CLOUD COMPUTING

                Cloud computing is clearly one of today’s most enticing technology areas due, at least in part, to its cost-efficiency and flexibility. However, despite the surge in activity and interest, there are significant, persistent concerns about cloud computing that are impeding momentum and will eventually compromise the vision of cloud computing as a new IT procurement model. In this paper, we characterize the problems and their impact on adoption. In addition, and equally importantly, we describe how the combination of existing research thrusts has the potential to alleviate many of the concerns impeding adoption. In particular, we argue that with continued research advances in trusted computing and computation-supporting encryption, life in the cloud can be advantageous from a business intelligence standpoint over the isolated alternative that is more common today.

                   Cloud computing is the most popular notion in IT today; even an academic report from UC Berkeley says “Cloud Computing is likely to have the same impact on software that foundries have had on the hardware industry.” They go on to recommend that “developers would be wise to design their next generation of systems to be deployed into Cloud Computing”. While many of the predictions may be cloud hype, we believe the new IT procurement model offered by cloud computing is here to stay. Whether adoption becomes as prevalent and deep as some forecast will depend largely on overcoming fears of the cloud.Cloud fears largely stem from the perceived loss of control of sensitive data. Current control measures do not adequately address cloud computing’s third-party data storage and processing needs. In our vision, we propose to extend control measures from the enterprise into the cloud through the use of Trusted Computing and applied cryptographic techniques. These measures should alleviate much of today’s fear of cloud computing, and, we believe, have the potential to provide demonstrable business intelligence advantages to cloud participation.Our vision also relates to likely problems and abuses arising from a greater reliance on cloud computing, and how to maintain security in the face of such attacks. Namely, the new threats require new constructions to maintain and improve security. Among these are tools to control and understand privacy leaks, perform authentication, and guarantee availability in the face of cloud denial-of-service attacks

Google Drive vs. One Drive vs. Dropbox

Automatic photo upload
Both Dropbox and One Drive have the option to automatically transfer photos from your phone to the cloud. This allows you to delete old photos and free up space on your phone. While you can upload photos to Google Drive, you’ll have to do so manually as there’s no ‘Automatic upload’ feature.

Camera backup on One Drive and Dropbox

Creating and editing documents
With Dropbox, you can open office documents such as spreadsheets and Word files. But you can’t edit them from within the app. However, are given the option to open files on any document-editing app such as Google Drive or Office Mobile.

One Drive opens documents, spreadsheets etc on Office Mobile – Microsoft’s free Office app for mobile. If you don’t have it installed, the app asks you to download the app so you can proceed. This is the default setting, but you can change this by un-checking Office Mobile in the settings.

You can’t edit documents in Google Drive for iOS either – it makes use of office apps such as Google Docs or Office Mobile for editing documents.

Privacy
If you intend to save personal files on the cloud, you can’t possibly ignore its privacy features. All the three apps – Dropbox, One drive and Google Drive ensure that files are private, unless you choose to share them with others. However, Dropbox and Google Drive also includes an option to lock the app with a passcode so that no one other than you can access the stored files.

Locking features in Dropbox and Google Drive

Sharing
Sharing is Google Drive’s strongest feature, which gives it an edge over Dropbox and One Drive. You can either choose anyone with the link to access your files, or assign specific people who can view, comment or edit photos.

Both Dropbox and One Drive let you share files only by sending the link to the files. The receiver gets a copy of the file and cannot make changes or add comments to the original file.

Features
Dropbox has some of the best features out of the the three options. It comes with a linking system, which allows you to connect your desktop to your Dropbox account. This it does by just clicking a picture of your desktop screen.

The Dropbox app lets you link to a computer in three steps

One Drive comes with 18GB of free storage space, while Google Drive comes with 15GB. Dropbox comes with 2GB of free storage when you sign up, though it increases as you use the app. For example, you get extra space every time you add a new device to Dropbox such as your smartphone or PC. Unlike One Drive and Google Drive, Dropbox does not have any file-size restrictions either.

All the three storage apps let you print, delete and move files between folders from within the app.

Turn any surface into a touchscreen with TouchPico

TouchPico, a new crowd funding Indigogo project, is a compact Android PC with a built-in projector. Imagine playing Temple Run, but not within the confines of your phone's screen, but on an 80-inch space. That, precisely, is what TouchPico does.

You can use the stylus that comes with TouchPico to touch and operate the apps on the projected surface.

The projector runs Android 4.0 and has access to all Google Play apps. Therefore, you can open your favourite apps to read a book, watch a movie, surf the web - all on an 80-inch screen. And not just for entertainment, this projector can also be used for professional work like giving presentations or drawing interactive tables; it can also prove to be instrumental for students and teachers alike in the classroom. 

              On the hardware side, TouchPico has a 1.6 GHz dual-core ARM Cortex A9 processor, 1GB of RAM and features a wireless mouse and audio output. The projector has a slot for HDMI input and also supports streaming. Users can expand the storage of the device via a memory card. Its lamp has a light output of at least 80 lumens. However, it is noteworthy, that it only works with Wi-Fi.

The funding campaign of TouchPico ends in August, and it will most likely be launched by October. The creators of the projector aim to raise $55 million through the crowdfunding project and have raised close to $100,000 till now. The device costs $499, but is currently available for $329 for a limited periodclick here for more informations...