The Web-to-TV media device have been updated as Google continues its push into the lounge. Google Barge: 10 Informative Images (click image for larger view) Google on Tuesday released an update to its Chromecast streaming media device that adds support for 10 new apps. The over-the-air update would be distributed automatically to Chromecast devices connected to a wireless network. It provides the facility to stream music, news, sports, and other content from mobile and web apps like BeyondPod, PostTV, Red Bull.TV, Revision 3, Songza, VEVO, and Viki to a Chromecast-connected television. The revised software also offers access to the Avia, Plex, and RealPlayer Cloud apps. Introduced in July, Chromecast seems to be quite popular, presumably as a result of its affordable $35 price. It sold out in retail stores shortly after its launch. That month, citing “overwhelming demand,” Google halted a promotional deal that provided three months of Netflix free with a Chromecast purchase. Presently, the internet-to-TV device is the end seller in Amazon.com’s electronics... Read More »

Nebula CEO Chris Kemp says IT must develop private clouds for the subsequent generation of applications. Otherwise, it risks irrelevancy. I write this post after spending per week on the OpenStack summit in Hong Kong. My company, Nebula, has not yet launched in Asia, so I took the chance to take part within the sessions and check with the developers, leaders, and users within the OpenStack community. It was the suitable chance to mirror on where we’re today, and the way forward for the project that I helped start just over three years ago. My conclusion? OpenStack has captured the hearts of developers, but not the minds of enterprise IT. As the CTO of NASA and CIO at Ames Research Center, I had the chance to deeply immerse myself in a corporation where thousands of old applications ran on tens of thousands of servers across thousands of networks in hundreds of datacenters. While NASA may need a bigger and more complex IT footprint than many... Read More »

Connected storage may mean the top to backup and recovery as enterprise systems follow the pattern consumers established with Box and DropBox. 8 Great Cloud Storage Services (Click image for larger view and for slideshow.) Everything is connecting. Cheap, portable computing combined with the sprawling reach of the web is breathing new life into even the foremost mundane artifacts. Examine Nest, which transformed the thermostat right into a home automation hub by linking sensors throughout the home to weather stations on the net. The file system is usually undergoing its most radical transformation in decades. Unencumbered by strict security policies or legacy systems, consumers are leading the transformation. Millions of individuals already rely upon products like Box and Dropbox to store, share, and synchronize data across a profusion of private devices. However the potential improvements in productivity are too meaningful for the enterprise to disregard. The transformation in personal file systems foretells an era when all storage in a datacenter becomes connected The file system,... Read More »

With BlueMix, IBM gives customers a cloud path for legacy apps. Here’s how SoftLayer, Cloud Foundry, and WebSphere tools slot in. 16 Top Big Data Analytics Platforms (Click image for larger view and slideshow.) IBM is putting together a PaaS platform that it has dubbed BlueMix, that’s a mix of open source code, IBM software tools, and large Blue’s tried and true WebSphere middleware utilized by lots of its oldest customers. In effect, it’s investing $1 billion to present enterprise customers a route to move legacy systems into the cloud. For enterprise users who want to move an application into IBM’s SoftLayer unit’s public cloud, the numerous components of IBM WebSphere middleware might be there and waiting as callable services through a SoftLayer API. IBM acquired SoftLayer and its 700 employees last July and made its provisioning, management, and chargeback systems the core of its future cloud services. Not so fast, you assert. IBM’s Blu Acceleration for DB2, Watson advanced analytics, Cognos business intelligence, and lots... Read More »