Grazed from ITWorld.  Author:  JR Raphael.

For many of us, the cloud has changed the way we work and play. Thanks to well-known services like Gmail, Dropbox, Facebook and Instapaper, practically our whole lives — photos, documents, contacts and more — are online. So isn’t it time to take control?

A little tweaking can turn the cloud into a more powerful and personalized place. All it takes is a few simple browser add-ons and other tools to unlock the full potential of the Web’s most popular services.

Here, in no particular order, are 10 essential tools to help you make the most of your cloud experience. In this story, we’re focusing on tools you would use on your computer itself, either through a Web browser or with software you download and install, rather than mobile apps you would use on a smartphone or tablet. That said, however, some of these tools do offer a mobile component as well…

Grazed from Public Service Europe.  Author: Daniel Mason.

New European Union laws to be proposed next month will oblige companies to act more quickly to tell customers if their data is compromised, reinforce individuals’ rights to remove photos and videos from an internet profile without leaving a digital trace, and reduce the regulatory burden of data protection rules so that businesses can maximise the benefits of cloud computing – European Commission vice-president Viviane Reding said today.

Speaking at a GSMA Europe conference on cloud computing in Brussels, Reding said she would propose next month to protect internet users and unlock the technology’s potential. "Reliable and consistent rules are essential if we want the digital economy and our digital single market to grow." These rules make people feel comfortable about using new technologies and services. We need a framework for privacy that protects individuals and boosts the digital economy." The EU is also negotiating a data protection agreement with the United States…

Grazed from MSP Alliance.  Author: Raju Shanbhag.

Looking to simplify and accelerate the design and deployment of cloud-based enterprise computing solutions, OnX Enterprise Solutions has launched a new family of cloud and managed services.

With certified staff and ITIL-compliant processes, OnX monitors and manages a client’s private or shared operations 24x7x365. Offering maintenance, upgrades, development integration and version control, the company offers clients four levels of service and support to accommodate differing in-house capabilities and requirements, ranging from network and server/storage break-fix and maintenance, remote monitoring and 24x7x365 support, to complete service level agreement (SLA)-compliant infrastructure management and full application support as part of its new OnExpert support service, the company stated in a press release…

Grazed from The Street.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Integrated Device Technology, Inc. ( IDT ^®);(NASDAQ:IDTI), the Analog and Digital Company™ delivering essential mixed-signal semiconductor solutions, today announced that it has expanded its leading timing portfolio with the industry’s most versatile WAN PLL supporting both Synchronous Ethernet (Sync Ethernet) and IEEE 1588 applications in cloud-based networking and 4G wireless infrastructure.

The IDT82V3391 is an integrated, single-chip PLL that supports both Sync Ethernet and IEEE1588 with legacy support for SDH, Sonet and T1/E1 clock rates. The broad range of supported protocols makes this product highly versatile, allowing system designers to use a single PLL device to support a wide range of applications. In addition, the device is capable of synchronizing to a 1 pulse-per-second (pps) input signal while simultaneously providing a 1 pps output, a feature that has become popular with 4G and LTE technologies. Ultimately, the extreme flexibility of IDT’s new PLL helps customers simplify their bill of materials (BOM) and reduce the total cost of their systems…

Grazed from VAdvert.co.uk.   Author:  Kelly Dunst.

The European Environment Agency (EEA), Esri and Microsoft Corp. today announced, at the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the launch of the Eye on Earth network, an online community for developing innovative services that map environmental parameters. The new cloud computing-based network provides a collaborative online service for hosting, sharing and discovering data on the environment and promotes the principles of public data access and citizen science. In addition, the organisations also announced NoiseWatch, a new web service available on the Eye on Earth network that measures noise in 164 European cities.

The Eye on Earth network provides organisations with a security-enhanced central location for managing their geospatial environmental content. It uses Esri’s ArcGIS Online cloud services coupled with Windows Azure and Microsoft SQL Azure, and it hosts the data in the Environmental Data Store. The network’s user interface enables the easy creation and sharing of map-based services, translating complex scientific data into accessible, interactive and visual web services. With Eye on Earth, users can create and share maps within their organisation or make the content publicly available as web-accessible services. Eye on Earth was first launched in 2008 as part of a public-private partnership between the EEA and Microsoft with the joint goal of making environmental data available to all 600 million citizens across the EEA’s 32 member and seven cooperating countries…

Grazed from V3.  Author: Shaun Nichols.

Grazed from HedgeCo.net.  Author:  Mary Beth hamilton.

The increased use of cloud-based services is undeniable. Analyst firm Forrester forecasts that the global market for cloud computing will grow from $40.7 billion in 2011 to more than $241 billion in 2020. The advantages of using “the cloud” include the ability to:

• Quickly implement and use enterprise-grade technology systems and applications without employing a dedicated IT team;
• Outsource management and maintenance of technology to third-party experts responsible for ensuring continuous availability and high performance levels;
• Transition technology spending from capital expenditures to operating expenditures; and
• Easily scale technology environments to match business needs – eliminating the need to over or under buy when forecasting business growth.

When weighing adoption of cloud-services, it is important to understand the difference between cloud deployment models, namely public and private clouds…