Grazed from Forbes. Author: Jordan Shapiro.

At just $199, the Acer C7 Chromebook seems like the perfect kids’ computer. When I was a kid, my whole family shared one Apple IIc. All the graphics were green. The software that taught me touch typing came on multiple floppy disks. Print Shop was my favorite way to make use of the dot matrix printer. The internet was not accessible.

My kids obviously live in a different time. Their world is saturated with personal computing. At five and seven years old, they are already familiar with “Google” as a verb. They are tablet savvy, navigating Minecraft in ways that are puzzling to me. And they have their own gmail accounts. When other parents hear me talking about emails that my son sent, their first reaction is a smile. It seems cute. However, they also express understandable worry that the internet is filled with predators and cyber-bullying…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Charles Babcock.

Amazon.com’s Web Services unit is gaining larger cloud customers than the developers and startups who first found a home on its EC2 compute service. That’s one reason two analyst houses have come out with upside predictions for the firm.

The previously faltering stock moved toward recovery yesterday after Morgan Stanley analyst Scott Devitt upgraded his rating on the NASDAQ-traded equity to "overweight." The stock went up $9.31, or 3.59%, in a day to close at $268.46 — its highest level ever. If it were broken out into a separate company today, AWS would be worth $19-$30 billion, with a share price of $41 to $66. The high end might be justified because Amazon’s EC2 is moving beyond startups to enterprise customers who are starting to rely on its services…

Grazed from CloudPro. Author: Jane McCallion.

Android-powered device will bring cloud desktop computing to mass market, claims hardware giant. Dell has unveiled the newest product in its cloud client computing range – code-named Project Ophelia – during the second day of CES 2013.

The device is roughly the size of a wireless dongle and plugs directly into a user’s monitor or television and requires only two amps of power, which it gets directly from the screen. Running the Android Jellybean operating system, Ophelia will deliver a desktop experience to users without the need for hardware and will bring cloud client computing to the mass consumer and enterprise market, the company claims…

Grazed from FCW. Author: John Moore.

The Obama administration’s cloud-first strategy, data center consolidation directive, and security certification process for cloud products and services all point agencies toward greater cloud adoption. Indeed, the policies and programs that seek to spark cloud acceptance are now largely in place. What’s lacking, however, is a definitive statement on how to coordinate cloud resources. Over time, agencies will likely end up juggling their own private clouds, public clouds provided by companies such as Amazon and multiple software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings.

As a result, the concept of the cloud broker has emerged as a way to deal with increasingly complex cloud environments. A cloud broker, also called a cloud services brokerage, basically creates a buffer between the customer and the cloud solutions. Bob Bohn, cloud program manager at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, said a broker “can take a complex situation for a consumer and make it manageable.”…

Grazed from ThePointDaily. Author: Aaron Esposa.

International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM) was not visible at the Consumer Electronics Show. But, global connectivity was the premium topic of the event which made the company much more prominent. The reason behind IBM’s recent prominence in cloud computing can be identified as its substantial investment in this field for the past few years.

Furthermore, the company unveiled its novel cloud service delivery program during August 2012 in order to keep up with expanding network of Smartphones, TV and Tablets. Moreover, IBM announced its partnership with STMicroelectronics N.V. (ADR) (NYSE:STM) and Shaspa…

Grazed from Gov Info Security. Author: Marianne Kolbasuk McGee.

While a privacy advocate is demanding federal guidance on how to protect health information in the cloud, one federal official says the soon-to-be-modified HIPAA privacy and security rules will apply to all business associates, including cloud vendors, helping to ensure patient data is safeguarded. Joy Pritts, chief privacy officer in the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, a unit of the Department of Health and Human Services, made her comments about HIPAA during a Jan. 7 panel discussion on cloud computing hosted by Patient Privacy Rights, an advocacy group.

The movement of health information to the cloud is inevitable, Pritts acknowledged. That’s particularly true for smaller healthcare organizations that are turning to cloud providers to host electronic health records to help reduce start-up costs…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

Quickly and easily taking existing software into the cloud and modernizing it as SaaS applications is a hot topic for businesses of all sizes. Heirloom Computing is hoping to make it simpler for enterprises to take their mission-critical applications and both SaaS-enable and modernize them, giving customers the ability to run their legacy software while still receiving the benefits of cloud computing.

GOPaaS is a new service from Heirloom that offers companies a way to host existing legacy applications in the cloud. According to the vendor, customers can move mission-critical apps to the cloud by using the service without having to rewrite code or build a new app from scratch. That’s pretty much what every business wants, as it takes time, effort and resources to write new applications to replace existing apps that are already doing the job…

Grazed from DigitalTrends. Author: AJ Dellinger.

AcerCloud, the cloud storage option from computer maker Acer that allows users to treat their home PC like a cloud-based hard drive, will be available for iOS later this month. Updates for Android and Windows Phones will follow, with improvements to existing features.

Don’t have enough cloud storage options to choose from yet? Well Acer’s got you covered. The Taiwan-based computer company is giving Apple mobile users a chance to access their files by offering a new iOS app and rolling out remote access over wireless connections…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: David Linthicum.

I’m consistently taken aback by many businesses’ disregard for customer service. As long as customers push back on companies that treat them shabbily, enterprises willing to cut service will find themselves out of business or forced to merge with establishments that treat their customers better.

Giving short shrift to customer service remains an issue in the cloud, which is based on the notion of automation and self-provisioning at scale. Dealing with people individually seems contrary to the idea of the cloud. Many public cloud providers assumed they could just put a layer of Web pages between them and their customers, and all would be right — no phones to answer, no planes to board…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Joe Panettieri.

OpenStack remains the largest and most active open source cloud computing project, Network World notes. But research from Chinese blogger Qingye "John" Jiang suggests that momentum is building for CloudStack, and interest in Eucalyptus and OpenNebula remains strong. For cloud services providers (CSPs) and consultants, it’s critically important to track each of the four open source cloud platforms. Here’s why. During Q4 2012, interest in CloudStack grew faster than rival open source cloud platforms. But Jiang’s data shows that:

• OpenStack has the largest total population, followed by Eucalyptus, CloudStack, and OpenNebula;
• OpenStack has the largest active population during the past quarter, followed by CloudStack, Eucalyptus, and OpenNebula;
• OpenStack has the largest active population during the past month, followed by CloudStack, Eucalyptus, and OpenNebula…