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Cloud wars: Walmart Strong-arms Vendors to Abandon Competitor Amazon’s Cloud Service

There is a new kind of war going on up in the clouds, and it does not involve anyone from the pantheon of Greek mythology. Its mega-retailer Walmart versus mega-retailer Amazon, and the pawns in their battle are the vendors who want to do business with Walmart.

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Amazon Unlimited Photo Storage Service only $11.99 per Year – Free with Prime

In the race for online services to become all things to all people, Amazon is offering an adjunct to its cloud storage: unlimited storage of pictures for only $11.99 per year, and if you have Amazon Prime, it’s completely free.

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Internet “Traveling Cloud Museum” Shines Light on the Hart Island Dead

Hart Island in New York is a massive burial site for the poor and unclaimed. A mass grave cemetary, also known as a “Potter’s field”, Hart Island (sometimes referred to as Hart’s Island or Heart Island) is run by the New York City Department of Correction, and few living people, other than the Rikers Island inmates who dig the pauper’s graves, are allowed to set foot on Hart Island. Even for the relatives of the dead who are buried there, the New York City DoC grants visiting permission only rarely.

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Google Drive – Google’s Disk Drive in the Cloud Service

Google announced Google Drive yesterday. No, this isn’t about Google’s Self-Driving car, it is essentially a way to store your files in the cloud (Google’s cloud) and to share them with others. There are a few things to keep in mind, however, before diving into this cloud.

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No Warrant Necessary for Law Enforcement to Access Data Stored in the Cloud

With the recent decision in the Fricosu case, ruling that one can be forced to provide the password to your encrypted hard drive, you may be thinking it is better to store things “in the cloud”. In fact, it can be worse, as cloud storage currently requires no warrant for law enforcement to access any of your data which has been stored in the cloud for at least 180 days.

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Google Takes iTunes on Head to Head with New Google Music Store in Android Market

Google has just announced a companion to Google Music, which graduated out of beta today, with the new Google Music Store, available through the Android Market. With this move, Google officially takes iTunes on head-to-head. And as Google Music is a cloud-based service, allowing you to store all of your music (including Google Music purchases) in the cloud and listen to it from any Android device, this seamless integration also has them matching iTunes stride for stride. In fact, because you can buy music directly from your Android phone or tablet, they have leap-frogged iTunes in that department, as you still cannot buy music from the iTunes store from your iPhone or iPad.

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The New Apple Music Service in the Cloud, Called, of Course, iCloud

The netosphere is a’buzz with the announcement of Apple’s new cloud-based streaming music service. The Apple music service is actually part of a cloudy storage service called iCloud (what else?). iCloud is an online storage and “syncing” service which allows you to “sync” calendars, contacts, email, photos, documents, ebooks, and yes, your music, across multiple devices. The music part of it basically allows you to store your iTunes library in ‘the cloud’ and access it from any capable device. (We put “sync” in quotes because technically it’s not really syncing, it’s having your data “pushed” and downloaded to each of your devices, on demand, but many users still think of it as syncing.)