Is Google GDrive any better than Microsoft SkyDrive?

Google 的貼牌冰箱（Google refrigerator） (Photo credit: Aray Chen)

So what really makes Google GDrive better than Microsoft SkyDrive? Probably not a whole lot; in terms of drive space. However what Google is achieving is synergy between all of its offerings. With the introduction of Google GDrive you can, in a sense, really live online. Of course there is the issue of privacy and trust, but it seems that people really don’t care. GDrive is available on all devices, with the nagging exception of the Blackberry; which I am blogging from at the moment. With GDrive live will ChromeOS take hold? What does this mean for Apple? Will Dropbox or Box.net get bought out? How about Facebook? The next few months will be interesting indeed!

Related articles

• Thanks Google, It Only Took You Six Years (techcrunch.com)
• The GDrive Plot Thickens: Google Docs Users Now Have 5GB Of Space (techcrunch.com)
• SkyDrive storage space land grab for grandfathers (sciencetext.com)
• Google ‘to launch GDrive cloud storage next week’ (digitalspy.co.uk)
• Thinking about GDrive for online backup? Consider YouSendIt instead (yousendit.com)

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Watching TV on the laptop–and on the cheap

I know this may sound crazy, but I don’t have a television. This isn’t a problem, except when I get glimpses of what I might be missing, like when the New York Mets choked and it was all anybody could talk about in the office that day. I went on a search for some of my old–and new–favorite TV shows on the Internet.

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Joost free video-sharing service opens to public

Internet-based television service Joost on Monday launched its software for Mac and Windows, making the peer-to-peer technology widely available to the public for the first time. With Joost version 1.0, users can now download the free software without being “invited” by a friend. With Joost version 1.0, users can now download the free software without being “invited” by a friend. They can transmit video using peer-to-peer technology (P2P), the same approach used to launch the Skype internet calling service and Kazaa, the music-sharing website.

P2P is a method of distributing data in which multiple computers each transmit and receive information.

Sharing the computing power and band width of its users instead of filtering everything through a central data server can lead to better transmission quality, particularly as the number of users goes up.

Founded by Skype’s Janus Friis and Kazaa’s Niklas Zennström, the service got a shot in the arm earlier this summer when it raised $45 million US from five investors, including CBS Corp. and Viacom Inc. The company has also signed deals with other big media players such as Turner Broadcasting System, Sony Pictures Television, Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League.

Overall, Joost says it has 150 channels of video. The mainstream approach is different from that of Kazaa, which has run into trouble with the music industry over users sharing music downloads for free.

While Joost focuses on bringing television programming to the internet, much of the move among technology firms has been to find a way to bring the internet to television in the form of set-top boxes such as Apple Inc.’s Apple TV.

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