to store all their tunes digitally…and for free.

The new Google Play Music service, which comes to Europe on 13 November, will feature a Scan and Match option that will scan your library and save it to the cloud – making them all accessible from any Google device.

While the likes of Amazon and Apple will charge you £21.99 a year (or only let you upload 250 songs for free) Google Play Music will allow up to 20,000 songs stored online, and can be played back on any internet-connected device at up to 320Kbps quality.

Play, collaborate and listen

The new Google Play Music platform will allow users in Europe to purchase and download music for the first time, and will also enable sharing to your friends via Google Plus.

These 'social recommendations' will allow you to share the song with unlimited people and they'll be able to listen to it once before being given the option to buy it, too.

And the big news for unsigned artists is they'll also be able to get their wares up on Google Play Music, as well - joining the other big names like iTunes and Amazon in being able to share their sounds.

The Google Play Music release date has been set for 13 November, when the likes of the Google Nexus 4 and Google Nexus 10 go on sale, freshly baked with Android 4.2 from the outset. There's no work on the cost per track as yet, but it's unlikely to be overly expensive given how much the average cost of each song is for the US version of the portal.

Source : http://www.techradar.com/news/mobile-phones/phone-and-communications/web/internet/google-play-music-unveiled-with-itunes-beating-scan-and-match-feature-1108451

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Rumor: Sony to launch MyXperia cloud service

Send in the Clouds

A "MyXperia" trademark filed by Sony possibly points to the company putting together a new cloud service for its Xperia mobile devices.

The European Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market-registered trademark is intended to enable the "upload, storage, retrieval, download, transmission and delivery of digital content and media."

Trademark 011197332 says that these functions apply to "mobile phones, smart phones, digital or electronic tablets, PDAs and/or portable and handheld digital electronic devices."

The forecast for Sony's cloud-based service is backed up by the existence of MyXperia.com. Going there forwards users to the subdomain MyXperia.Sony.com, which asks for credentials.

Cloudy with a chance of "Me Too"

Sony is just the latest mobile device manufacturer with a desire to capitalize on cloud storage.

Apple iCloud and Google Drive are already helping users sync files between their devices and computers. Both offer 5GB of free storage with the ability to expand for a fee.

Microsoft is trying to up the storage ante by offering 7GB for free. Its SkyDrive service is also the only one that is compatible with iOS, Android and Windows Phone.

Dropbox doesn't have a horse in the mobile device game and only offers 2GB initially. But the popular storage-only service allows users to expand (up to 16GB) with referrals.

But Sony has XPERience

Sony is late to the cloud storage game when it comes to mobile devices, but its experience in video games is once again a help to its technology division.

One of the features of PlayStation Plus, the paid service for PlayStation Network users, is the ability to sync 1,000 save files (up to 1GB) with Sony's servers.

Sony's gaming cloud has been running on PlayStation 3 for one year and is slated to come to the handheld PlayStation Vita next month with an extra 1GB of storage.

There's no word on a release date for the company's MyXperia service. But given the fact that MyXperia.Sony.com is already up and running, it may not be long.

Source : http://www.techradar.com/news/computing-components/storage/rumor-sony-to-launch-myxperia-cloud-service-1106668

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Samsung S Cloud pops up on the Galaxy Note 2

Samsung offers up a bit of cloud control 

Samsung's much rumoured but not yet confirmed S Cloud appears to be real, with an image of it working on the Samsung Galaxy Note 2.

The Samsung S Cloud is, yes you've guessed it, Samsung's apparent foray into cloud storage. We have to say apparent as Samsung has yet to confirm its existence. This is despite rumours that the technology was set to launch alongside the Samsung Galaxy S3.

Now the cloud storage service has cropped up again in a photo that seems to prove its existence. And the bonus is that even though it is a spy shot, it's not even blurry.
Cloud speaker

The Samsung Galaxy Note 2 launched at IFA 2012 in Berlin and an eagle eyed German blogger from BestBoyZ spotted the functionality.

Interestingly, the S Cloud currently seems to be a shell for Dropbox, so it may well turn out that the S Cloud is a collaboration with the popular file-distribution app.

If S Cloud, when/if it does arrive comes with similar Dropbox functionality then it will be able to sync pictures, movies and documents into the cloud.

Given that Samsung has expanded Android to its latest camera range, this could well be an integral part of the camera's functionality – and it certainly wouldn't go amiss on Samsung's bevy of smartphones and tablets.


Source : techradar[dot]com

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