Cloud computing

Yahoo has changed its Flickr Pro premium service into a subscription plan, a modest but reasonable change that I hope presages bigger adjustments to compete better against new photo-sharing rivals.

Flickr, a fixture in online photography, has lost luster as alternatives such as Facebook, Google+, Instagram, and 500px have advanced the state of the art and attracted millions of users. Flickr is shucking old baggage as part of a promise of new vitality in 2012, though. And although the new Flickr Pro pricing scheme is hardly a dramatic new course, at least it shows somebody's at the tiller.

With … Read more

A Hawaii politician who proposed requiring Internet providers to record every Web site their customers visit is now backing away from the controversial legislation.

Rep. Kymberly Pine, an Oahu Republican and the House minority floor leader, told CNET this evening that her intention was to protect "victims of crime," not compile virtual dossiers on every resident of--or visitor to--the Aloha State who uses the Internet.

"We do not want to know where everyone goes on the Internet," Pine said. "That's not our interest. We just want the ability for law enforcement to be able … Read more

One of Google's hometown members of Congress is complaining that the search company isn't doing enough to protect its users' privacy.

Rep. Jackie Speier, a longtime Democrat whose district includes YouTube's San Bruno, Calif., headquarters, co-authored a letter (PDF) today asking the company to respond to a series of sternly worded questions about its plans to simplify privacy policies into one more-or-less standard one. Currently Google has more than 70 individual privacy policies.

"We believe that consumers should have the ability to opt-out of data collection when they are not comfortable with a company's terms … Read more

PC and mobile users who listen to a lot of audiobooks each month may appreciate a new service from the folks at Audiobooks.com.

The site is kicking off its own cloud-based service that lets you listen to as many audiobooks as you want to the tune of $24.95 per month.

Accessible from any computer or Internet-connected mobile device, the new service is unlimited, so you can listen to the same book for as long as you want with no need to return it.

Since the books are stored in the cloud, you can also listen to any books … Read more

At first blush, private clouds can look a lot like virtualization. But first looks can be deceiving. While it's certainly true that we see virtualization management products extended--for example, with self-service portals--in ways that make them look superficially like clouds, we're really talking about different categories of software.

There are two ways to think about these differences. The first is in terms of different mindsets and approaches to IT operations. The other is to consider specific features and capabilities.

Consider the "big picture" aspect first. Mary Johnston Turner, research vice president of enterprise system management software, … Read more

Like newspapers to the Web, many business software vendors are now reluctantly dragging themselves into the cloud-based enterprise. If they aren't nimble enough, a new generation of companies is ready to take their place.

While major enterprise IT vendors continue to deliver so-called features that keep users tied to their desks and legacy software, companies like Box and others have figured out that the industry is changing right before our eyes. The new enterprise takes the best aspects of consumer applications to make business-critical data available anywhere, anytime.

The majority of the fawning stories about startups that come out … Read more

Watch out, Facebook, because Google+ just got the feature that will wipe you off the social-network map.

I'm talking about a LOLcat text generator.

"Today we're rolling out a feature that makes it easier to add big, bold text on top of your photos," programmer Colin McMillen said in a Google+ post today. "To try it out, drop a photo into the sharebox on Google+, then click the "Add text" button underneath the photo. Type in something funny, then share and enjoy."

OK, so maybe it won't dent Facebook's dominance, … Read more

Anyone can download Linux for free, so it was no surprise that Amazon offered the open-source operating system on the free tier of Amazon Web Services.

But now the company has added a free version of Windows Server to the Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service, too.

"We are excited to announce that starting today, the AWS Free Usage Tier will now include Amazon EC2 instances running Microsoft Windows Server," Amazon told EC2 customers today. "Customers eligible for the AWS Free Usage tier can now use up to 750 hours per month of t1.micro instances running Microsoft … Read more

Kwaga, a French startup that fixes shortcomings of today's e-mail, has raised $1.55 million in first-round funding.

The company's flagship service today is called WriteThat.name. It reads your e-mail and automatically enters contact information into your address book, creating new entries and updating existing ones.

It works today only with Google Apps and Gmail, but the funding will help the company bring it to Microsoft Outlook, too. That service is in beta testing right now.

The funds also will help the company integrate with major customer-relations management (CRM) products.

The funding came from private investors and … Read more