Items tagged with skydrive
Microsoft announced that is has renamed its long-running SkyDrive cloud storage and sharing service. From henceforth, it shall be known as “OneDrive”. In the short video Microsoft posting on its OneDrive blog announcing the change, the new message is that the service is “one” place for everything--your photos, videos, and so on. If you’re wondering what cool new changes Microsoft is launching with the new brand name, here’s a complete list: Nothing. It’s just a new name. “For current users of either SkyDrive or SkyDrive Pro, you’re all set. The service will continue to operate as you expect and all of your content will be available on OneDrive...
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One of the perks of jumping into the Windows Phone ecosystem is that Microsoft’s SkyDrive cloud storage service is built in, and the company gives you 7GB of free storage capacity to go with it. For a limited time, though, users can bump that capacity up by another 20GB. It’s notable that this extra capacity isn’t only accessible with your phone (although that’s more or less how Microsoft envisions it working)--it’s just there for you to use, however you like to access your SkyDrive account. The extra 20GB will only last for a year, and you have to claim the bounty before January 31st. We wonder, though, if Microsoft will actually pull back that 20GB when the time...
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One advantage Microsoft has over the competition in the mobile space is that it owns a number of products and services it can integrate into its Windows Phone platform. Microsoft has done this before and it's doing it again, this time by giving every single Windows Phone user an extra 20GB of free SkyDrive storage for one year. "To show our appreciation of Windows Phone customers, we are giving you an extra 20GB of free SkyDrive storage for one year," Microsoft stated in an email to Windows Phone users. "This is in addition to the 7GB of free SkyDrive storage that all customers currently have." Image Source: Flickr (Janitors) Users have until January 31, 2014 to claim their holiday gift from...
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When we covered Microsoft’s unveiling of the second generation of its Surface devices, the Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2, we were impressed with the hardware and the in-person experience, and now those devices are available from the Microsoft Store and at several third-party retailers in 21 initial markets. The Surface 2 runs Windows RT 8.1 and boasts an NVIDIA Tegra 4 chip and a 10.6-inch (1920x1080) 5-point multitouch display. It has 2GB of RAM, 32GB (or 64GB) of onboard storage, 5MP/3.5MP rear and front cameras, stereo mics and speakers, USB 3.0, microSD card reader, and HD video out, and it ships with Microsoft Office 2013 RT. The whole package will run you $449. The new flagship Microsoft...
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Let’s not kid ourselves, the era of showing up to work at 8am, sitting at your desk all day, and leaving it all at the office at 5pm is over. Although that’s still the “standard” work paradigm, most workers find a sincere need for mobile productivity, whether that’s due to a long commute on the train in the morning and evening, frequent air travel, working with clients or colleagues in different geographic locations, or a thousand other miscellaneous scenarios. (Show of hands: Who hasn’t had to slip away from a family holiday gathering for a few minutes to take care of something work-related?) Our computing devices have had a parallel (if not causal) relationship...
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Let's stop harping on it. We've already discussed Microsoft's failures and shortcomings with their first generation of Surface and Surface RT devices. The company's $900 million dollar mistake has been bounced around along with Steve Ballmer's tenure ad nauseam and so it's probably no surprise that more than a few pundits and analysts are sounding off so negatively regarding Microsoft's recent Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 unveiling earlier this week. They're too big, too expensive, not retina, too "Windows RT," whatever. What is it about Microsoft that seemingly draws such a critical eye these days, especially when it comes to mobile? Let's all take a deep breath and analyze the Microsoft...
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Dropbox is still somehow getting by while only handing out a couple of free gigabytes to new users, but everyone else understands the reality: you either dole out massive amounts of cloud storage, or the consumer goes elsewhere. In the growing war amongst cloud storage lockers and the companies that run them, the ecosystem play is becoming ever more powerful. In order to sweep more people into its own camp, Microsoft has announced a major boost for SkyDrive Pro users. The new SkyDrive Pro apps are now available in the Window Store and App Store, and moreover, each user will now get 25GB of storage -- up from 7GB. Plus, admins can increase a user's SkyDrive Pro storage beyond that, going as high...
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After three days of outages, Microsoft finally fully restored access to its Outlook.com email service. Without diminishing the egregious nature of such a lengthy outage for many users, Microsoft has been forthcoming about what went wrong and outlined the steps it’s taking to avoid the same problem cropping up in the future. “This incident was a result of a failure in a caching service that interfaces with devices using Exchange ActiveSync, including most smart phones,” reads a service status report. “The failure caused these devices to receive an error and continuously try to connect to our service. This resulted in a flood of traffic that our services did not handle properly,...
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For months, there've been questions regarding just how secure Skype's encryption was. After Microsoft bought the VOIP company it began moving to a more centralized node structure that made it easier to scale the product but at the cost of intrinsic security. Now, it seems such concerns were valid -- new leaked documents from The Guardian allege that the NSA has an effective backdoor to all of Microsoft's online products including Skype, Outlook, and SkyDrive. While The Guardian doesn't have any slides to show this time around, it suggests that Microsoft has gone beyond the minimal amount of grudging cooperation mandated by law. The company has reportedly helped the NSA "understand" certain alias...
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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer wrote a lengthy email and memo to the company today detailing a new direction for Microsoft, including a massive reorganization and revamped focus. Primarily, Microsoft will no longer operate as a series of islands, with many departments all working on different projects; instead, under the banner of “One Microsoft”, the company’s many groups will all contribute holistically to developing products and services. Microsoft will be organized according to function, so the major groups will be: “Engineering (including supply chain and datacenters), Marketing, Business Development and Evangelism, Advanced Strategy and Research, Finance, HR, Legal,...
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Microsoft released a long-awaited preview of Windows 8.1, the first revamp of the Windows 8 operating system, just a couple of weeks ago, and now Microsoft said that PC manufacturers will get the full version in August. We looked over the preview build rather thoroughly and found that Windows 8.1 was indeed a major improvement over the intriguing though often baffling or frustrating original version. There are a number of improvements, including a new Start Screen, new boot options, quicker shut down and restart, better SkyDrive integration, an improved PC Settings screen, and more. Although the enhancements are nice and will likely please Windows 8 users, if you’re fundamentally not a...
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Microsoft announced updated versions of its OneNote note-taking app for iOS and Android, which follows hot on the heels of the launch of Office Mobile for iPhone. However, unlike the latter, the former isn’t reliant (necessarily) on an Office 365 subscription. You can simply download the app and tie it to a free Microsoft account. Of course, OneNote is also available for Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 devices as well as on the web. Microsoft says that new features include a consistent experience across all devices, including text formatting, shading and borders in tables, consistent support for hyperlinks and note tags, handwriting “ink”, and so on. It also includes the Office...
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It’s no secret that Windows 8 hasn’t exactly captured the hearts and minds of the public at large, but when word leaked that Microsoft was working on a rejiggered version of its newest operating system called Windows 8.1, it was a sign that Microsoft might be able to fix what consumers and businesses dislike and jumpstart sales. Although the finished version of Windows 8.1 won’t arrive until later this year, Microsoft has a preview version ready to go, which you can download here. If you want to take a 90-second tour, here’s a visually stimulating video: Windows 8.1 certainly looks pretty, and Microsoft did indeed bring back a version of the Start button when in Desktop...
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Many have been quite vocal about the fact that Windows 8 and Windows RT could use a little work, and apparently Microsoft agrees, which is why the company is planning a major update to both versions of its new OS. Windows 8.1 is coming sometime this year as a free update, and for those hoping that it will fix all of Windows 8’s problems (perceived and real), today’s sneak peek from Microsoft has been a long-awaited one. It looks as though most of the updates are essentially UI tweaks, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, although those hoping for something more substantial may be left unsatisfied. First, though, is the feature everyone seems to be preoccupied with: the Start...
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Most of us get 7GB of free cloud storage space on SkyDrive with a free Microsoft account, which includes free web versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. It’s frankly a pretty good deal, but Microsoft is hooking up college students with a slightly better one. College students can get free 3GB of additional SkyDrive storage for a year. All they have to do is enter their .EDU email address at Sky Drive for Students to verify that they’re in school, and they’ll suddenly have 10GB of total free storage. Once that year expires, college students will apparently be back to the same options as the rest of us again, which is 7GB free or 20GB ($10/yr), 50GB ($25/yr), or 100GB...
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With cloud storage apps taking off and becoming more and more important in terms of managing our digital lives, Microsoft is making strides to keep SkyDrive up there with Box, Google Drive and Dropbox when it comes to overall functionality. A new post offered up by the company suggests that photos are the most common file type seen in SkyDrive storage boxes -- both in sheer number and in total storage consumed. Starting today and rolling out over the next 48 hours, Microsoft is making it simpler for users to view all of their photos across all of their albums + folders, using a timeline view. In the timeline view you can scroll down to navigate through all the images. They're organized into groups...
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Google’s various free cloud services are tremendous in terms of what you get for what you pay, but now the deal is getting even better. The company announced today that it will unify storage between Drive, Gmail, and Google+, which both gives users a shared pool of storage that they can distribute among those services as they fit and also integrates those services even deeper with each other than they were before. Now, it doesn’t matter if your Gmail account is sparse and your Google+ page is loaded with photos--your 15GB of storage is your 15GB, no matter where you’re using it. It’s a simple yet brilliant tweak--and it’s one that Google (smartly) swiped from Microsoft....
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Microsoft announced a new milestone for its online storage service today: SkyDrive now has more than 250 million users. The company is pointing to Windows 8, which launched in the second half of 2012, as playing a key role in the recent rush of user signups. Microsoft took the opportunity to highlight important changes, such as better uploading speeds, a revamped iOS app, and making SkyDrive the default save location for Microsoft Office. Microsoft released a timeline of SkyDrive's evolution. Image Credit: Microsoft Although 250 million users is noteworthy, there’s plenty of room to grow: more than 700 million people have Microsoft accounts. What are they using, if not SkyDrive? Aside from...
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Extra security is always nice, isn't it? Particularly in a world where cyber attacks are becoming all the more common. These days, it feels like every major cloud service provider is either offering a two-factor authentication protocol, or planning to. Following the likes of Google and Apple, Microsoft is now rolling two-step login procedures out to select online accounts. Over the next few days, a "major upgrade" to Microsoft's account will roll out, and the most important addition is the inclusion of optional two-step verification to help keep your account more secure. Everything from your Windows Phone, Xbox, Outlook.com, Skype, SkyDrive and Office accounts will be able to be that much more...
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With Box.net, Dropbox, Google Drive, and iCloud already securing a huge chunk of the consumer cloud storage market place, Microsoft's SkyDrive sometimes feels like the guy in the back of the room. Of course, adding multi-platform capabilities to it could help it better rival things like Drive and Dropbox, but the company's clearly aiming to make it a flagship product for its own software first. Back in October, Microsoft released SkyDrive for Windows and Windows RT, and starting this week, the SkyDrive app from the Windows Store will start showing you notifications on the live tile when you add new files to your SkyDrive. Now the tile for the SkyDrive app will be useful for more than just launching...
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In keeping with its strategy to unify all screens in its product ecosystem, Microsoft has added a SkyDrive app to the Xbox 360 that allows you to see, interact with, upload, and share your SkyDrive photos and videos in the living room. You can pull up your SkyDrive media and easily show images or video from an event (bringing the living room vacation pictures slideshow, begrudgingly endured by friends and family for decades, full circle), snap a picture and see it appear in your SkyDrive camera roll, and so on. The app also supports Kinect voice controls and gestures, which is a nice touch. To get the app for your very own, fire up your TV and Xbox, go to Apps, and find SkyDrive under the Social...
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Microsoft’s SkyDrive online storage service is now available from Android smartphones and tablets. And it already supported iPhones, iPads, and Macs. All this means that you don’t need to use a Windows-based system to manage your SkyDrive files. Heck, you can even edit Office documents on your SkyDrive folder with the free Office Web Apps Preview. If you’re starting to feel like you’re seeing a new side of Microsoft, you’re not alone. From the portable Surface and social network-savvy Windows 8 to cross-platform cloud services, Microsoft is working hard to go where you go, and that means getting friendly (or, at least, compatible) with the likes of Apple...
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