Cloud computing

It's still no Facebook, but Google+ usage by people in the United States surged 55 percent from November to December, Experian Hitwise said.

The growth lifted Google+ to 49 million visits, the analysis firm said in a tweet yesterday.

Google has held its official measurements of Google+ usage close to its chest, but others are happy to fill the void. FamilyLink founder and "Google+ unofficial statistician" Paul Allen concluded Google has 62 million users overall in December and predicted 85 million by February 1, and ComScore measured the Google+ population at 65 million for November. Note that … Read more

The Internet's most popular destinations, including eBay, Google, Facebook, and Twitter, seem to view Hollywood-backed copyright legislation as an existential threat.

It was Google co-founder Sergey Brin who warned that the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act "would put us on a par with the most oppressive nations in the world." Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, Twitter co-founders Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone, and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman argue that the bills give the Feds unacceptable "power to censor the Web."

But these companies have yet to roll out the heavy artillery.

When … Read more

You may not need to use the 42nd fastest supercomputer on Earth, but if you want to, you can for just $1,279 per hour.

As reported by Wired, Amazon Web Services latest salvo into the computing on demand landscape is a platform known as the Elastic Cloud Computer, which at $1279 per hour, or $11 million a year if run full time, is probably on par in comparison to the time, effort and expense of procuring the same level of compute power in your own data center.

Amazon's virtual super computer is capable of running 240 trillion calculations … Read more

Dropbox is playing around with a new option for transferring your photos and videos online.

The site has added a feature to its latest test build that can transfer your local photos and videos to your online Dropbox storage without requiring any action on your end.

Available in the "experimental" build 1.3.4, the feature would scan your camera, phone, and SD card for content and then automatically import all your photos and videos to the cloud. Since it's still in the test stage, the feature doesn't yet work on certain platforms, such as Mac … Read more

Re-reading a piece I wrote a few weeks back about the uptick in online sales during Black Friday, I started to wonder if real-time customer intelligence is what is driving online retail growth.

There are undoubtedly a number of aspects to the growth in online sales. But after spending some time with a few of the major online retailers last week--including one who might not be considered a "retailer" in the traditional sense, I realized that the online world has a huge competitive advantage in its predilection toward data analysis with actionable near real-time results.

Amazon's suggested … Read more

A new version of the Stop Online Piracy Act appears to be no more popular than the last one was.

In an effort to head off mounting criticism before a vote on the legislation this Thursday, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) today announced a series of tweaks (PDF) to SOPA, which is backed by Hollywood and major record labels but opposed by Internet firms and the Consumer Electronics Association.

But Smith, who heads the House Judiciary committee, stopped short of altering the core of SOPA--meaning that allegedly piratical Web sites could still be made to vanish from the Internet. Deep … Read more

Recently, I've noticed a meme spreading through Silicon Valley that questions whether Amazon Web Services' (AWS) current dominant position will hinder the cloud. The short answer: not at all.

I was in a venture capital meeting last week where we were told by one prominent VC that, "Two years ago Amazon was a blessing to startups. Today it is neutral. In two years it may well be a curse." How so? By building up Amazon Web Services to include many services currently offered by other vendors.

And while Amazon does continue to roll out new services, it'… Read more

PARIS--Bad news, would-be social networking startups.

"Social is running out of hours. Social is also running out of people," concluded George Colony, chief executive of analyst firm Forrester Research, speaking today at the LeWeb conference here. What he means: people don't have any extra time for social networking, and it's a saturated market.

The company bases its findings on consumer research. For example, regarding saturation, Forrester found that 86 percent of people have adopted social networking services. In Canada, it's 88 percent, and in Poland, 95 percent. Urban areas of China are at 97 percent. … Read more

PARIS--Most people who try Evernote quickly lose interest in the cloud-connected note-taking service.

But Chief Executive Phil Libin isn't worried, because in the long run, they come back--and start paying. He showed statistics today at the LeWeb conference here to prove the point.

In the first month after signup, about 45 percent of people are return users. That drops down by half to 22 percent by 17 months. But then it picks up, and by 42 months, it's back up to 43 percent.

And as they stick around, they eventually start paying for the premium version of the … Read more