Don’t you know that all the Internet cool kids no longer use the word Internet? It’s now The Cloud, a representation of all the data floating around our heads 24/7.
I use services like Dropbox to have access to my files wherever. I know that there are a ton of applications out there that serve a similar purpose.
Amazon unveiled their Cloud Drive today. My immediate reaction to the news? Lakitu.
Amazon is leasing out server space to store video and music files. You get the first 5GB free and then there’s a subscription per year depending on the size. I can’t imagine spending $1000/year to store 70 hours of HD video, but whatever. An external USB terabyte drive is $70 on Amazon. Sure, it’s not portable and could crash, but come on.
There’s an Amazon Cloud Player phone/web app. No iOS app yet and my guess is that the Amazon digital download store is the next biggest competitor to the Apple store. (Sorry to leave you out, Zune. I’m sure someone thinks you’re cool.) Anything that can be stored on your Cloud Drive can be played on your Cloud Player.
They do include offers like “download an album and get 20GB free for a year”. The amount of sales revenue and advertisement probably balances out any server costs for Amazon. The 5GB is a good idea to get people hooked. I still don’t think I would pay for more space. This is an interesting jump for the future, though. Imagine a 1TB iPod.
Let me start by saying that I am one of those someones who likes Zune. Personally, I think it’s better than itunes, but that’s just me. Anyway, it isn’t all that difficult to bring an external hard drive, such as the one you linked to above, with you to where you may need the data it stores. Even a drive with 1TB on it. I’d rather spend a tenth of the money for twice the memory and deal with it in a physical form (with a chance of crashing, yes) than spend $1000 for only 1 year with 1TB in the cloud. I’m not sure I’d be comfortable with the service anyway, considering it just started. Too many services get shut down for one reason or another before they have a chance to get well-known.
I thought Google Wave was going to be the next big thing since it was from Google. So, even though it’s Amazon’s Cloud Drive, it could still tank if no one uses it.
Zune has intrigued me ever since I got my XBOX, but I’ve always stuck with iTunes out of an “ugh I don’t have time to learn a new program to play my music” mindset.