It looks like Apple has turned to Microsoft and Amazon for help in the cloud services. The hints of this came from an anonymous source who sent a set of screen shots to InfiniteApple. The screenshots supposedly show Apple’s new iMessage service in action – specifically, the HTTP traffic log. The images seem to indicate that iCloud is getting some assistance from S3, Amazon’s cloud storage system, and Azure, Microsoft’s cloud service.
PUT https://mssat000001.blob.core.windows.net:443/cnt/1234.5678 HTTP/1.1
Host: mssat000001.blob.core.windows.net:443
Exactly how the Microsoft Azure and Amazon S3 cloud systems may be helping Apple’s iCloud is unclear, but whats there is that both companies involvements is merely related to iCloud’s back-end and it’s unlikely they had major involvement in developing iCloud per se.
Google announced a bunch of new features at Inside Search press conference, June 14th, 2011, which took place yesterday. The new additions are voice search on desktop computers, Instant Search and Image Search.
Voice Search on the desktop
Google Voice Search has been available in phones for years. Both Android handset and iPhone via Google’s search app have that feature for a long time, and now the same capability is brought to the desktop and initially, to the Chrome.
Search by Image
With this feature you can now upload images straight to the search engine and Google will search through the image file and attempt to locate any similar images and return you the terms they’re associated with:
If you click the camera, you can upload any picture or plug in an image URL from the web and ask Google to figure out what it is. Try it out when digging through old vacation photos and trying to identify landmarks
Google has released an extension for Chrome and Firefox that lets users identify any picture on the web by simply right-clicking.
Instant Pages
Google is bringing Instant Pages to Google Chrome. Available in all of the beta and dev versions of Google Chrome, Instant Pages is Google’s answer to the pre-fetching features built in to Mozilla’s Firefox. Instead of simply scraping basic HTML information ahead of time, however, Google says that their pre-rendering will grab other resources as well such as Javascript for snappy page loading. Instant Pages are only being used for search results (not targeted for ads specifically), but Google did mention they’ll be looking at how to best deliver ads to consumers in the future. Instant Pages allow the most common results to load instantly (in virtually zero seconds) when the user decides to load them:
Google pointed out that mobile searches on its site have grown and now surpassed desktop searches.
Apple has begun selling unlocked GSM iPhone 4 in the US. The 16GB black model starts at $649 and the 32GB $749. The unlocked device has all the features and can be used worldwide on supported GSM:
If you don’t want a multiyear service contract or if you prefer to use a local carrier when traveling abroad, the unlocked iPhone 4 is the best choice. It arrives without a micro-SIM card, so you’ll need an active micro-SIM card from any supported GSM carrier worldwide.
The unlocked iPhone 4 requires an active micro-SIM card that you obtain from a supported GSM wireless carrier. Simply insert the micro-SIM card into the slot on your iPhone, connect to your Mac or PC using the USB cable, and launch iTunes on your computer to complete the setup.
The 98-acre campus bought last year from Hewlett Packard, in Cupertino revealed to be a future campus for Apple as CEO Steve Jobs explained Apple’s plans for the space to the Cupertino City Council. Here’s what the new 4-story building holding 12,000 employees will look like when it’s completed in 2015 as described by Steve:
It’s a pretty amazing building. It’s a little like a spaceship landed. It’s got this gorgeous courtyard in the middle… It’s a circle. It’s curved all the way around. If you build things, this is not the cheapest way to build something. There is not a straight piece of glass in this building. It’s all curved. We’ve used our experience making retail buildings all over the world now, and we know how to make the biggest pieces of glass in the world for architectural use. And, we want to make the glass specifically for this building here. We can make it curve all the way around the building… It’s pretty cool.
The facility will be 80% landscaping, with most of the parking underground, compared to 20% landscaping with all above ground parking currently. The current campus has 3,700 trees and Apple plans to increase that to more than 6,000 trees, including “some apricot orchards.”
Apple also plans to build its own energy generation facility using natural gas, with the electricity grid as a backup.
One of the city councilors asked what the citizens of Cupertino would get from the new campus, and in particular brought up a free Wi-Fi network, like Google offers in Mountain View. Steve responded that Apple was the largest taxpayer in Cupertino and he felt that the tax benefits to having a company like Apple in Cupertino was benefit enough and the city should be providing a service like that.
“If we can get out of paying taxes, we would be glad to provide free Wi-Fi.”
Cupertino’s Mayor has responded to Steve’s proposal:
The City of Cupertino has responded to Apple’s stunning new campus proposal. In the statement, Cupertino Mayor Gilbert Wong states “there is no chance we are saying no” to the new Apple campus. Apple proposal will still have to go through an environmental and a public hearing, but Wong says they are willing to bring on more staff to accommodate the process.
Progress of the project can be followed at Cupertino.org/apple where they’ve also posted a PDF of Jobs’ presentation slides.
