On the Cloud News Roundup: Week of Nov. 18, 2011

Amazon might be releasing a smartphone, iTunes Match is now available so you can start syncing your music library to the Apple iCloud, and Chill.com is making noise with its relaunch as a social platform for watching live events. These stories and more in this week’s edition of On the Cloud News Roundup:

• Chill.com “relaunched on Wednesday as a social platform for watching live events, TV shows and music videos.” Now you can enjoy your favorite shows with your friends in separate locations while utilizing the private or public chat options to talk during the show. They have since integrated with Hulu, Livestream and Vevo making it one of the top places to go for web content in a social setting. [Mashable]
   
• Amazon’s new cloud music is live in the newest release of iTunes, iTunes Match. It is an optional paid subscription service that can add any track you purchase to the Apple iCloud and the songs are saved automatically so you don’t have to sync all of your Apple devices with your new music. All you have to do is update your iTunes and (a few other small steps) register with a credit card to start matching your music library to the Apple iCloud. [CNN] [Windows IT Pro]
   
• It seems the SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) act is running into opposition from Google, Facebook, Linkedin, Zynga and eBay as well as Nancy Pelosi and Darrell Issa. According to these companies if “this law was passed 10 years ago we might not have YouTube or Facebook. The startups that aspire to be these companies would be forced to spend enormous resources to police their users”.[CBS News] [Reuters]
   
• Analysts say that Amazon will release a smartphone in Q4 of 2012 and pricing could go as low as a $99 smartphone after discounts. It will likely run on the Android platform but there has been no agreement with Microsoft yet. [PCMag] [TechFlash]