The micro-blogging platform Twitter is going to launch their own photo sharing service. This is what a report originally published on the TechCrunch blog states. The new service is going to compete with the existing TwitPic and Yfrog services that have established over the recent years.

According to multiple sources, the launch of Twitter’s photo sharing service is imminent. It is said that the service will be announced at the D9 conference later today. TwitPic and Yfrog are popular especially on mobile platforms like smartphones, as you can upload photos taken with your device with ease, to share them with the world via Twitter using a short link.

A photo sharing service of its own is the next step on Twitter’s expansion road, recently manifested with taking over TweetDeck for some US$ 40 million. The company wants to reach the users with its own products, so the experience may be controlled in detail. This is especially important when it comes to developing a business model for Twitter.

There is no information yet about how Twitter’s own photo sharing service will look like. The only fact is that such service is going to be introduced imminently.

1.0 is a milestone for us, and with it we want to communicate our confidence that Dropbox is stable, high-quality software. The service has grown from a simple sync app to something that’s changed the way lots of people work and communicate.

Dropbox offers you 2GB free online storage. Now you can also customize what to sync (selective syncing). For example, you might want to sync only important files to your smartphone, as it has only limited space, while performing a full sync with your notebook. Sharing your uploaded files with your friends and workmates is possible too, so collaboration is an easy task.

The new Windows, Linux and Mac OS X Dropbox clients now handles large amounts of files with many changes more efficiently and enhance “memory usage by up to 50%”, effectively leaving more RAM for your work applications.

Download the clients from the Dropbox website. You may also view an intro video there. The updated installation assistant helps you to set up the software for the first time.

After going through the following how-to, you will be able to access your SkyDrive folders from a mapped network drive, e.g. drive “S:\\”.  You do not need any extra software to do this.

1. Open your browser, and navigate to http://skydrive.live.com/.
2. Sign in with your Windows Live ID.
3. Copy the UID part of the displayed URL, like: https://cid-1234567890abcdef.skydrive.live.com/ .
4. Leave SkyDrive open, and take note of one of your folder names.
5. Open Windows Explorer.
6. On the left sidebar, right-click on Network.  Choose Map network drive.
7. Enter the following URL: \\docs.live.net@SSL\\1234567890abcdef\\XYZ
8. Replace “XYZ” with the folder name you noted and that you want to map.
   Note: Replace “Documents” with “^2Documents”, and “Public” with “^2Public”.
9. Choose a drive letter, and submit the dialog.
10. You will be prompted for your Windows Live ID.  Sign in.
11. Then, you can access all the files and subfolders within your SkyDrive folder, including copying and pasting.  You can even open and edit files directly!

Cloud computing is currently a hyped phrase on the web.  Everybody plays with it and promises the moon.  In the end, it is about never having to install software anymore.  No problems with system crashes.  And your personal data aren’t stored on hard disks or USB sticks, but in the cloud.

Get more done on the Web

In the end, the ‘cloud’ is just the Internet.  There are tens of thousands of servers, and your data are stored somewhere on them.  In the cloud.  The idea by itself is great: Most of us are connected to the Web permanently anyways, so why not get everything working in the Internet, save your data there and launch programs from there?  That is the basic concept of cloud computing.  Get more done on the Web, less on your own computer.  That could make your home PC cheaper, as the real work is done by the Web instead.

Google Chrome OS

Google has just launched their own operating system for small computers, “netbooks”.  Chrome OS is free and is more or less just the browser, Google Chrome.  You can use it to go online—and that’s it.  You launch programs that are stored on the Web, and just do your whole work on the web.  Everything happens online.  Yet, Chrome OS cannot do everything that Windows can, but if you only want to accomplish certain tasks, such as writing letters, sending and receiving mail, surfing the Net or editing photos, you don’t need anything more—thus you can save money on hardware and software.

Writing letters on the Net

However, you don’t need a new operating system to participate at cloud computing.  Best example: Google docs & spreadsheets.  A free online text processor that cannot do everything that Microsoft Word can, but that is free.  Just enough for many things like writing letters or designing invitation cards.  You don’t have to install any software and you save your texts directly on the Net.  That’s cloud computing.

Editing photos on the Web

Even photo editing or graphics creation doesn’t require setting up software locally.  There are several web sites that can do the job nearly as good.  You can edit photos, optimize them, print them.  That’s also cloud computing.  There are many more examples.  If you are storing your photos at flickr or sharing your videos at YouTube, you are in fact using cloud computing.

Lots of advantages

Cloud computing is not necessarily completely new, only its name is relatively new—and most of us are already a part of it somehow.  There are many advantages.  You can access documents stored on the Web from anywhere, so you don’t have to take them with you.  And you can share them with work mates or friends easily—for example with Windows Live SkyDrive.  Collaboration is easy, even working on projects simultaneously.  And: you don’t have to install any software.

Concerned about your privacy?

What about your privacy?  Many people feel uncomfortable with storing everything on the Web—and that has its reasons.  Surely you can set up permissions and access rules, like who may view your photos or edit your texts.  But you cannot control it.  You should rather not store very private or sensitive data on the Web.  What might happen as well: You’re offline, there is no web connection.  You won’t be able to access your data.

Summarized: Cloud computing has its good and bad sides.  The solution: think about the advantages and disadvantages of storing specific data on your local disk—or, if they are not too private, easily on the Web.

More information

• Google Chrome OS
• Windows Azure
• Google docs & spreadsheets
• Snipshot—Edit pictures online
• flickr
• Windows Live SkyDrive

Windows Live is rolling out 19 new web activity partnerships with leading global and regional web companies – including YouTube and Break.com.  […]  With today’s update, we now have partnerships with 74 sites from around the world – localized into 35 languages, with broad coverage of leading sites worldwide in social networking, video sharing, photo sharing, blogging, reviews and ratings, and more.

How-to: Add YouTube to your Windows Live Profile

Here are the single steps that you should do to have your YouTube activities, such as posting a video or marking your video favorites, appear in your What’s new feed in Messenger, Hotmail, Windows Live Home, etc:

1. Open your Windows Live Profile.

2. At Web Activities, click the Add link.

3. Scroll way down (the list is alphabetically sorted), and find YouTube.  Then click it.

4. Enter your YouTube screen name.

5. Click the Add button.

6. Click the Go to your profile link.

Done!  Your activities on YouTube will now appear in your What’s new feed.

Source: www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/compare/top-ten-reasons.aspx