Tag: Viewer »

CloudOn has introduced version 2.0 of their document viewing and editing service, adding several key new features. First, Box has been added as a cloud storage service alongside Dropbox, with plans to add more services in the future, according to CEO Milind Gadekar when I spoke with him about the update recently. Box support should come as a boon to business users looking to take advantage of CloudOn, as according to Chris Yeh, Vice President of Platform at Box, "Over 120,000 businesses and 82% of the Fortune 500 use Box to store, manage and access their business content."

The other major feature of CloudOn 2.0 is Adobe Reader support for PDFs and any other files that support their viewer, including Photoshop files, and images. The PDF viewer is more extensive than built-in support, including support for features like 3D modeling in PDFs that the iPad's built-in PDF viewer does not support. This goes along with improvements to streaming performance in the newer version, the ability to open attachments in CloudOn and email attachments directly from the app. Emails will display as being from the same address as the user's CloudOn account. The free update is available now.

OnLive, the streaming game service that plans to take the world by storm, has announced today as the launch day for its official OnLive iPad viewer. The free service allows users to watch any game being played by any member of the OnLive community at any time. So if you're feeling like a video game voyeur then this may just be the perfect app for you.

The app comes with a few strings attached, so make sure you know what you're getting into before you install. First off, this is a viewer only, so you won't be able to actually play any games, but rather instead only watch them. If you want to interact with the titles available on OnLive first you'll need to set up an account and then stream the games to either a PC or the newly released MicroConsole. Also, keep in mind that OnLive requires a rather large chunk of bandwidth, even to simply watch games, so make sure you're running an Internet connection that can keep up with the requirements. In our quick tests, the quality was not so great on 802.11g, but very good on 802.11n. But it's free and your mileage may vary.

Some might scoff at merely releasing a viewer rather than a full-on OnLive client, but OnLive representatives have explained to us that the games on the service have been tuned for consoles and PCs and aren't yet ready to run on the iPad. The conversion of PC video games that are used to a full keyboard and mouse to a touch only device, just isn't that easy. Does that mean we might see a true iPad client down the line? Absolutely, it's just a matter of letting the OnLive crew continue to tweak and hone the service until it's ready to support actual gameplay. Basically, users should think of this as an important first step and a sort of proof of concept for what will be available on down the line.