In Moving to the Cloud, NASA Leaves Major Security Holes

NASA appears to be having issues moving to the cloud. In a review, the space agency realized that several cloud initiatives were low on security. Some sections of its cloud even left sensitive information at risk. Looking at its five cloud contracts, none of them even came close to meeting the guidelines it set forth for datas security.
NASA is considering have an outpost to manage its cloud and security. This would be critical as NASA claims it wants to have 75% of new IT programs to run in the cloud.

MTA App Quest Hackathon Recap

Wow, what an amazing hackathon! There were great apps built this weekend; I am very impressed with what was built. These developers only had 24 hours to build their apps and have something ready to show off. Congratulations to the first, second, and third place prize winners; SubCulture.Fm, MTA Sheriff, and ACCESSWAY. These apps will truly impact the New York City's mass transit in a bright way. Check out below for a quick summary of what's cooking in the app division of NYC public transit.

SubCulture.Fm is an iOS app that allows you to interact with subway musicians. The app mostly works through QR codes. Each artist would have a QR code that the user would scan. This would give the user information about the artist; such as social media, albums and songs, etc. You can share information about the musician using Facebook or Twitter. The app also allows you to track nearby musicians, and even where your favorite musician will be playing. SubCulture.Fm won first place at the hackathon.

MTA Sheriff is a quick and easy gamified way to report issues within the MTA's system. As you report more issues, your character upgrades until you become the "MTA Sheriff".

ACCESSWAY is an iOS way-finding app to help visually-impaired or wheelchair-assisted New Yorkers find their way in the NYC Subway. It allows you to track elevator and exit status. The app currently looks pretty good, but should try and implement real time status updates.

Space Monkey: Rethinking Data

Imagine the cloud, but with no datacenters. The cloud, would be your hard drive. Except, your hard drive would be on steroids. Meet Space Monkey, a futuristic new hard drive that has a new look on the way that data should be stored. The Space Monkey looks like a regular hard drive, but looks can be deceiving. You can upload as many files as you want, as large as you want, for as long as you want. Space Monkey charges $10 per month for 1 terabyte (1,000 gigabytes). Trust me, this cloud storage opportunity is one to grab for. $10 for a terabyte is something that is biblical in this day in age. On Dropbox, for $10, you would get only 100 gigabytes. With Space Monkey, you get 10 times as more storage space as Dropbox. Space Monkey also has native mobile and tablet apps, where you can download and upload files from your Space Monkey. And don't worry about losing data either. Once you upload a file onto Space Monkey, it is encrypted and then a backup of the file is sent onto the Space Monkey network. All of your files are copied and then stored elsewhere. So long to your nightmares about getting hard drives stolen and losing all your data. Space Monkey truly is the future for cloud data storage.

Younity: Slaughtering Sync

Everyone hates sync. Whether its music or videos, it just sucks. Everyone is moving up to the Cloud. Nothing is synced. It's just downloaded for offline viewing. File syncing is the worst of all the breeds of sync. It takes literally forever. You could leave your iPhone plugged into iTunes for literally hours. Ugh!

That's where a cool new service, Younity, comes in. There's no syncing involved. You download the app on your PC or Mac, Younity does a scan, and walla! If you download the app to your iPhone/iPod Touch, you can now see all of your music, photos and files with no syncing! Isn't that awesome? Younity is making Sugar Sync and iDrive start to become obsolete. With Younity, you can also download files for offline viewing. You can also view files and photos and listen to music right from the cloud. Younity is available on PC, Mac and the iPhone app store.