This Week In Techie News

This week in the news we have several stories that have hit pretty big.
- Apple Itunes and 'The Cloud' could it be?
-Skype Rules...Long Distance Sucks.
-Ubuntu 10.04 Alpha is now available.

First up, a few months ago Apple 'acquired' Lala (a streaming music service). This led to a whole bunch of speculation for Itunes user's. The most popular being that Itunes would support streaming audio now. According to an article over at AppleInsider word on the street is that Apple may instead take a 'cloud based storage' approach to user's Itunes library. Making it simple to use Lala's technology to upload a user's music/media library to their dedicated section in an online storage area devoted to Itunes users. This would allow that user to login to a 'web based Itunes' from any computer with an internet browser, and be able to playback that stored media.

Great idea, but a couple of things to think about. Most Itunes user's have a massive amount of media stored on their machines. This would essentially take a long time to backup online. Also, how would files not purchased via Itunes fair during this backup process? Food for thought. For more info, checkout this article.


Next up, Skype rules. Yep, we knew that. Skype is a fun program to use. It's versatile and cheap. For those who don't know, Skype offers a VOIP (Voice-Over-I-P) telephony service. You can make calls through Skype to other Skype user's free of charge. You can also setup a Skype-Out account which grants you access to voicemail features, calling to landlines and mobile phones, and several other handy features. Best of all, it's extremely cheap. Great for keeping in touch with family, and to use when traveling.

And according to this article at the Washington Post, Skype is the leading provider of over seas communications. And with many new cellphones utilizing Wifi networks as well as 3G Data networks, many people are able to use Skype's mobile offering to save money in the long run via their mobile phones. Great news for Skype, and it's users!


And finally this week, for all of the Linux fans out there. Ubuntu 10.04 Alpha is now available. So go check it out if you like: http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=05868