SkyDrive slips snapshots into cloudy wallet

Microsoft is updating SkyDrive, its cloud storage file gobbler, to add SkyDrive-accessed picture viewing in the Windows 8 Photo application.

Any photo you have stored in any of your SkyDrive-connected PCs can be viewed in the Photo app. They are available from within the application, with SkyDrive being used to access the target PC.

The photos aren't actually stored in SkyDrive though. Mike Torres, Group Program Manager for SkyDrive apps, says: "Right from the Photos app in Windows 8, you can fetch photos stored on your other PCs that have SkyDrive installed."

This change and others are detailed in a Windows team blog. The update is being pushed out automatically to SkyDrive PC and Mac users over the next few days.

You will get this Photo app capability in the early June Windows 8 Release Preview. Torres says there is no restriction on the size of the photo collection on the target SkyDrive-connected PC; terabytes were mentioned.

Another change is that the "number of total files in the SkyDrive folder created by the apps has been raised from 150,000 to a whopping 10 million." SkyDrive folder updates are also synced faster.

Microsoft is gunning to make SkyDrive slick, speedy, simple and seductive. It's like the browser wars all over again with Internet Explorer being revved up and pushed until Netscape just wilted and died. Google's GDrive and Dropbox are smack in SkyDrive's sights. ®