Apple to bring cloud computing to iTunes

According to Michael Robertson, a digital music expert, iTunes will soon have a feature that allows users to back up all their music to the cloud:

An upcoming major revision of iTunes will copy each user’s catalog to the net making it available from any browser or net connected ipod/touch/tablet

Such a feature would no doubt be very useful to consumers. The ability to access your music anywhere at any time and always have a backup in place will help keep iTunes ahead of the pack. But maintaining a facility large enough to handle all this data is a modern miracle itself.

As it turns out, the Apple data center currently under construction in North Carolina we covered last year will be used to power the iTunes cloud. Once completed, it will be one of the largest in the world– five times the size of its current data center.

Photo | Flickr

Alleged cybersquatter defends actions

Last week, Apple won a domain dispute in which it accused a Los Angeles entrepreneur, Daniel Bijan, of cybersquatting. Bijan lost 16 domains to the company famous for its iPhone and iPod products. Now he has issued a public statement regarding the incident.

The domainer says he was “naive at the time” he registered the first of the 16 domains, MacbookPro.com. He states he never received any legal notices from Apple and because of this, assumed he was in the clear. Bijan claims he set up affiliate sites that redirected users to sites selling Apple products and never promoted competitors. Apple’s complaint to ICANN states otherwise.
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American loses 16 domains to Apple

Daniel Bijan, a Los-Angeles singer and entrepreneur, recently lost a domain dispute with Apple over 16 domains. In its complaint filed under ICANN’s UDRP, the Cupertino company claimed the names were confusingly similar to its trademarks. Naturally, the arbitrator ruled in favor of Apple.

A few of the names seized are blueipod.com, macbookpro.biz, and macbook.us. Whereas there is often a gray area in many disputes as to whether a domain infringes on a trademark, this was a clear-cut case of cybersquatting. Unsurprisingly, Bijan opted not to fight Apple and submitted to no response to its complaint.

Source | TechCrunch
Photo | Johannes Pape

Apple gains control of itunes.com.mx

Given the large number of domain extensions out there, it’s nearly impossible for companies to register a domain on each one for all their products. This explains why Apple recently filed a dispute over the name itunes.com.mx, which had been registered several years earlier by a cybersquatter.

Naturally, Apple won the domain because of its trademark on the term “iTunes.” With the introduction of gTLDs next year, expect to see more causes like this one. There are simply too many extensions for one company to keep track of, and when new ones begin to appear on a regular basis, it will be even harder for trademark holders to enforce their rights.

Source | Domain News
Photo | Flickr

FTP files for free in OS X with Cyberduck

There are a lot of free FTP clients out there for the Mac, but my favorite is Cyberduck. Boasting a great user-interface and support for a wide variety of protocols, it’s a good alternative to the popular but expensive Transmit 3.

The open source software has a number of features that sets it apart from the pack. It works with Amazon’s S3 storage service, supports Growl for system notifications, integrates with a number of editors, and allows for advanced transfer settings using regular expressions. It also has the ability to integrate directly into OS X.

Builds are available for both PowerPC and Intel processors. Popular alternatives to CyberDuck include FileZilla and Classic FTP.

Photo | Cyberduck.ch

Speculation about Apple data center abounds

Apple’s plans for a mega data center in North Carolina have been public knowledge for some time, but few details about the facility itself and its intended purpose have been divulged by Apple thus far.

That hasn’t stopped people in-the-know from speculating, however. One industry expert, Data Center Knowledge editor Rich Miller, believes that its 500,000 square feet of space makes the data center a prime candidate for cloud computing.

According to Miller:

Cloud computing is a hot trend, and I’d be surprised if Apple isn’t thinking hard – and thinking differently – about cloud computing. The companies that are building the biggest data centers tend to also have the biggest cloud ambitions.

This speculation seems dead-on. When completed, the Apple data center will be one of the largest in the world– 5 times the size of its current facility in Newark, California. Whatever Apple is planning, it’s something big.

Source | MacNN

Microsoft joins the HTML 5 discussion

Last month we discussed the current state of HTML 5, particularly regarding its video component. Not only were the major browser makers, Mozilla, Google, Apple, and Opera, all duking it out over what should be considered standard, but the largest browser maker, Microsoft, had barely contributed to the debate at all.

Now Microsoft has begun to open up to the HTML 5 development mailing list, indicating that they are interested in joining the discussion. Their latest browser, Internet Explorer 8, includes some HTML 5 features, although it is far behind Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Google Chrome, and Opera. Microsoft clearly wants to be involved now, a move that more than likely is the result of website owners embracing HTML 5 even in its development state and Google’s willingness to adopt it, with its huge Web presence.

HTML or hypertext markup language, is the technical language of the World Wide Web. It is standardized by the World Wide Web Consortium or W3C. Much of the HTML 5 development, however, has come from an outside organization called Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG), which the major browser makers established as a reaction to their disappointment with XHTML 2.0. There has been a highly publicized debate about embedded video standards, whether to use Ogg Theora or H.264. Until now, Microsoft has been largely silent.
Source: ZDNet Asia

Prototype allows for creation of iPhone data center

In June, a free piece of software called ServersMan launched that lets any iPhone or iPod Touch be used as a web server. Its maker, a Japanese company by the name of FreeBit, wants to go even further, unveiling a prototype today for an iPhone server rack.

The rack holds 5 of any generation iPod Touch or iPhone. Truth be told, it looks more like a lunchbox than a server rack. A handle is included for easy travel, but you could also buy a bunch of these and create a iPhone data center.

Server providers need not worry, however. The FreeBit prototype is just that, a prototype. There are no plans to produce the product, and besides, it would take dozens of iPhones to obtain the same power provided by a server. But the concept is really neat.

Source | DVICE
Photo | IT Media

Apple, Google and the death of HTML 5 video

Who done it, with what, and where? Was it A) Microsoft, inside their security deficient, sub-standard browser with an over-hyped search engine? Was it B) Apple at its elitist developer conference with an exploding iPhone app? Was it C) Google in a YouTube video with a poison drop of lonelygirl15‘s blood? The answer is D) All of the above. From Microsoft’s refusal to participate in the process at all to Apple’s insistence on a patented, closed, proprietary format, the entire episode only serves to illustrate that the “browser wars“, however petty, are far from over.

While the W3C intentions were certainly noble, the entire ordeal is now spiraling out of control. The initial proposal was simple: create an open standard for streaming video playback on the web, something to replace the vendor-locked, resource hogging, proprietary Adobe Flash player. Microsoft’s abstention was disappointing but not surprising. But what is more disturbing is that, of the four main participants: Mozilla, Opera, Apple and Google, only Mozilla and Opera were willing to sign on to using the open Ogg Theora format. Apple and Google both insisted on H.264, which might be an outstanding video codec, but it is not open and is laced with patents, making it not much better than Flash player.

Google has stated that they will at least ship their Chrome browser with support for both Ogg and H.264, but Apple refuses to support Ogg at all. As a result of this childish bickering, Ian Hickson, the man responsible for the HTML 5 audio and video tags, has removed the codec specification, essentially leaving us where we began, with multiple formats and no packaged solution. It is a company or web site owner’s nightmare to have content on their websites that not all visitors can view, but it happens all of the time, partly due to web developer arrogance and partly due to the impassible situation in which browser makers and video codec patent holders have left us. The future looks grim indeed. Who done it? It was Apple, Google and Microsoft in the comfort of their corporate offices, with their egos.

Photo: Flickr

Use iPhone or iPod Touch as Web Server with ServersMan

Just in time for the suspected announcement of the new iPhone, here’s a post about an application that lets you use any iPhone or iPod Touch as a web server.

Launched last month under the name Serversman, it lets any iPhone/iPod Touch connected to a WiFi or 3G network be used as a network storage device.

The free service can give your iPhone a http://serversman.com/your-iphone/ web address, allowing all sorts of files like webpages, sound recordings, and even video to be accessed remotely.

ServersMan won’t be replacing web hosts any time soon as the device and connection are both too slow for anything other than personal use. The application has mixed reviews, but is free, so why not give it a try?