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Microsoft Revamping SkyDrive
Windows 8 is drawing near, and with it comes tighter integration with Microsoft's cloud storage service SkyDrive. Because of its increased visibility, Microsoft is revamping SkyDrive to a more modern design, and is updating the SkyDrive apps for desktop PCs and Android devices.
"SkyDrive’s revamped home page embraces the same tile-based design aesthetic as Microsoft’s other new and upcoming products, including Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. Microsoft previously referred to that aesthetic as 'Metro,' but plans on giving it a new name at an unannounced future point. ... SkyDrive users can flick for a more detailed view of files, including dates modified, sharing status, and size. In terms of features, there’s the ability to search within SkyDrive for pretty much any term, including content within Word and other Office documents. Microsoft has also shifted common commands (creating and sharing folders, for example) to the toolbar that runs along the top of the SkyDrive interface.
What's wrong with the name "SkyDrive"?
is it because Ballmer got caught using drop-box? ( earlier slashdot article)
This isn't specific to Skydrive, it's a defect of other 'cloud storage' things as well; but why the hell would I want an "app" on my desktop for something that is supposed to be a filesystem?
Why would I use an application-specific re-implementation of things like 'search' and 'metadata display'? That's just perverse. I can understand that, if you need a UI that works in just about any browser, with download links and a little xmlhttprequest upload box, for basic just-need-to-grab-that-file-to-print-it-out type needs; but a desktop "app"?
Is it too hard for Microsoft to expose their own service as a filesystem?
With that lead-in I expected a significant change in the service, but it sounds more like, "redesigned the website". Wow, they moved some buttons to a toolbar, too!
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Serious question, why is it a "turd"?
I don’t see anything obviously wrong with SkyDrive.
Unless you’re saying because it’s by Microsoft, there for it must be bad.
If so wouldn't that be considered trolling?
Seems like on Slashdot the difference between "trolling" and "funny" dependent on if you’re in the cool camp or not.
Serious question, why is it a "turd"?
I dont see anything obviously wrong with SkyDive.
Unless your saying because its by Microsoft, there for it must be bad.
Wouldn't that be considered trolling?
Perhaps the diffraence between "trolling" and "funny" is dependant on if your in the cool camp.
If your computer is connected to the internet it is, as much as anything in the cloud is, an "online system" and subject to the "online systems have been and do continue to get hacked" problem. So, there's that.
If your computer isn't connected to the internet, you probably aren't storing data from it in the cloud in any case.
Either way...
More seriously (though the above is not non-serious, just somewhat less serious) storing data on the cloud rather than on your own computer which is sometimes exposed to the internet obvious has some amount of increased security risk. It also has some usability advantages, particularly if you use multiple different devices -- say, you prefer your desktop when you are in the neighborhood of your desk, but prefer your tablet when you are away from your desk -- and want to keep them in sync.
There's a cost/benefit balancing to be done as to whether to use cloud storage and what particular content to use it for (and what particular cloud provider to use, including -- particularly for business -- self-hosted cloud storage as an option.)
Neither "no one should ever use the cloud to store anything because of the potential security risks" nor "everything should be tossed off on to the first free cloud storage service you stumble across" are particularly thoughtful ways of addressing that cost/benefit consideration.
Skydrive has a synchronization application for Windows and OSX. It has for months.
Patriotism isn't bigotry. Nationalism approaches bigotry. Pretentious sigs are pretentious.
LAN Sync: with Skydrive if I move 50gigs of data into the shared folder of my iMac, my iMac uploads that 50gigs into the cloud over my DSL connection and then my Macbook downloads that 50gigs from the cloud over my DSL connection and then my old PowerMac downloads that 50gigs from the cloud over my DSL connection. Dropbox will just copy the 50gigs to the other machines over the gigabit ethernet they're all plugged in to since they're all in the same room.
Differential upload: with Skydrive if I change one byte in an 8gig DVD image then that 8gigs of data gets uploaded into the cloud. Dropbox uploads the one byte.
Get public link: right click on a file in Dropbox, get link for sharing with people. A killer feature that Skydrive just doesn't have.
They should call it "a drive", or "a: drive" to be more specific. Nobody uses flopies anymore. Make it appear to be just another disk and consider it done.
it was a joke, you useless cunt.
Check out the product placement in it for the SkyDrive. Or just search for comments online about it.
... they don't go very well together. I tried the new outlook and other unified, metro styled, webapps on my windows7.5 nokia... I could ignore the uglyness, but the functionality... they must be kidding.... are they new to this thing called the internet?
MS bakes their IE browser into the the OS: [Slashdot opinion] this is the most evil thing ever and they are evil in gaining a "unfair" advantage.
MS doesn't bake skydrive into their OS instead using a app so all cloud storage apps are on equal footing:[Slashdot opinion] This is the most stupid idea ever, why wouldn't they bake it into the OS!
Nobody's asking that Microsoft "bake skydive into the OS", just that one should make it appear that it's part of the file system. Nobody demanded that IE not be available, just that it not be part of the OS. If you "bake skydrive into the OS" so it can't be removed, that would be like IE and Windows and yes, we would rightfully bitch about that.
Hope I cleared that up for you.
Free Martian Whores!
I'm really starting to hate Microsoft for changing all of their websites to this shitty new GUI. My reactions to changes they made in the website GUIs.
apphub (formerly creator's club which sounded cooler):
1) Pressed F5, maybe the page didn't load properly.
2) Pressed F5 again with firebug running, maybe the page had an error I could report.
3) Cleared browser history, cache, and all other temporary data.
4) Tried again with 1 and 2.
5) Tried loading the page in IE, repeated the above with an IE equivalent to firebug.
6) Checked the page on my laptop.
7) Disabled web filters on my router to see if maybe I blocked the content.
8) Deleted apphub from my bookmarks.
codeplex ran me through the same as above, except step 8 was moving my projects to a different open source project host.
Seriously what the hell are they thinking. That new GUI looks like someone just figured out how to use the line and box tool in mspaint. The previous GUIs looked nice, they weren't distracting, and best of all they were usable.