Victor Cruz

The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) conference in Las Vegas that ended last week saw a 10 percent hike in vendor exhibits from last year and a slight rise in the number of people attending at 92,112. The world's largest media event since covering filmed entertainment and content delivery in 1922 inducted Betty White and Bob Uecker into its Hall of Fame, and the unmanned military-issued drone flying overhead was prone to taking pictures of Teri Hatcher among other beauties. But among the technorati, those things were not the only star attractions. For the first time in NAB history, cloud computing was put on the agenda. Thanks to the efforts of the Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA.info), a pavilion was dedicated to looking at how the cloud relates to the A/V ecosystem at each stage of the content distribution chain, from collaboration to s... (more)

Money Thrown at Finding Proof in the Cloud

Last year marked a 10-year high for venture capitalists in terms of deals and dollars. This year is starting off just as hot. Joyent just announced an $85 million D round, bringing its total to date to about $115 million. Trust makes the world go round. Signing a contract is about binding a trust. Without trust, little is possible. Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling wrote, “Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can’t see where it keeps its brain.” Quite fitting when you talk about trusting data that resides in the all-invisible cloud. The age-old argument for whether ... (more)

Safe Driving in the Cloud: A "Black Box" for Cars

When an aircraft crashes, investigators are able to retrieve useful information about what went wrong from the flight data recorder, more commonly known as the black box. (The data recorder itself is actually not black, not until it’s retrieved from charred remains.) Statistically speaking, plane crashes are rare occurrences compared to car crashes, so why not install a black box for cars? That’s exactly what Japanese telemetrics company Crew Systems developed: a driving data recorder for cars and trucks. A big market exists for these in Japan, since businesses with more than fi... (more)

Trusting Data in the Cloud Is About Losing a Key

The online storage and collaboration market has been hot, with early market entrants Dropbox, Box.net and YouSendIt appearing to have taken the initial lead in providing individuals and businesses with the ability to easily store, share, and send large files between multiple parties. In the spirit of secure collaboration, at this year's RSA event, Ftopia and GuardTime announced a partnership that hopes to shake up the market a bit by raising even higher the pressing question of one's ability to trust their precious data in the cloud. To answer this question, the Ftopia service is ... (more)

Online Storage Security Flaws Highlight Need for Cloud-Based Compliance

Blogs are currently seeing intense discussion among users concerning security issues in online document storage services. These are easy services to use for sharing .mp3 files or accessing fat files that they host, from several computers. Yet the fact that authentication data can easily be copied from a user's computer to give other people access to confidential documents emphasizes the need for secure access procedures and reliable solutions to protect confidential documents. Companies are increasingly running business processes on web-based systems. Storing documents that cont... (more)