The Nextbit Robin is a beautifully designed Android phone with an interesting take on storage. The Kickstarter backed project will be shipping GSM units to its first thousand backers on February 16th, while the rest will receive their devices by the end of February.
Over the past day or so we’ve seen a number of reports across the web claiming that Google’s Photos app is uploading photos even after it’s been uninstalled. Of course the worry is that customers could be racking up huge cellular data overages from having it “switched on without them knowing it”. The truth is, having the Photos app installed or uninstalled makes no difference to whether or not your snaps are being uploaded to Google’s drive in the sky.
Google Drive for Android, the cloud storage service by Google, received an update yesterday that brings a helpful new improvement for those who rely on the service to access files across devices and share them with others.
Version 2.2.23, which hasn’t propagated completely in Google Play but can be pulled from APKMirror (click here), includes the ability to send and/or download multiple files at once. All you need to do to select multiple files is hold down on one file, and then a blue checkmark will appear indicating the file has been selected. After that just tap the checkmark for every file you want to include and the menu at the bottom of the screen will allow you to choose what you want to do with the selected files.
This should be useful for those who may have a lot of photos, music, and other files stored in Drive that they want to download to a new device, upload to a network like Tumblr, or whatever else. For reference, here’s what the previous version of Drive looked like when you selected multiple files:
No option to download or send the files is present when multiple photos are selected (the overflow menu doesn’t include them either). To do so you had to visit the info page of each file individually and send or download from there. A nice little update that avid Drive users will surely appreciate.
Chromebook’s are becoming a viable option for people with simple computing needs, and while the laptop alternative typically ships with limited local storage, Google often tosses in 100GB of cloud space from Google Drive for two years. But to sweeten the pot this holiday season, the search giant is turning the dial up quite a few notches and tossing in 1TB of Drive storage with the purchase of an eligible Chromebook.
After several requests, Dropbox for Android users can now export files to their device’s SD card. This new feature will help keep important items like documents and photos accessible whenever offline or switching from one device to another.
Microsoft updated OneDrive for Android today with some new features that change the way users view photos saved to the company’s cloud storage service. Bringing the app up to speed with its counterparts, the software maker added All Photos View to its mobile application, along with some new search features that make it easier for business customers to locate specific files.
Google has partnered with cloud storage startup Panzura to offer developers 2 TB of free storage for a full year, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. It’s the latest move in the continuing battle between competitors like Google and Amazon to dominate the cloud storage market.
The new plans are focused more on cloud app developers than end users, who will still want to rely on services like Google Drive or Dropbox for their own storage needs. However, for app developers looking for cloud solutions, Google’s new offer could provide a pretty decent starting point. Getting 2 TB of storage on Amazon, by comparison, would run at least $240 a year, while a similar setup on Microsoft’s cloud system would cost even more.
Microsoft is making notable improvements to its storage offerings for its OneDrive cloud-based service. The company is announcing today that OneDrive storage at the free tier will be more than doubled, Office 365 storage will see a major increase, and that there will be storage price drops across the board. Here are the three main announcements in more detail:
These price changes automatically go into effect today for current users. The shift is notable because OneDrive’s free storage tier now matches Google’s 15GB Google Drive and other cloud services. OneDrive’s 100GB storage plan also now matches Google’s at $1.99 per month. Google also offers much larger storage plans than Microsoft, which can be seen below:
Whether you’re an average Joe backing up pictures of your family or a huge mega-corporation that regularly moves terabytes of data, cloud storage migration can be a bit of a pain. Aware of your plight, Google is developing a solution that will help enterprise customers move their precious information with less of a fuss. Today, the company announced a limited preview of its new cloud import tool, which makes it “faster, easier and cheaper” to import your cloud storage buckets through Google’s “high performance network.”
Cloud storage provider Box announced an update for its Android app today that introduces a trove of new tweaks and features. Users of version 3.0 will be greeted by a simplified menu and an overhauled previewer that can handle over 100 file types without flinching. This means that PowerPoint presentation will load directly from within the cloud for fast access on your Android device. This spiffed up previewer also displays page thumbnails and lets you search text in any document. While Box’s new apps isn’t exactly a Drive killer, it may come in handy as a back-up plan if you often find yourself working with funky file types.
This isn’t by any means the first time we’ve seen a cloud storage provider offer up a special offer, in fact it seems like the cool thing to do these days. With that in mind, it’s worth noting that Amazon is throwing its hat into the proverbial free cloud storage offer with 50GB of storage with the purchase of over 100 carrier-branded Android smartphones.
Google announced today on its Cloud Platform Blog that the data stored in its Cloud Storage platform will now be automatically encrypted before written to disk at no additional charge to developers. Google said the process will not involve any input or configuration from developers and that the new encryption will cause “no visible performance impact”:
We manages the cryptographic keys on your behalf using the same hardened key management systems that Google uses for our own encrypted data, including strict key access controls and auditing. Each Cloud Storage object’s data and metadata is encrypted with a unique key under the 128-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES-128), and the per-object key itself is encrypted with a unique key associated with the object owner. These keys are additionally encrypted by one of a regularly rotated set of master keys.
Google noted that developers will still be able to encrypt data using their own methods and manage their own decryption keys, but from now on Google will free developers from the effort and cost associated with doing so. The new server-side encryption is active starting today for new data written to the platform, and Google says it will work with both new objects or for overwriting existing objects. It also said that “older objects will be migrated and encrypted in the coming months.”
In July, reports claimed that Google was also readying server-side encryption for files stored in its consumer-facing Drive cloud storage service.
A nice little pre-I/O surprise today from Google: Everyone who uses Gmail, G+ Photos and Google Drive now gets 15GB of free space across all three platforms instead of the previous 10 GB for Gmail and another 5 GB for Drive and Google+ Photos. That’s a lot of combined space
We’ll also be making updates to the Google Drive storage page, so you can better understand how you’re using storage space. Simply hover over the pie chart to see a breakdown of your storage use across Drive, Gmail, and Google+ Photos. And if you need more storage, this is your place to upgrade, with plans starting at $4.99/month for 100 GB.
Pro tip: This change means you’re no longer limited to a 25 GB upgrade in Gmail—any additional storage you purchase now applies there, too.
These changes to Google Drive storage will roll out over the next couple of weeks. Google Apps users will also be getting shared storage, so visit the enterprise blog to learn more.
Enterprise users get 30GB between the three platforms.
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As first reported by Chrome Story, owners of newer Chromebooks and Chromeboxes might soon get their hands on more cloud storage…for free. According to references discovered in Chromium OS code, the storage increase will most likely come soon in the way of Google Drive Google currently makes 5 GB available free to users for storing files and documents.
According to the code reference “553 GDATA_WELCOME_TITLE_ALTERNATIVE: ‘Get 100 GB free with Google Drive’,” it sounds very likely that users will be able to receive 100 GB of cloud storage for free. That is definitely useful, especially considering most Chrome OS devices only have 16 GB of local storage. We will let you know when the 100 GB goes official.
The Cloud storage Google Drive has been an on-again, off-again rumor for years.
Today, GigaOm’s Om Malik says Google Drive will release to the public in the first week in April.
I am told the big day is sometime during the first week of April 2012…Google is going to offer 1 Gb of storage space for free, but will charge for more storage. The market leader Dropbox currently offers 2 Gb for free. Google’s product will come with a local client and the web interface will look much like the Google Docs interface. Interestingly, it will launch for Google Apps customers and will be domain specific as well. Google has also built an API for third party apps with this service so folks can store content from other apps in the Google drive. My sources are impressed, so far with what they have seen.
This could be the last piece of the Cloud puzzle.
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An update to the Dropbox for Android client issued yesterday allows users to automatically save every photograph taken with a phone’s camera to their Dropbox in full resolution. A new setting to Turn on Camera Upload also lets you upload existing photos and videos over wireless or both wireless and cellular networks.
In case of the latter, Dropbox will not upload large videos using a data plan; although, you can override the preference in settings. Your photos and clips save in a private folder on your Dropbox called Camera Uploads. The company said people wishing to test the new feature would get an extra 3GB of free storage for a total of 5GB.
It is important to note that you will not get an extra 3GB at once but rather your storage limit will gradually increase as photos and videos upload with the new feature. For example, your first automatic upload scores 500MB of free extra storage. The company is also testing new Windows and Mac clients that can also automatically upload photos found on digital cameras, smartphones, tablets, or SD card connected to your machine.
Once your photos and videos automatically upload to Dropbox, you will be able to view them using a new web interface. The updated Dropbox for Android client is now available for download in Android Market. The company also confirmed iOS users will soon get the Camera Upload feature through a forthcoming update.
It is worth mentioning that Google had a similar feature in the Google+ for Android client, and Apple tackled this issue with Photo Stream—an iCloud feature that automatically syncs photos (but not videos) across Macs, PCs and iOS devices.
Google Drive was rumored to launch for sometime now and looks to be coming even closer. Geek Wire reportedly obtained a screenshot of Drive from one of its readers. As you can see, Google Drive looks very similar to Google Docs, which can also upload any type of file. Below, Geek Wire enlarged the Google Drive favicon, perhaps exposing the service’s logo.
Along with a web based interface, Google Drive is also rumored to have a desktop application very similar to Dropbox, where users can push files to the cloud for access anywhere. There will also be deep Google Drive integration available on Android, several reports said.
Last week, WSJ reported Google Drive would launch in the coming weeks or months. Google Drive will be available for free, but premium versions will also be available for those who want more space.
Google Drive was already referenced to in Google Docs code. Maybe Google Drive will also be integrated somehow into Google Docs at some point. Expect to see Google Drive in the coming weeks.
It is no secret that HTC is doubling down on software. One example: Recently, their chairwoman Cher Wang contemplated an operating system of their own. HTC also has Sense, an Android user interface skin, and the company has expanded into a cloud-based delivery service for music, television shows and Hollywood entertainment on the go. The latest addition to their arsenal includes cloud-storage service Dropbox, which teamed up with the Taiwanese handset maker to offer folks with select HTC smartphones a bonus three gigabytes of free storage. This is on top of the two gigabytes free storage Dropbox has always had in store for new sign-ups, resulting in five gigabytes of free storage for HTC handset owners. Plus, convincing five friends to sign up for a Dropbox account raises the free limit to a maximum of ten gigabytes of free cloud storage.
Given Dropbox’s popularity, many people will no doubt take advantage of this promotion. Using Dropbox, users can effortlessly sync their files across desktop and mobile devices, regardless of the platform. The service takes care of file system differences between the platforms, resolving conflicts and keeping platform-specific file meta data intact. This promotion is valid from October, Pocket-lint reports. It requires a new HTC handset with the Sense 3.5 software or later, which currently includes only the Rhyme and Sensation XE smartphones.
As of April 2011, more than 25 million people saved a cool 200 million files daily on Dropbox. Eagle-eyed readers could observe that computer maker Hewlett-Packard used to bundle its PlayBook tablet with a 50GB of free cloud storage on Box.net, until they shuttered webOS.
If you believe the rumors, Google’s been working on a cloud-based drive for your computer since 2005. Code-named “Platypus” and also known as GDrive, it was supposed to arrive long ago, as I wrote over at TG Daily in January 2009. Today’s article by TechCrunch asserts that the search company may be close to launching Gdrive, based on code hooks discovered in Chrome that point to the drive.google.com URL:
Diving a bit deeper into the code reviews, what’s most striking is that drive.google.com doesn’t appear to be referenced anywhere besides this one exposed ticket. This suggests that it’s either no big deal, or that Google is keeping this very secret.
TechCrunch also reminds us of Steven Levy’s book “In The Plex” which describes how Google+ lead Bradley Horowitz “convinced Google’s top executives not to launch” Gdrive back in 2008 because he felt “the concept of a ‘file’ was outdated”.
Box has added today the ability to create and edit Google Docs inside of their service. The popular cloud storage solution favored by six million people would previously require folks to create documents at the Google Docs website or using a desktop program before uploading them to the Box cloud. Being Google Docs, other users can also collaborate with you right inside the Box service. Once done, you can share files with your other computers and those you are working with. Check out these new features in a short clip after the break.
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