A couple of weeks ago we launched Kadoo, a private video cloud, and we’d like your help telling us how we did. Although we have all kinds of interesting features lined up to add over the coming months and beyond, we’d like your thoughts about the features you would find the most compelling. The best feature request submitted by April 8, 2011 (as judged by our marketing team) will get an iPad 2 in return.

Kadoo improves on the best features of divShare. Among other features, Kadoo simplifies the user experience; has drag ‘n drop sharing with friends and groups; and our new player shows video in either portrait or landscape so it doesn’t matter how you hold your camera. Kadoo’s other features will look very familiar, including the ability to embed files.

In addition to Kadoo.com, our video cloud has apps for the iPhone®, iPad®, Android®, and the Roku® digital player so you can stream your videos to any device—including the TV.

It’s easy to take a look. As a divShare user, your files are already there. Just login with your divShare credentials, play around and then drop us a line to submit your ideas.

And please don’t forget. We need your submission by April 8th in order to qualify for the iPad 2!

Have fun!

At least that’s how the cloud seems these past few months. HP, Facebook, and the other big guys are snapping up the smaller cloud players like Motionbox and Drop.io and shutting them down. With relatively short notice, customers have to find a new cloud.

But isn’t the cloud everywhere? Technically you shouldn’t have to download your stuff just to upload somewhere else when a Web service goes out of business. Open standards and business practices are the key to making the cloud more user friendly, allowing people to upload once and then use their stuff on whichever service or device they like.

It’s a big enough hassle to move in the real world, I really don’t want to have to do it in the virtual world. That’s where the concept for our ‘community cloud’ comes in. And that’s why we built divShare on Kadoo Backstage^TM—a shared cloud.

When developers use a community cloud like Kadoo Backstage, you can use your files on any mobile or Web service using that platform. And, if one of those services goes away for any reason, your files are still in the cloud ready to use and share. You always retain ownership and control of your stuff. Isn’t that what cloud computing should be about?

We are very excited to announce that we now offer our premium users high-definition (HD) video streaming and viewing.  What does that mean?  That means you can now share or stream your videos in HD however you use divShare - embedding them in your blog or forum, posting them to your Facebook wall with our Facebook app, or just inviting selective friends to view them.What is unique about divShare’s HD?  Well, for one, we don’t limit the duration of your HD videos.  We recognize many different video formats (AVI, WMV, MOV, MPG, MPEG, ASF, MP4 and FLV) and, depending on the video quality, they can be viewed in 240P - 720P.  And you always control who can see your information.  You can also customize the player to look they way you like.

By the way, we made a point to price our HD services to be very economical. Our plans start at under $2/month.  And, as always, if you are happy with standard resolution, we still offer our free account so users can continue to share standard videos for free.

Stay tuned – soon we will be announcing many other ways you will be able to access your files including HD video.

I love Apple Computer.  I have loved their products, their culture, and Steve Jobs, the man.  They are innovators and, if you ask me, without Steve and Apple, technology might be set back 10 years.

Now, enter Ping.  It’s a social network for music.  It’s a cool idea that makes sense – especially for Apple given their position in relation to the music industry. The problem is Ping focuses on Apple, not the customer.

This time I think Apple got it wrong. Ping assesses my musical tastes based on what I’ve downloaded from the iTunes store, not the tunes I listen to the most or have rated as my favorites. What’s worse, though, is that Ping locks me even more tightly into the Apple platform.  A social network needs to be open.  So I say let’s pull down the walls.

New markets and trends attract all kinds of players.  And when everyone comes running to take part in the next big wave, some will fall. The impact of a failing or transitioning company, specifically cloud computing companies, can be devastating to its customers.

Certainly the transition to cloud computing has brought benefit to many companies and consumers.  And, in the frenzy to serve this market, there have already been winners and losers.  The problem is that when a new company fails, their customers often are left hanging. The customers have to retrieve and manage the very files they placed in the cloud for convenience – if they can. This is sometimes the case even when a company doesn’t fail, but changes its policies for strategic or other reasons.

For example, Motionbox, a video storage and streaming cloud solution, was recently acquired by Snapfish, a division of Hewlett-Packard. Snapfish had announced that the Motionbox website would be shut down and the files stored on the site would no longer be available after 8/10/10.  That meant there was a lot of users scrambling to download their video files and then upload them again elsewhere, if they wanted the same functionality.

In fact, if you do a search for Motionbox, you’ll find that competitors were and are advertising directly to Motionbox users, inviting them in for a free 30-day trial. The problem is, moving files to a new, stand-alone platform doesn’t give the customer any protection from the problem they’re trying to solve — cloud evaporation.

This is exactly why we like the idea of the “community,” or shared, cloud.  When developers use a shared cloud like Kadoo Backstage, their subscribers can use their files at any sites that have been developed on the Kadoo Backstage platform.  The divShare service is a prime example of how a community cloud works, with files that never expire.

Had Motionbox been developed on a community-based platform, Motionbox users would still have their files long after the shut down of motionbox.com because user files would be available for any website or application that a user joins in the Kadoo Backstage community.

We just plain like the idea of community… community to lower risk for shared customers, community to protect user privacy, and community to bring down the walls between apps and services and the people who want to use them.

We have a large base of bloggers amongst our divShare audience, but everyday there are new people who are starting to blog.  So, in honor of those new to blogging, I thought it might be useful to do a quick and dirty tutorial on how to embed a video into your blog.  If you are seasoned blogger, this probably isn’t for you.

First off, I will assume you already have set up your blog and might be using a service like Blogger, Wordpress, or Typepad.  At this point, you should have your blog written, and a video completed and exported for upload. 

Step 1: Log into divShare (or sign up for a free account, if you don’ t have one).

Step 2: Upload your video if you haven’t already done so.

Step 3: Go to your dashboard and find your video. (See Illustration 1 below)

Step 4: Under the title of the video, you will see an “Embed” link (in icon view).  Click it. (See Illustration 1 below)

Illustration 1

Step 5: Under Video Skin Browser, choose the way you want the player to display in your blog and hit the “Apply” button. (See Illustration 2 below)

Step 6: If you want the video to start playing (autoplay)  when your readers arrive on your website, keep the box “autoplay” checked, otherwise uncheck it. (See Illustration 2 below)

Step 7:  Copy the embed text (Edit -> copy).  (See Illustration 2 below)

Illustration 2

Step 8: Open your blog entry.  For this example, I am using Blogger, but it’s very easy to translate these instructions to most of the major blog services. 

Step 9: Where you inputted your blog text, click where you want the video to appear.  Click “Edit HTML” (Blogger) and paste the embed text (Edit -> paste). Click the “Publish Post” button. (See Illustration 3 below)

Illustration 3

Step 10: Wella!  You have embedded a video.  And if you are a divShare user, you can uniquely embed HD video. 

Illustration 4

Welcome to the world of video blog publishing!

Back in the late ’90s everyone was talking about thin clients. Companies like Oracle and Sun were banging their drums about low-power computers that would use the power and resources of the Internet or network servers to gain much of their functionality. And this meant that people would be depending on networks, especially the Internet, to store and use their documents. But, the predicted trend never really took off. I think one of the biggest drivers was that thin clients were not really any less expensive than other computers and broadband was not prolific.

A decade later we have more broadband, cheaper chips, and a more powerful network.A decade later Cloud Computing began to gain momentum.

Cloud Computing is very much like the above trend. It also depends on online storage, as well as CPU and resources in the network. Well, this time around, according to Pew Research, Cloud Computing will eclipse the desktop by the end of this decade. And, by the end of 2010, the majority of consumers will be using Internet-based devices (netbooks, tablets, smartphones) instead of PCs. Even in 2008, according to Pew, 69% of Americans had stored data online or used web-based applications - the movement to the cloud was already underway.

So, of course, this begs the question of why the consumer would want to move to the cloud? Here are some reasons I think the Cloud Computing trend is a plus for you and me.

1. I want my stuff when I want it - and that can be anywhere. If our information is already in the cloud, I don’t have to think about making it available or replicating it. By default, my information is accessible if I have an Internet connection.
2. The “appliances” (tablets, netbooks, and smartphones) are lighter and cheaper than a high-powered laptop or desktop.
3. You can conceivably “rent” software once you are using it in the cloud. Sure, some software you may want to own, but what about those utilities you only use once in a blue moon? I would love to be able to pay per use in these cases.
4. We can leverage the expertise of the experts. If software is in the cloud, then the software provider needs to make sure that software is the current version and secure.
5. The cloud is elastic. What I mean by this is that if I need more storage, I just increase it in the cloud by updating my profile and paying my provider a bit more. And I can do it by a little or by a lot. Right now, if I want more storage I have to buy another hard drive, which will require I predict the amount that will suffice and it most likely will require the labor of a reorganization of my data. In the cloud, it’s easier and less expensive.

So, I say I am looking forward to the Cloudier days ahead…

Kadoo is much like divShare, but on steroids – it’s so much more.  We call Kadoo, your cloudtop™, a place where you can do private, social sharing. Kadoo is a cloud-based, file sharing service grounded in the principles of ownership, privacy, and control.

Frankly, Kadoo was borne out of our own frustration. We were outraged by how casually other companies were treating users’ privacy. So, 18 months ago, we decided to do something about it, and gambled that personal ownership and control of your files would become a big deal.

As a result, Kadoo enables you to own and privately manage your files, information, applications, friends, and the relationships between them.

The industry experts said we were crazy. They said that consumers did not care about online privacy and never would. Undeterred by the naysayers, we set out to create a consumer cloud that people could use on their own terms.

Kadoo is kind of like your personal lockbox in the cloud. We’ve designed it to store data in a way that web crawlers cannot index your private files or information. Files default to a private setting during the upload process. You have to change the privacy setting, actively share a file, or make files public before someone else can see your stuff. The groups settings help you manage who sees what, and sharing is drag ‘n drop simple.

But Kadoo is only half of the picture.

Sure, online storage and file sharing with your social network is great, but what about usability in the larger sense? You can own your files on Kadoo, but if you want to use them somewhere else? Unless you are publishing from Kadoo, you have to register for yet another service and upload the same files you’ve stored on Kadoo… and now those files are in the public domain.

Not a problem. You’ll notice that your divShare files are immediately available in Kadoo… that’s part of our vision. We built Kadoo on open source APIs, and are making those APIs available through Kadoo Backstage™. Developers use Kadoo Backstage to create sister applications and web services, much like we did with divShare and Kadoo. You won’t have to register for sister services, but you will need to give permission to allow them access to your files and information in the future.  Simply use the same login and password wherever you see Kadoo.

Just imagine. Register once. Upload files once. Move from application to application and device to device and be able to use your stuff… anywhere, any time.

Visit Kadoo.com to become a beta tester today!

I’m out her in Las Vegas for CTIA, and the Cloud is finally elbowing its way into the mobile conversation quite heavily. Today–the second day of the conference-there was an educational session titled “Cloud Computing Meets the Mobile Enterprise” with panelists from  Mobile Trax, Private Planet, J. Gold Associates, and AT&T, and moderated by Stephen Wellman and Eric Lundquist from Ziff Davis. The focus of the panel discussion was to discuss “the implications for cloud computing and the enterprise that wants to build out a mobile infrastructure.”

Walking the show floor and talking to various companies, it becomes obvious to me that there is an increasing need for Cloud service components becoming part of some of their offerings, if not entire new offerings. Certainly as we approach rollout of LTE and everything gets more and more connected this will become vital.

But it doesn’t seem that everone’s gotten it figured out yet, so tey’ll be relying on companies like divShare in the space to partner with them and help guide the way.

One of the few pure play Cloud solutions I came across was in the Enterprise Ireland pavilion (I had to swing in there, because the Irish are really on an innovation streak, and seem to always be a few steps ahead). The company is FeedHenry (http://www.feedhenry.com/) and had a pretty interesting offering.

All in all, the mobile industry is moving in the right direction, but I’m expecting to see more of a Cloud focus at the fall show in San Francisco. Baby steps… baby steps.

divShare–your file sharing and storage site–has been hard at work bringing you the best product in the industry. We’ve created useful new features, made inovative improvements, and are taking great strides torward creating the first anb best cloud computing platform for consumers.

Here are just a few of the upgrades and new features over the past year:

Drag-and-drop uploader
The drag-and-drop uploader has been a favorite of our users, we’ve gotten tons of great feedback from our users on how simple this makes uploading your files. If you haven’t tried it out yet, make sure you take it for a spin!

Increased Speed
divShare has increased both download and upload speeds for all users. Free account users should see a 2x increase in speed, and premium account owners will have an even better experience.

Video player skins
Many of our customers like using personalized skins for the embedded video player on their sites, either to better blend into their site’s branding, or to visually enhance the content in the videos being played. Be creative with both your videos and the player itself!

Facebook connect
We wanted to make divShare even easier to use, so we took advantage of Facebook’s APIs, and plugged in using Facebook connect. Sign in to divShare at the same time you’re signing in to your FaceBook account, and vice-versa!

Facebook Privacy
divShare was the first service to enable the private sharing of content to your Facebook friends. divShare allows you to share one of your divShare files or folders to some people on Facebook, without exposing it to everyone you know! Your new family photos are for the in-laws, not your office mates, afterall.

New Data Center
divShare has operated a top-notch data center for several years. But as we topped 1.5 million active users (we’re at 1.8 million as of this writing) we knew expansion was necessary. We expanded into a new data center, providing geographical redundancy, upgraded hardware, and better overall performance.

divShare was originally built as a file-sharing and backup solution, but it is rapidly evolving into much more. It is at the very heart of an industry-changing cloud computing platform for consumers–and current divShare customers will be the first in the world with the opportunity to see it… stay tuned!