As promised in the recent article, today I am going to another article about the way to turn Amazon S3 into a cheap, even free content delivery network (CDN). However, I feel the story will be suitabe in the tomorrow since today I have a more amazing story from Amazon to tell you and I promise you will be happy to read and even get some useful thing from.
Today, Amazon has just officially unveiled its 2 newest services Amazon Cloud Drive and Cloud Player, one for uprising cloud storage demand and one for streaming multimedia service and both, of course, are working well together in a unifield system.
Taking the first glance these new online services, I found that they have a very, very potential prospect, despite that there are many big competitors available on the market. To me now, I have found another reliable but free storage service beyond Dropbox and Box.net. Yeah, so wonderful, we can get free 5 GB storage space on Amazon Cloud Drive.
A brief comparison: while Dropbox offers only 2GB in their free package, what Amazon Cloud Drive brings to us is really awesome. But it looks like that Amazon service capacity is much more than storage need, particularly it strongly connects with its brother Amazon Cloud Player. Of course, each one has its own goal, as I mentioned before, one for storage and the remain for streaming multimedia data.
It appears that Amazon freebie offering is more generous than others since the free package reaches to 5 GB, meaning we can store approximately 10k songs. In addition, if you purchase an Amazon MP3 album, you will be upgraded to 20 GB without any extra cost (but this offer is available till the last day of 2011 only). Perhaps, I will buy one, not for music demand but for more free space. LOL!
Though Amazon Cloud Drive is for music storage, we can use it for various data and demand, of course!
Once you have purchase music on Amazon Market, the data will be saved into your account by clicking on the Save to Amazon Cloud Drive button. Now the remaining brother Cloud Player will get its voice. It allows us to entertain the cloud music on the go and on a larger number of devices. Also, You can use Cloud Player to manage and enjoy music that purchase previously from iTunes.
On Cloud Player dashboard, you can browse, search your music, create your own playlists or download to your local devices. But the awesome thing is you can install a specific application for Android device and then stream music from your Cloud Player library or download it to smartphones or tablets.
Register Amazon Cloud Drive 5GB free
That news is pretty promising but there is however a small problem. Currently, Amazon only opens the Cloud Player service inside US. So, if you are not an US citizen, what we can do now is register an Amazon Cloud Drive account and enjoy free 5 GB for storage/backup data.
1. Visit Amazon Cloud Drive homepage https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive and click on Get Started. The registration process is very simple and not require an active credit or debit card as you register an Amazon S3 account.
2. If you have not ever used Amazon services so far, just register an account here. Then, login to Amazon Cloud Drive and you may see the same web interface like below:
The Amazon Cloud Drive dashboard is no special at all. By default, there are 4 folders including Documents, Music, Pictures and Videos. You can create new folder by a no brainer task.
3. Testing Upload task speed, I was really surprised with what Amazon offers. It is much faster than other services I have ever used, even my favorite Dropbox and Mediafire, at least in my simple test by a slow Internet connection. I had to wait few minutes before my 6 MB file was brought into the cloud and in case a small Word document file, it appeared that it worked immediately. You can see the upload speed status on the main interface too. Another advantage is that you can upload a file up to 2GB, so wonderful AmazOOOOOOOOOn!
I tried to upload a MP3 to Music folder to test its streaming capacity. The upload speed one again let me feel crazy! So fast!!!!!!!!! However, when I tried to test streaming service Cloud Player, it did not work with an aforementioned reason: Amazon Cloud Player currently works inside US. So, wait for the available worldwide soon.
In short, I highly recommend you register a free Amazon Cloud Drive account soon and enjoy free 5GB for backup and storage demand. Perhaps, it is time for me to leave Dropbox and let it as an… old close friend? Sure, I will use both mate!
One more thing, I hope there will be a specific WordPress plugin that allows us to back up database and WordPress files on Amazon Cloud Drive, no matter automatically or manually but it is so wonderful! It will be great! Waiting now!!!
You might also like:
- Android Is Now Powered by Winamp Media Player 1.0 Final
- Grab Free one Year Amazon S3 and How to Turn it Into an Efficient and Reliable Backup Solution [1]
- Adobe Official Releases Flash Player 10.2 for Android
- Free Angry Birds for Android on Amazon App store [Today only]
- How To Collaborate Microsoft Office and Google Docs With Google Cloud Connect
Has anyone read the T&C’s??
Heres a few of my favourites:
4.3.Automatic Renewal. UNLESS YOU NOTIFY US BEFORE RENEWAL THAT YOU WANT TO CANCEL OR DO NOT WANT TO AUTO RENEW, YOUR SERVICE PLAN WILL AUTOMATICALLY RENEW AT THE END OF ITS TERM FOR A NEW SERVICE PLAN, AND YOU AUTHORIZE US (WITHOUT NOTICE TO YOU) TO COLLECT THE THEN-APPLICABLE FEE AND ANY TAXES FOR THE RENEWAL PLAN, USING ANY CREDIT CARD WE HAVE ON RECORD FOR YOU. SERVICE PLAN FEES AND FEATURES WILL CHANGE FROM TIME TO TIME.
Which alligns nicely with…
4.4.Promotional and Trial Offers. We may offer trial Service Plans or promotional Service Plans (“Promotional Plans”) for access to the Service. Some Promotional Plans may automatically upgrade to a paid Service Plan at its regular price at the end of the promotional or trial period unless you choose not to upgrade by using the means we provide you to do so. If you sign up for a Promotional Plan THAT AUTOMATICALLY UPGRADES, UNLESS YOU chOose not to upgrade, we will charge your credit card the applicable Service fee at the end of the term of the Promotional Plan. Specific terms of Promotional Plans will be provided with the plans.
It gets better,
5.2.Our Right to Access Your Files. You give us the right to access, retain, use and disclose your account information and Your Files: to provide you with technical support and address technical issues; to investigate compliance with the terms of this Agreement, enforce the terms of this Agreement and protect the Service and its users from fraud or security threats; or as we determine is necessary to provide the Service or comply with applicable law.
5.3.Security. We do not guarantee that Your Files will not be subject to misappropriation, loss or damage and we will not be liable if they are. You’re responsible for maintaining appropriate security, protection and backup of Your Files.
You are welcome. Thank you very much for dropping by!
looks like you have read each and every point very seriously… but really thanks for sharing these conditions..
There is a GPL-ed desktop application for Windows, Mac and Linux for accessing CloudDrive (upload/download files, creating dirs, renaming etc…) at http://code.google.com/p/qt-cloudrive/
thanks for your nice information!