Redmond, Washington — The Redmond Vole today took the wraps off its new SkyDrive applications. First is the integration to include Metro-style app that will take advantage of Microsoft’s new Windows 8 user experience and provide access to all SkyDrive files with a touch friendly interface and also coming for SkyDrive will be a desktop app for Internet Explorer, the software giant revealed on its Building Window 8 blog.
Currently, there are around 17 million people using SkyDrive to store everything from photos to documents. Now, the SkyDrive app will also use Windows 8 controls and and contracts to allow third-party Metro applications store data to SkyDrive and share documents and photos with additional apps.
In a post on the Building Windows 8 blog, the company talks about file sync via desktop app for easy drag-and-drop use–similar to what we have become used to with Dropbox. What Microsoft is working on is modifying SkyDrive–“from a website today into a true device cloud for Windows customers,” according to the blog post written by Mike Torres and Omar Shahine, group program managers for SkyDrive.
“With Windows 8, we want to ascertain that your files would be instantly available and up-to-date as you move between PCs–without configuring add-ons or using a USB drive,” they write.
“This will present a file cloud to every Metro style app, enabling you to open files in your SkyDrive and save them right back to your SkyDrive just like you would on your local hard drive,” the pair writes.
Microsoft’s SkyDrive.
Another SkyDrive application is conceived to present a desktop version of Microsoft’s consumer cloud to Windows Explorer, which was rumored over the weekend. The SkyDrive desktop application will empower Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows 8 users to drag-and-drop and upload or download data to SkyDrive right within the familiar Windows Explorer interface. Microsoft says it will limit support of uploading large files to 2GB through Explorer, and that the application will automatically sync changes to and from the SkyDrive folder in a similar way to Dropbox.
Interestingly, the software maker also announced a novel way to access non-SkyDrive files from PCs using a SkyDrive account. Fetching, available for Windows 8 PCs, which will permit users to fetch documents from any PCs connected to SkyDrive. Microsoft refers to the feature as “forgot something” internally as the application will let users simply browse a home PC and retrieve and files they forgot to upload to SkyDrive. The company has added an extra layer of protection by using two-factor authentication, requiring a code (delivered to a mobile phone or alternate email address) before a new untrusted PC is granted access to SkyDrive using a Windows Live account and fetching.
The post further states that “For app developers, this means that, so long as your app supports opening and saving documents and photos, it will automatically support SkyDrive without any additional work.”
Apparently, this announcement follows on the heels of a preview Apple gave of Mountain Lion that revealed that the next iteration of the operating system will include deep integration with iCloud, Apple’s personal cloud storage product.
For a closer look at the some of the tweaks, peep the gallery below or hit the source link for more on the particulars here.
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