And the answer is …

Two weeks ago I received a phone call from a TR Times reader who inquired if I could expand on my discussion of Amazon Prime Photos, the unlimited photo storage service briefly mentioned in my February 5 OnMouseClick column. To refresh your memory, Amazon Prime is a $99 a-year subscription service that includes free shipping of Amazon products, Amazon Video, Amazon Music, and Prime Photos. Of these services, Prime Photos is probably the least known and most underutilized. 

Prime Photo is a cloud storage service that takes advantage of Amazon's Cloud Drive. Since the journey of bits and bytes to these data centers begins with an upload to the internet, the centers are often referred to as Cloud Storage. When a user takes advantage of cloud storage, it is said that they are storing information on a cloud drive.

Amazon’s Cloud Drive is a service that stores files in Amazons’ secure servers, located at their massive data centers. The Amazon Prime members receive unlimited photo storage and 5 GB of storage for other types of data. While the web abounds with photo storage services, most charge a fee, and as Amazon Prime members are already paying for the photo service, it definitely warrants some review. 

Prime Photos can be accessed from a computer or with the Amazon Photos iOS and Android apps. You sign into Amazon Cloud Drive in your browser at www.amazon.com/clouddrive/primephotos. Once signed in, uploaded photos can be viewed by date, or in user created folders. Images can be moved between folders and sorted by date taken or date uploaded. Images can be shared to email, Facebook, or Twitter. You can also choose a single photo and create a URL (web address) that will allow other people to view the selected image. However Amazon unfortunately does not include any editing features with its service.

Uploading photos from the desktop is simple. You click on UPLOAD in the top right corner of the screen and navigate to the files you want to upload. Unfortunately there is no way of uploading a folder of images without selecting each individual image — to select multiple images, click on the first image you want to upload, hold the shift key and click the last image in the group, and then select enter.

To upload photos on a mobile device, choose Add Photos from the menu (tap the three lines on the top left of the screen to see the menu). You will see the photos albums on your device, including the camera roll. To upload an entire album, click the checkbox on the top right and then select the album or albums you want to upload. To upload selected images, click on an album and select the individual images you want to upload. Once you have made your selections, tap Upload on the top right, and the upload will commence. If you choose Auto-Save from the menu, everything in your Camera Roll will automatically upload to the Cloud Drive on an ongoing basis. When using a mobile device, it is a good idea to remember that uploading a large number of photos at one time can be a drain on both your internet connection and battery. Unless you have fast service, I recommend uploading photos while you are asleep and the device is plugged into an electrical outlet.

Video files are not treated the same as photo images. Videos can be uploaded, but they count against the 5GB Cloud Drive storage limit. For $59 a year, Amazon offers unlimited storage for all types of files, but the Cloud Drive has a limitation as a backup solution since it does not sync files (a backup service that syncs files only uploads files that are new since the last backup). 

Next week I will compare Amazon’s Prime Photo with some of the other popular online photo solutions.

Where has all the data gone?

Download and upload — two words most of us are very familiar with, but do we really know what they mean? Did you send or receive and email today, visit a website, make a Google search, sign in to Facebook, send a text, stream a video, or share a photograph? If you did any of those things, you were downloading and uploading data, but where does the downloaded data come from, and where is the uploaded data going? We say that we use the internet and backup our files to the cloud, but where is the internet; what is the cloud? Are they real, tangible entities or are they as amorphous as they sound, existing somewhere beyond time and space.

In reality, data, which is nothing more than bits and bytes of numerical information, does indeed go somewhere tangible. It goes to data centers all over the globe to be stored and retrieved as needed. These data centers are networks of very powerful computers, called servers, owned and operated by thousands of companies and organizations. These computers perform very different functions than our personal computers. The servers run dedicated software designed to preform specific functions. They wait for requests from other machines (known as clients) and respond to their requests. Some of the types of servers are: file servers receive, store and send data files; web servers store webpages; mail servers receive, store and forward emails; media servers transmit digital video and audio; game servers enable computers and gaming devices to play multiplayer games; database servers maintain and share organized collections of data; application servers host application software that can be utilized without being installed on individual computers.

Millions of servers run continuously around the world and virtually every internet connection requires one or more interactions with multiple servers. The physical size of a large data center varies from 400,000 to more than 1 million square feet. Such centers house thousands of servers, all of which require tremendous amounts of electricity for power and cooling. The amount of electricity used in a large data center is equivalent to the amount used by a small town. 

A online search for Google data centers identified fourteen locations, seven in the United States, one in South American, two in Asian and four in Europe. In 2013 Google’s data centers housed 900,000 servers that consumed 260 million watts of power, enough to consistently power 200,000 homes.

Facebook operates three data centers in the United States and in 2013 it opened its first center in Europe. Located just inside the Arctic Circle in Lulea, Sweden, this state of the art Data Center is one of the most energy efficient centers in existence. Powerful computers generate a great deal of heat, and one of the most critical aspects of maintaining a data center is temperature control, which in most cases involves massive air conditioning units. At the state-of-the-art Swedish facility the frigid arctic air is filtered and piped into the building in lieu of air conditioning. Facebook’s data centers are online twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. As of January 27 of this year, Facebook had 1.591 billion monthly active users, between 2004 and 2014 over 400 billion photo were uploaded, 7.8 trillion messages were sent and in 2014 31% of US senior citizens use Facebook.

I want to thank TR Times reader Norm from Golf View who inspired this column. After reading the February 5 issue, he called and asked if I could write a column describing  how Amazon Prime members can take advantage of the option to store unlimited photos in the cloud. I plan to cover that topic in next week’s column, but first I wanted to describe a context for cloud storage. 

note: The information in this column was compiled from a variety of internet based sources, including business dictionary.com, Wikipedia, Yahoo!; PC, Cloudyn Blog at cloudy.com, ZDNet, StorageServers blog, theatlantic.com and expandedramblings.com. 

Cut the cord — or at least shorten it…

We live in a wireless world. Or so it would seem, until you look at all the cables and cords connected to our electronics. How is it that these so-called wireless devices need so many wires to make them work?

Mobile phones and tablets need be plugged into a power source to recharge the batteries. We have two of each, which means four cables and four power adapters. Two laptop computers that must be plugged into a power outlet to recharge the batteries. An Apple TV set-top-box that captures a wireless signal, but it needs to be connected to the television set with an HDMI cable and plugged into a power outlet, and two soundbars and subwoofers for two TV’s, both of which need a power connection and also audio jacks to the TV’s. A SONOS sound system that requires a power cord. A wireless printer that comes with a power cord and a USB cable for its initial setup, and finally a Centurylink DSL modem-wireless router with a power cord and DSL phone connection. Back in New York we also have Verizon cable coming into our house, so in addition to the modem with coaxial cabling and a power cord, we have two DVR set-top boxes that need power and cables to connect to the television sets. Wireless we are not!

All of these devices requiring power connections can put a strain on the outlets in your home, not to mention the problems that can occur in the event of a power surge. Devices with small digital components and microprocessors are extremely sensitive, and even a small, 10-volt fluctuation in electrical current can be detrimental to the device. To protect your electronic equipment, you should always plug them into a good quality surge protector that will double as a power strip, adding additional outlets to your home. 

Surge protectors are rated in joules (a joule is a unit of energy). When purchasing a surge protector, look for one with an energy absorption/dissipation rate of a minimum of 600 joules — more is better, a response time of less than one nanosecond, and a status light to let you know that the surge protection is working.

When it comes to mobile phones and tablets, the power cables used for these devices double as a cord to connect the device to a computer. Apple devices use a cable with a proprietary connection called a lightening connector on one end, and a USB connection on the other. Most other devices use a cable with a standard USB connection on one end and a micro USB connection on the other. In both cases, the standard USB connection plugs into a computer, or a power brick that plugs into the wall, and the other end plugs into the device. A power brick is simply a power supply for almost every device on the market similar in size and shape of a small brick, hence the name. It plugs  into an outlet and you can plug components into it for recharging. 

To simplify plugging in two or more devices you can replace the individual power bricks with a wall charging hub that can connect the cable for two or more devices. Another alternative is to purchase a surge protector that plugs directly into the wall and also doubles as a USB charger. Using this type of surge protector eliminates extra wires on the floor while still expanding the number of available outlets. When purchasing an outlet with USB connections, it is important to know the output amp rating (amount of current). A mobile phone typically requires 1 amp and a tablet requires 2.1 amps. To charge both a phone and tablet at the same time the rating should be 3.1 amps or higher. As a device will only take as much current as it needs — a 1 amp device can charge in a 2 amp connection, but a 2 amp device in a 1 amp connection will charge extremely slow, if at all. The photos show examples of both types of units.

There are rumors that Apple may be introducing iPhones that can charge wirelessly in the near future. For now, wireless doesn’t mean truly wireless, but with some planning you can better manage the wires in your house. 

Until next week, visit onmouseclick.blogspot.com for the online version of OnMouseClick.

For your listening enjoyment…

I have written in past columns that Eddie and I stream media content, such as Netflix and Hulu, to our television sets with both an Apple TV and Smart TV. The Apple TV is a small wifi device that plugs into an HDMI port on a television set, enabling it to play streamed content. Similar devices are the Roku 4, Google Chromecast, and Amazon Fire. A Smart TV does pretty much the same thing, but without the need for a third party device. By definition a smart TV is a television set with integrated internet and wifi features.

Each device, or television manufacturer, offers a variety of content, some of it specific to the device and some available across all platforms – each with a unique user interface. For that reason, even though we have two smart television sets in our house, we choose to watch Netflix and Hulu on the Apple TV because we prefer its interface. What we cannot watch on our Apple TV is Amazon Prime Video. Apple and Amazon are feuding and the result is that Apple TV is not available for sale on Amazon (although they do sell other Apple products) and Apple TV does not stream Prime Video.

We came upon Prime Video much by accident. Over the summer we signed up for Amazon Prime to take advantage of free, 2-day shipping on Amazon orders. We do not have a smart TV in New York, but when we arrived at TR in November we gave Prime Video a try. We liked the service — especially the streaming drama series Bosch. (If any of you are fans of the Michael Connelly novels about the detective Harry Bosch, you will love the Amazon Prime series. Season 1 is online now, and season 2 will be available in early March, but I digress.)

More recently we discovered another valuable component to an Amazon Prime subscription — Prime Music. On-demand, ad-free music streaming with access to over one million songs, is available to Amazon Prime subscribers at no extra cost. The two most popular steaming music services, Apple Music and Spotify, charge $9.99 a month, or $120 a year, while the price of an Amazon Prime subscription is $99. For that you get free 2-day shipping on Amazon purchases, Prime Video, Prime Music, and Prime Photo storage.

The music service can be accessed online, or with an Apple iOS or Android app. Once signed in to the service, you can choose to listen to preselected music from a wide variety of genres and artists, or you can create your own playlists and listen to just the music you want to hear. What makes it even more exciting is that it interfaces with our Sonos sound system which wirelessly streams music to every room in our house.

I also mentioned that Amazon Prime membership includes Prime Photos, which offers unlimited cloud storage of digital photos. We discovered the photos service during our recent Hawaii trip when we needed a quick and easy way to archive the photos on one of our iPhones. The upload was effortless, and the photos, which can be as large as 2GB, are easily accessible from any device. Personally, I found using Prime Photo much less cumbersome than Apple’s iCloud.

In our current economic climate, we never know from one month to the next what will happen in our economies. I can only say that at this point in time Amazon Prime, for all it offers, is a bargain at $99 a year.