Cloud Computing is among the recent technological innovations that has revolutionized the computing sector. However, many people still do not understand the benefits that this cloud technology can drive to their small businesses. Generally, cloud computing provides an avenue through which individuals can access powerful software applications from the web. They can then use them in internal networks physically located within their proximity. The most applauded applications include online data backup, hosted email systems, and software as a service (SaaS). People who use this technology also have their Internet Protocol (IP) hosted phone services (Hosted VoIP) among other benefits.

  [Image credit: scottchan]

Basic Preconditions before Establishing a Cloud Computing Environment

People have to conform to some basic preconditions before creating a cloud-computing environment. Organizations that plan to develop a cloud-computing platform should first analyze their Information Technology (IT) infrastructure. For instance, they should look at various IT facets such as their data center, networking systems, storage resources and the overall capacity of their IT applications. Generally, by aligning such infrastructure, they should be able to determine whether their platform conforms to the minimum requirements for efficient performance in a cloud-computing environment.

Secondly, protection is a major attribute of a good cloud computing architecture. Therefore, organizations that want to create decent environments should comprehend the individual requirements of all applications that they will use in a cloud-computing environment. As a result, they will be able to make informed decisions when choosing a cloud platform. The right cloud-computing platform should enhance the performance and reliability of their applications. This is only possible if the platform complements the application requirements.

Principally, individuals should make sure that their environments outsource their network servers, and other applications form third party centers. As a result, they will pass down the maintenance and uptime costs to hosting data centers while they enjoy seamless computing.

Considerations for Businesses that Want to create a cloud Computing Environment -

1. Security

Data security is a key attribute that people must keep in mind when creating cloud-computing environments. For instance, they should understand how segmentation of multi-tenant or shared environments occurs to avoid customer overlap. They should look at the safety of their hosts’ storage platform and other attributes such as networks.

2. Manageability

Organizations should understand their roles and the roles of their service providers. For instance, they may not get administrative assistance from some public vendors. Therefore, organizations should determine whether they are in a position to carry out these duties or if they have to outsource from other cloud vendors.

3. Performance

The level of performance of a cloud environment should be directly proportional to a company’s infrastructure demands. Therefore, people should determine whether they cloud environment that they are using or that which they intend to use will cater for these demands. They can ascertain this attribute by regular testing and troubleshooting.

4. Compliance

People should know where their cloud hosts will keep their data. They should also understand how, and who will interact with their data. Understanding these areas of compliance will enable them to audit their host’s regulations and standards and select those that they can tolerate.

People who consider these key attributes can create good environments and benefit from their cloud computing ventures. They will experience faster internet speed at lower costs. This will improve the productivity of the businesses and present them with higher profits.

Author Bio:

Biljana is a writer and a blogger exploring the Australian virtual private server solutions available and publishing useful tips and advice on how and why cloud solutions may be beneficial for businesses in Australia and worldwide.

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Certainly, there are lot of free File Sharing sites that allow users to upload their data to cloud and share it easily with their family, friends, co-workers, etc. However, most services lets you share stuff via their web interface only, which isn’t much convenient for users who frequently upload & share files across the web. Luckily, I got to know about a great web service that is a perfect alternative to CloudApp, an app for Mac.

Minus is an amazing and fast file sharing platform that allows users to simply upload, manage and share photos, music, documents and files. It is a cross-platform program, available as a desktop application for Windows, Mac and Ubuntu. Minus is available for popular mobile platforms – Android and iOS (coming soon for WP7), and has browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox. Minus is Absolutely Free! Just create an account at Minus in less than 5 seconds and you’re all set to use it efficiently.

Key Features include -

• Get 10 GB of free space
• Share Large Files up to 2 GB each
• Unlimited Downloads and Transfer
• Use Dashboard to manage your uploaded stuff
• Profile to publish and share your files and folders (example)

Minus is very handy and useful because it makes sharing files real simple & quick. One can easily batch upload files using its web interface or use its desktop app that offers the ability to ‘drag and drop’ photos and files into the taskbar and instantly upload onto Minus. It currently supports files such as images, PDF, text docs, music and videos.

Minus application for desktop comes with built-in Screen Capture support which is indeed a great add-on. Hence, it eliminates the need to first take a screenshot using a dedicated program, then save and lastly upload it to web for sharing. With Minus, just Take screenshot quickly using a user-defined hotkey and it will upload it automatically. Once the file is uploaded, a pop-up shows up and the file share link gets copied to the clipboard which you can share with anyone (Private by default).

The desktop app has a simple and cool interface, with Dashboard providing access to all the files uploaded and lets you manage them. You can delete files, toggle Public/Private, set a caption for files folder. You can even drag a bunch of files from desktop or explorer to an existing folder or gallery.

Minus on Web – The web interface of Minus is also pretty impressive and easy-to-use. The Dashboard displays your files, activity, lets you explore and search all the cool publicly shared stuff. You can choose between several display modes and switch between light and dark background with Lights On/Off option. Users can upload files (drag n drop), edit the file name, download files, get a shortlink for your files. It also displays the storage usage, number of folder views and total hits to your profile.

Furthermore, Minus allows you to Edit images in browser with Aviary. You can simply add effects to your photos in just a single click, rotate, resize, crop, remove redeye, sharpen, add text, etc.

It’s Reliable – Minus uses the latest Cloud computing technologies. They are fully deployed on Amazon’s EC2 and S3 Cloud storage. Minus keeps all files indefinitely unless deleted by the uploader or if it violates their terms of service.

Minus for iPhone, iPad and Android devices, allows you to upload files and photos to Minus from your mobile device, directly from the app or from the share menu. It keeps a history of uploaded files and galleries. You can login into account to access your files.

Minus Firefox and Chrome extension – Allows you to take screenshots of your browser and auto-uploading them to your account. Additionally you can browse your galleries with this extension.

Download Minus – Desktop App for Windows/Mac/Ubuntu | Android App | iOS App

Goodie – For every friend that joins Minus through your referral, they give you 1 GB of extra space (up to 50 GB). Get 10 GB of Free Space today! [Sign up for Minus]Related Posts:

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OS X Lion indeed comes with a variety of features but there are couple of things that people dislike about the latest OS X release. One can always Disable or Enable most of the annoying features and components using Terminal but that isn’t the most easiest way for everyone. Here is a new handy tool to simply customize your Lion experience.

Lion Tweaks is a small and free tool that allows users to customize and correct certain new features in Mac OS X 10.7. One can easily enable some good old options, disable several new unwanted features, and change the way Lion looks in just a single click.

List of changes that can be customized with Lion Tweaks:

• Enable/Disable the user Library folder.
• Change to a 2D or 3D dock.
• Enable/Disable system window animation.
• Enable/Disable mail reply animation.
• Remove/Add Reading List Icon in Safari.
• Enable/Disable Spelling Correction.
• Enable/Disable repeating keys.
• Enable/Disable permanent scrollbars.
• Show Hidden Files.
• Disable Crash Dialog Pop-Up.
• Get a new Stack List View.
• Highlight Stack items on mouseover.
• Change iCal leather interface to aluminium
• Change Address Book leather interface to aluminium
• NEW: Disable resume for a single app
• NEW: Enable the hidden FTP-server
• NEW: Customize Launchpad folder background

Note: After downloading, move Lion Tweaks to Applications prior to using it.

Download Lion Tweaks

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Today, Microsoft previewed next version of its Windows OS, codenamed ‘Windows 8’ at the MS partner preview event at Computex 2011 in Taipei. Windows 8 is basically a touch based OS with all apps optimized for touch devices like tablets and touch PCs but works equally on desktops, laptops and netbooks. Windows 8 has just one version and will be able to run on wide range of machines because it has same system requirements.

Windows 8 Preview gave an insight on the innovation and features implemented in new OS. Here are few aspects of the new interface in Windows 8 as shared by MS:

• Fast launching of apps from a tile-based Start screen, which replaces the Windows Start menu with a customizable, scalable full-screen view of apps.

• Live tiles with notifications, showing always up-to-date information from your apps.

• Fluid, natural switching between running apps.

• Convenient ability to snap and resize an app to the side of the screen, so you can really multitask using the capabilities of Windows.

• Web-connected and Web-powered apps built using HTML5 and JavaScript that have access to the full power of the PC.

• Fully touch-optimized browsing, with all the power of hardware-accelerated Internet Explorer 10.

Windows 8 is not just about Touch PCs -

And this isn’t just about touch PCs. The new Windows experience will ultimately be powered by application and device developers around the world — one experience across a tremendous variety of PCs. The user interface and new apps will work with or without a keyboard and mouse on a broad range of screen sizes and pixel densities, from small slates to laptops, desktops, all-in-ones, and even classroom-sized displays. Hundreds of millions of PCs will run the new Windows 8 user interface. This breadth of hardware choice is unique to Windows and central to how we see Windows evolving.

Check the Windows 8 Demonstration video that showcases a few of the basic elements of the new Win8 UI. MS is working very hard to get its next generation OS ready for early testing. They’re going to reveal much more and share their progress on Windows 8 at a developer event, BUILD in Anaheim, California the week of September 13–16.

Source: Previewing ‘Windows 8’ [Microsoft News Center] , Engadget

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I just got my New MacBook Pro 13 and was pretty excited about it as it was my long wished Apple product. Apparently, all Apple Mac’s comes pre-loaded with OS X to which I’m a newbie and had hands on OS X first time ever yesterday. As a Windows 7 lover, I wished to get most of the similar features in OS X too but was surprised to see that some small but nifty features were missing from Apple’s OS. So, I’m here to cover my first tip, i.e. How to get ‘Show Desktop Screen’ on OS X.

Unlike Windows 7, OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard doesn’t offers a 1-click option to minimize all the open Windows and see the Home aka desktop directly. But after some searching, I got hold of a Keyboard shortcut that hides all the opened windows on Mac OS X and shows just the wallpaper and other stuff present on the desktop.

To hide all open windows and view the desktop, just press the Command + Exposé key (F3), or Fn + F11 at the same time. The home screen will appear instantly.

Although, this is not as quick like the Aero Peek function in Windows 7 but does the job perfectly. I’ll be covering more interesting tips and tricks on OS X soon!

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This is our first post on Windows 8 which still has long time to go and the end users would be able to enjoy it probably by 2012 only. Windows 8 M1 and M2 leaked builds have already started floating across the web and few hours ago the latest Windows 8 (build 7955) got leaked.

This new 7955 Windows 8 build continues to carry some cool features being explored by some Windows freaks. Here are 2 new videos uploaded by Xeraxical, one highlights the updated gesture controls, touch screen keyboard and cursor effects while second one gives a preview of MetroUI oobe Screen in Windows 8.

Windows 8 – Touch Effects/Gestures

Windows 8 – MetroUI oobe Screen

We will continue to share more interesting Windows 8 features and tips.

Source: WinMatrix

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It’s always advisable to secure your PC if it has some important data or anything which you don’t want to disclose to others. So, locking your computer with a strong password is best and you shouldn’t forget to lock your PC, even when leaving for a short while.

Windows 7 provides a quick option to instantly ‘Lock the computer’ with just a simple shortcut key. You first need to Set a Password for your Windows user account in order to use the password locking functionality. To Lock Windows 7 desktop, just Press the Win+L keyboard shortcut. Now you will be asked to enter the password to login.

Other method -

We’ve tried this on Windows 7 only. Check the tip via HowToGeek to “Create an easy Shortcut for Locking your Computer Screen in Windows 7, Vista, and Win XP.”

Hope you found this tip useful.

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One can easily view YouTube videos in fullscreen with just a click of the button. But the full screen option offered by Youtube occupies the entire desktop screen which you might not want every time. Here is an easy way to ‘Set YouTube videos to Play in full screen mode by default’ and they will expand to entire window of your browser only.

To Set YouTube video to play in full screen by default, just replace watch?v= with v/ in the video link. An example of same is given below:

Original URL – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Kyb7U_djUk

Modified URL – http://www.youtube.com/v/9Kyb7U_djUk

Then use the modified video URL or share it to view Youtube videos automatically within entire area of your browser window.

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