Posts tagged ipad
Mobile video training reaches the cloud
Jun 17th
Computerworld – With video from mobile devices expected to grow, a market for enterprise video applications such as training and instructional sales videos is emerging, analysts say.
Adding to the market’s momentum are mobile devices with better video shooting and video calling features, such as Apple’s new iPhone 4 and the latest Android devices, such as Sprint’s HTC EVO 4G.
Recognizing that growth in mobile video, one small company sees a future in allowing workers to use wireless devices to search through corporate video content stored in the cloud.
Altus Learning Systems today launched vSearch Mobile, a cloud-based service that allows users to search content such as Web conferences, audio and video presentations and telepresence meetings from devices including the iPad, iPhone, BlackBerry or Android handsets.
With the service, a company would create a portal into a cloud-based repository or content, which the company’s workers could search via specific search terms.
The service, available as of today, costs between $10 and $25 per user per month, depending on the type of content and amount.
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Is ‘cloud computing’ the future of video games?
Jun 16th
Los Angeles, California (CNN) — Playing high-profile video games quickly from portable devices such as your iPad might get easier after this week’s Electronic Entertainment Expo.
While the E-3 “game changer” tag has been reserved largely for innovations such as 3-D and motion-sensor systems, several companies hope using cloud computing to store games will be the real shift by letting gamers play high-end titles anywhere, on almost any machine.
If fully realized, they say, cloud gaming could be a console killer.
Gaming company OnLive announced Tuesday that it will make 23 popular console games, including “Assassin’s Creed II,” “Batman: Arkham Asylum” and “Mass Effect 2,” available through an online subscription service.
“Today we’re taking the first step toward a future where video game content is increasingly free from the restrictions of device and location, while showcasing the ability to instantly play the latest, most advanced games at the touch of a button,” said OnLive founder and CEO Steve Perlman.
Cloud gaming uses rapid data compression to let users store their games “in the cloud” — on Web servers — and then pull them down and play them using a regular Web browser. It’s the same concept as storing photos on a site such as Flickr or music videos on a MySpace page.
The user doesn’t actually have those files on any one particular computer but can access them from anywhere.
OnLive has partnerships with gaming companies such as Electronic Arts, UbiSoft and Warner Bros. Interactive and announced several new ones, including Sega, on Tuesday. More titles were expected to be available as they are released.
OnLive’s service, which launches Thursday, will offer free subscription for a year, with an announced price of $4.95 a month for an additional year. Individual games will, of course, cost extra.
OnLive isn’t the only one in the cloud-gaming business though. Rival Gaikai announced this year it had raised $10 million for a streaming game service that will let users sample games before buying them.
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Dell CEO says IT will be about virtual desktops and cloud computing on mobile devices
May 18th
Dell CEO Michael Dell contends that mobile devices will never kill the PC. Instead, he envisions a future where users own an increasing number and variety of devices, each capable of looking like the other via desktop virtualisation, served by virtual networks and the cloud.
“What’s converging is the data, not the device,” Dell told attendees of the Citrix Synergy user conference in San Francisco during a keynote speech. “It’s not clear that one device replaces another.”
He believes that each user will have many devices, each geared for a specific task. “Some are better for carrying with you. Others are for consuming content, others are better for creating content.” This runs counter to the idea that a smartphone or other mobile device will eventually become the multi-function computer of choice for work, communication, social networking and entertainment. Since 2008, users have purchased about a quarter of a billion smartphones, reports market research firm Strategy Analytics. Many of them use their smartphone for traditional PC work tasks, be it composing a document or sending e-mail.
Yet, Dell said that the iPad confirms his view that users will want more devices, all accessing the same data (and even, perhaps the same virtual desktop).
“There is an application infrastructure growing up significantly around devices like the iPad. Does this create new uses, new demand, or does it replace something else? Seem to me it creates new uses,” Dell said.
To a mixture of ahs and titters from attendees, he showed off a prototype of Dell’s Android Streak smartphone. His Streak was equipped with a Citrix receiver that allowed him a choice of several desktop environments, as well as native Android apps and social media apps such as Facebook and Twitter. The Streak will be available next month in Europe from Telefónica O2 and from AT&T in the summer in the United States. Some attendees loved the device. Others in the audience seemed to feel that an Android phone from Dell, Citrix equipped or not, is too little, too late to compete with the iPhone or BlackBerry.
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Mobile Cloud Computing – iPad Killing Netbooks Already?
May 6th
An interesting chart released from Morgan Stanley Research this morning shows that during the month of April – the month the iPad launched – netbook sales stalled. Did the iPad really have that much impact on an industry that was once the fastest-growing segment of the PC market? Or was the netbook’s fall from grace bound to happen at some point, with or without the Apple tablet’s help, as consumers discovered how hard it is to type on those tiny keyboards?
The netbook market saw incredible growth around this time last year. CNNMoney’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt, who uncovered the chart in a research report about HP’s acquisition of Palm, notes that netbook sales peaked last summer at “an astonishing 641% year-over-year growth rate.”
But in January, coincidentally (or not?) the same month that Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced the forthcoming tablet computer dubbed the iPad, netbook sales took a nose dive. But by nose dive, we mean they only saw 68% year-over-year growth during this time frame, the first month of the new year. That’s not actually all that bad, is it? It only looks bad in comparison to the incredible numbers netbooks saw last summer.
But what’s more telling is that the numbers continued to trend downwards since then. 53% in February, 25% in March and a meager 5% in April.
Did consumers rush out and buy iPads instead of netbooks? Or do they plan to at some point, a decision which is now affecting netbook sales?
Considering that the pre-iPad month of December saw a still respectable 179% year-over-year growth for the netbook market, it’s hard not to draw comparisons between Apple’s news and the netbook market as a whole. Morgan Stanley’s Katy Huberty certainly does, claiming the tanking sales are “collateral damage,” says DeWitt, from Apple’s tablet announcement and launch.
iPad Cannibalizing Other Markets
In case you’re still not convinced that this correlation is also causation, Huberty digs up a Morgan Stanley/Alphawise survey from March focused on consumer buying intent. Here, she found that 44% of U.S. consumers planned to buy an iPad instead of a notebook or netbook computer.
Continue…
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Google Cloud Print Answers Key Question for Google Chrome OS
Apr 16th
Looking to enable printing without drivers for computers running Google Chrome OS, Google introduced Google Cloud Print. The service lets any application print to any printer from any computing device using Google’s cloud computing infrastructure. Google Cloud Print will submit and manage print jobs via the cloud instead of relying on a local operating system or drivers to print. Though the service is still under development, Google April 15 released code and documentation as part of the open-source Chromium and Chromium OS projects.
Google April 15 introduced Google Cloud Print, a service that lets any application print to any printer from any computing device using Google’s cloud computing infrastructure.
Google Cloud Print was designed as a solution for Google’s Chrome Operating System, a Web-based operating system that boots up computers in a fraction of the time it takes to start most of today’s machines.
The open source-based Chrome OS is intended as an alternative to computers running Microsoft Windows. Google intends Chrome OS to power Web apps on netbooks and other mobile devices, such as tablets.
Google, which intends to use Chrome OS to help extend its cloud and mobile computing efforts publicly said it did not want to build a bunch of printer drivers for every computing device and operating system.
If not a printer driver, then what was the alternative solution? Google Cloud Print attempts to answers that key question.
Google Product Manager Mike Jazayeri said in a blog post that Google’s desire was to build a printing service that would enable Web apps to give users the full printing capabilities that exists in today’s native applications.
“Using the one component all major devices and operating systems have in common — access to the cloud — today we’re introducing some preliminary designs for a project called Google Cloud Print, a service that enables any application (web, desktop, or mobile) on any device to print to any printer,” Jazayeri wrote.
To wit, Cloud Print uses Google’s cloud infrastructure to Google submit and manage print jobs instead of relying on a local operating system or drivers to print.
Though the service is still under development, Google today released code and documentation as part of the open source
Chromium and Chromium OS projects.
Chrome OS is expected on netbooks by November or December of this year and a Google spokesperson told eWEEK the company is on schedule.
While it is unclear whether Chrome OS will appear on netbooks from Acer, Asus, HP and others at that time, the company is certainly experimenting with different form factors.
Chrome OS could appear on tablets to challenge Apple’s iPad later this year. However, Google CEO Eric Schmidt reportedly said an Android tablet is in the works. Google has declined to comment on this speculation.
This begs the question: will Google release netbooks, tablets and other mobile devices with Android and Chrome OS? Will they cannibalize each other as they seek to challenge Microsoft and Apple devices? For now, there are more questions than answers. Full Source: Eweek
