A better comparison is with Dropbox or Box.com, which started as pure online storage and synchronization services but which have added collaboration features. Both are more expensive than Zocalo, but benefit from a partner ecosystem that provides integrated apps and services.The weakest point in Zocalo, then, is not the limited feature set but the fact that Amazon has not published an API so that third parties can extend it, for example with mobile apps that upload documents or images, or to analyse activity logs.With its commodity pricing and simple operation, Zocalo may appeal if you trust Amazon more than its rivals. Yet it will only become compelling when Amazon opens up the service for integration; though bear in mind that it is still in preview and features may change.Zocalo is in free trial, but will cost $5 per user/month which includes 200GB of storage. Additional storage costs around $0.03 per GB. The maximum file size is 5GB. If you sign up to Workspaces (from $35 per user/month) then Zocalo is free but only up to 50GB storage.
On the official Apple support forum, dozens of angry customers claimed that the latest software update for the 2011 Macbook Air had gone horribly wrong.Some posters said their Airs had been totally borked by the update, while others reported difficulties installing it.All had been trying to install version 2.9 of an EFI firmware update, which was supposed to fix a problem which causes the computer to take an eternity to wake from sleep and then run the fans at full speed.One owner of a Macbook Air from mid 2011 is now in mourning for his deceased laptop.He wrote: The update seemed to install fine, then asked for a reboot.The MBA shutdown and never came back on. Tried SMC reset, with and without power adapter. Nothing. The thing is dead.Worst of all, the poster was from Greece. Not necessarily a bad thing in itself, we note, but terrible if you're a fanboi because of the lack of an official Apple store in the country. Now he has been forced to pay for a fix.My son is on an internship in a somewhat remote place in Alaska (read: no Apple genius to bring it to), with his Macbook Air, he said. He sent me a text informing me that his perfectly working MBA won't power on at all after applying a firmware update this morning. It's dead, killed by Apple, and it is out of warranty.
Other forum folk suggested there was hope of a resurrection, if you just leave the computer alone for a while.I just realised the fan is running quietly, so maybe not dead, just having a terrible dream, one fanboi wrote.Anyway, the laptop after standing around for two hours (I kid you not) rebooted by itself. A scary two hours, another added.Happily, some posters reported fixing the issue by performing a triple System Management Controller reset. To do this, you just need to plug the laptop in, hold down the Shift, Control and Option keys as well as power. Then release them all and whack the power button.Repeat three times, say four Hail Marys, salute the great gods of the underworld and hey presto, your Macbook might just return from the grave. Until then, we are praying for you. Pics A Google Hangout of a different sort took place at its London offices yesterday. And, neatly fulfilling quite a few of our expectations of the Choc Factory, we ogled tech while milling around a real chocolate fountain.Yes, we’re talking Christmas in July again, the silly season where vendors and resellers showcase Yuletide bound products including some that aren’t available to buy just yet... and the press were invited to savour some Chocolate Factory festive fare.
Having dodged the assimilation of hacks adorning Google glassware, I made it to the Christmas tree of Chromebooks – which featured all the latest models from the likes of Acer, HP, Lenovo and Toshiba. A welcome sight was the Samsung Chromebook 2 with its 13.3-inch full HD display which is still coming soon to the UK.What makes the memorably named XE503C32 so interesting is that it’s powered by Samsung’s 2.1GHz eight-core Exynos 5 Octa ARM processor, whereas the bulk of today’s Chromebooks rely on Intel’s 1.4GHz dual-core Celeron 2955U CPU. In other areas it’s much the same with 4GB of RAM and a 16GB SSD. I did a quick boot to login test which took 8.5 seconds – on a par with the Intel alternatives.Processors aside, another distinction is its stitched leather effect lid. It’s a bit subtle, which is probably a good thing, as you do have to look closely to notice it and you won’t find this ornamentation on the base.While it doesn’t bend over backwards Lenovo N20p Yoga-style, the non-touch display does tilt back quite far. The 200nit screen is sharp and bright enough but isn’t the usual Samsung laptop dazzler league as it’s no doubt toned down a bit to save on battery.
As Christmas tunes blasted away from a Google Play playlist and the Chocolate Factory’s chocolate fountain shimmered its indulgence as passing journos daubed strawberries in this edible form of streaming, I dodged the Glassholes again and wound up alongside the watches.Analysis Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella talked up the big changes he has in store for the company during a conference call with financial analysts on Tuesday. And among his plans were universal apps that can run on any Windows platform.There was little talk of layoffs, beyond what Nadella and new Microsoft phones boss Stephen Elop discussed last week. Redmond plans to issue pink slips to as many as 18,000 workers in the coming year, most of them from Nokia's manufacturing divisions.Instead, Nadella used the opportunity to boast of the restructuring and realignment going on inside the company – and this time, he mostly managed to do it without resorting to the kind of bloviating and empty jargon that made his recent six-page memo to employees so stultifying.The key, he said, lies in shaking up a business that has relied too long on processes that it developed in the earliest days of the PC industry.The diversity of products that Microsoft has – from silicon tape-outs to services that we are continuously updating in Azure or Office 365 – is a lot more than when we first created the Microsoft engineering system, Nadella said. That was for retail, packaged products.
In future, Nadella said, Microsoft's engineering groups will not only be restructured to span both the cloud and on-premises worlds, but consumer products and those targeted for enterprise customers will be more closely aligned, as well.For example, the OneDrive and OneDrive for Business engineers now work as a single team, as do the Outlook and Exchange groups and the Skype and Lync teams.It's safe to say we can forget about devices and services under Nadella, too. Former CEO Steve Ballmer started using that phrase to describe Microsoft's future direction just 12 months ago, yet it wasn't uttered once during Tuesday's call.To hear Nadella tell it, Microsoft is rather a productivity and platform company for the mobile first, cloud first world – which might not be as pithy as Ballmer's mantra, but it's a phrase that appears, at least, to express a grander vision than the chair-flinging ex-CEO had for the company.While Ballmer was desperate to claw back share of the smartphone and tablet markets from Apple, Nadella doesn't see selling devices as an end unto itself.Mobility for us goes beyond just devices, he said during the call. While we are certainly focused on building great phones and tablets, we think of mobility more expansively.
And while Nadella didn't hesitate to mention that sales of Redmond's Surface 3 fondleslabs are outpacing those of earlier iterations, he also said that Microsoft isn't really interested in competing with its OEM partners, and that one of the main goals for the company's hardware division will be to develop innovative products that define new categories.We are not in hardware for hardware's sake and our first-party hardware will be aligned with our strategic direction, he said.There's a million dollars in prizes up for grabs from Google and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for the clever clogs who can build a direct current (DC) to alternating current (AC) converter that's the size of a laptop.The Little Box Challenge aims to solve one of the dilemmas in modern-day power supply – that many sources, such as solar panels, output DC, as do batteries, but that most appliances in homes and businesses expect AC*.To convert DC to AC to power a building, a bulky inverter is needed. But Google is unhappy with the state of today's offerings, hence the contest to build a better inverter.We hope The Little Box Challenge may lead to improvements not only in power density, but also in reliability, efficiency, safety, and cost, Maggie Johnson, Google's director of education wrote in a blog post.
Furthermore, it is our hope that some of these advances can also improve the other types of power electronics. If these devices can be made very small, reliable and inexpensive, we could see all kinds of useful applications to the electric grid, consumer devices and beyond, maybe including some we have yet to imagine.Household inverters are bulky at present, about the size of a picnic cooler, we're told. Google wants the prize winners to shrink this gear by a factor of ten to about the size of a laptop – or even a tablet if possible. At the same time, the inverter has to be able to handle loads of 2kVA with a power density of 50W per cubic inch. It must take 450V DC in series with a 10-Ohm resistor, and output single-phase 240V AC at 60Hz.The winning device will have to do all of this while staying below 60 degrees celsius (140°F) on any touchable surface, with no liquid cooling systems allowed, and with a conversion efficiency of more than 95 per cent.Google suggested that the competitors may want to look into the use of wide-bandgap (WBG) semiconductors – such as gallium-nitride (GaN) and silicon-carbide (SiC) – for the project, but new approaches are always welcome. All intellectual property for the winning designs will remain with the inventors.
Initial applications must be submitted by the end of September, and by October next year the 18 finalists will be picked by a five-person judging panel and sent to a testing facility. The winning teams will be announced the following January and cash awards of up to a million dollars will be awarded. * The irony of converting DC to AC and then, inevitably, back to DC again in a tablet or laptop adapter is not lost on us. But hey, a million bucks is a million bucks. And, anyway, something's got to power that smartfridge.If you've been wondering why the battery life on your Windows laptop or tablet seems so lousy, your Chrome web browser might be to blame – and it may have been sapping your system's juice for years.A documented bug in the source code for the Chromium open source project seems to account for the mysterious power drain that some users of Google's web browser have been experiencing.