Flickr is one of those great sites of the past which was ignored for way too long. As Yahoo’s SVP Adam Caham puts it: “Flickr had become about words, little images, blue links. It was not about the photo anymore.” No Yahoo is hoping to finally rejuvenate the aging photo site with a brilliant new user interface and a massive amount of storage for users.

The boring old white page with tiny images has now been replaced with a image rich interface which is much more in sync with our current broadband age. There is extensive sharing options also built in – and of course it includes Yahoo’s new darling, Tumblr (which it bought for a cool $1,1 Bil).

The biggest way to get people back to Flickr is of course with online storage. (more…)

Cloud storage has taken the world by storm, and most people have taken to it in one form or another. There certainly is an abundance of cloud storage services these days and they all try to differentiate themselves by offering unique services. Dropbox is one of the most popular cloud storage services, and it wants to grow the capabilities of its offering. (more…)

Global Micro Solutions launched their Virtual Filing Cabinet and Office on Demand at this year’s Microsoft TechEd Africa, which took place from 16 – 19 April 2013 at the Durban International Convention Centre. Global Micro showed how customers now have the option to rent Microsoft applications on a monthly basis, without purchasing the software outright.

“Our goal at TechEd 2013 was to share our expertise and showcase the best practices which we have built our business on. This year we are focusing on how to guide your customer along the Cloud journey” says JJ Milner, Managing Director and chief cloud architect for Global Micro Solutions.

Global Micro’s solution comes in the form of a Virtual Filing Cabinet, a technology developed by Allenport to deliver the best possible Cloud storage experience and business-grade service, currently available on the Cloud services platform.

Global Micro has invited Joel E. Allan, Founder, President and Chief Executive Officer at Allenport to attend TechEd 2013 and host talks on the Global Micro stand. Allan gave attendees the best insight into how businesses can handle their Cloud services. (more…)

Microsoft has kicked off its TechEd 2013 conference with a strong statement of intent in the cloud computing space, including the announcement of the general availability of Windows Azure Infrastructure Services (IaaS), which allows users to move existing apps to the cloud to save time and money.

With this announcement, Microsoft is now the only cloud provider offering customers a fully supported, comprehensive hybrid cloud solution with platform and infrastructure services, said Microsoft South Africa’s developer platform head, Clifford de Wit.

“This is a significant step in our cloud computing strategy, which has been influenced directly by our discussions with customers and partners around the world,” said De Wit. “Customers don’t want to rip and replace their current infrastructure to benefit from the cloud; they want the strengths of their on-premises investments and the flexibility of the cloud.”
 
“It’s not only about Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) or Platform as a Service (PaaS), it’s about Infrastructure Services and Platform Services and hybrid scenarios.  The cloud should be an enabler for innovation, and an extension of your organisation’s IT fabric, not just a fancier way to describe cheap infrastructure and application hosting.”

Delivering the keynote address at TechEd 2013, which runs until Friday at Durban’s ICC, De Wit said Microsoft’s Windows Azure platform was gaining momentum in the marketplace, with nearly 1000 customers signing up for Azure daily. More than 200 000 customers are using the Windows Azure platform to date, with “strong growth” in the South African marketplace as customers started seeing the benefits of the platform. (more…)

Gamers have been shifting around in their seats in anticipation of the launch of both the Sony PlayStation 4 and the new Xbox (code named 720). After Sony’s mysterious launch of the PlayStation 4 in February, many Xbox fanatics have been scouring the web for any shred of information surrounding the possible launch of the Microsoft gaming platform. Well Xbox fans, time to get those wallets ready! Popular blogger Paul Thurrott reports that “sources familiar with the project” has informed him that the new generation Xbox will make its debut on the 21^st of May. Thurrott claims that the new console will retail for around $500 and that there may be a $300 subscription model available. Precious little information has been leaked regarding the new console, but Microsoft did announce that they have partnered with Ericsson to enable serious development of the Xbox’s TV features.

The console wars have taken a bit of a backseat after the smartphone skirmishes started heating up between Apple and Android. We see a lot of similarity in the gaming console market, where Microsoft and Sony have been bumping heads for years now. Although, unlike the relatively close battle we see in the mobile market, one of the console sides sit with a potential end-game strategy. (more…)

The Integr8 Group is re-branding Integr8 Fax to Fax Unplugged as part of the company’s global expansion plans.

Integr8 Fax is a well established and renowned leader in innovative cloud-based technologies around paper to electronic based unified communications, with Fax to email as one of its core offerings.

The company is one of a handful of providers that own and manage their own platform, with a substantial base of resellers that offer fax to email services under their own white labelled brand.

Robert Sussman, joint CEO of Integr8, explains that Fax Unplugged offers precisely the same level of performance, reliability and ease-of-use that customers have come to expect from the company’s fax2email service – only that it is now being managed under a different brand.

Executive management believe the Fax Unplugged brand has global appeal and also the technical clout to be established more independently and aggressively in the market.

“This will further cement our fax-to-email offering as a corporate service which differentiates itself from casual, non-established email providers in that it is an enterprise grade service. Platforms globally are hosted in carrier grade data centres with full triangulation and redundancy,” Sussman continues.

(more…)

Samsung’s SVP for Samsung Media Services TJ Kang has told The Next Web that the company has plans to expand its Music Hub service to other non-Samsung devices.

Music Hub, a cloud based service that lets users upload all the music they have into one integrated mobile web service, is currently available to download from Google Play for the Samsung Galaxy SIII and Galaxy Note.

In this case, when the time comes, making the service available on Android powered devices for example, is a simple process.  

Kang has revealed that the plan to expand the Music Hub goes beyond limiting it to Samsung devices as the fact is that customers may own devices from more than one manufacturer. Making the Music Hub available to them then can make their lives much easier.

Rather, the expansion of the service will begin by making it available to other Samsung devices, so it is not limited to the Galaxy SIII and Galaxy Note. These devices include all Samsung phones, tablets and Smart TVs.

Then, the company will look into making it available across other manufacturers’ hardware. However, having said this, we highly doubt you will see it soon on iOS devices.

POPI (the Protection of Personal Information Bill) has been a difficult subject for most corporates living in the age of cloud computing. Corporates using offshore data centres to store customer or employee-related personal information need not fear that this will be totally prohibited once the POPI becomes law. Although POPI prohibits the offshore transfer of personal data, POPI will provide for a number of exemptions to this prohibition.

“POPI has been in the making for eight years and will hopefully be passed into law this year. Companies will then have a one-year transition period to get their houses in order to ensure they comply with POPI” says Tammy Bortz, director and IT law specialist at Werksmans Attorneys. “One of the benefits of POPI is that it sets out the requirements to enable the transfer of personal data offshore which will in turn enable South African companies to do business internationally,” says Bortz. (more…)