After being forced to ditch its SkyDrive name following a dispute with the telecommunication and TV giant BSkyB, Microsoft has today begun the rebranding process that will see SkyDrive become OneDrive. Existing users won’t notice a great deal other than the new name, but Microsoft is now also offering people who use its service the ability to increase their free storage capacity via referrals a la Dropbox, with the potential to earn an extra 5GB of space.

As of today, Microsoft’s cloud service SkyDrive will be known as ‘OneDrive,’ a move that no doubt strengthens connections with the all-new Xbox One console. The decision is not entirely voluntary, with the name change very much the result of a trademark case involving the Sky Broadcasting Group (BSkyB), but it does, in a sense, afford Redmond company’s product range an improved degree of uniformity.

Microsoft is seeking to spread a little pre-Christmas cheer by offering users of its SkyDrive online storage service something extra this holiday season. If users stake their claim before the end of January, they will be treated to a whole 20GB of extra cloud storage, free of charge.

Getting photos off of our iOS devices is the kind of thing that can be a deadly serious subject for many of us. If you’ve got kids, being able to ensure that your photos are safe and secure in the event of a lost or stolen phone can be the most important thing in the world at times. Apple’s Photo Stream and iCloud backups go some way towards filling the hole for some people, but there are other ways of getting images and videos off of iPhones and iPads. Those options now include Microsoft’s SkyDrive.

The Xbox One will hit shelves next week, and Microsoft is diligently planning in advance to ensure all of the associated services have been primed and are ready for the big release. SkyDrive, the Redmond outfit’s fledgling cloud service, is one such entity, and today, Microsoft has delivered a fairly detailed blog post regarding the video and photo streaming element of the stock dedicated SkyDrive app for Xbox One will play out.

Dropbox may all but have the online storage race sewn up, but Microsoft’s got a little service of its own that it likes to think of as a real competitor to Google’s dominance – Drive. SkyDrive may not be on the tip of everyone’s tongue when talking about places to store data in the cloud, but with 7GB of free space from the get-go, they perhaps should be.

Although Apple’s iCloud service very much looks after those in ownership of an an iOS device or Mac, the same cannot be said for the cloud service of rival Microsoft. SkyDrive is available across all of the major platforms, and today, the version tailored to the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch has just been bumped to version 3.0. As you would expect from a whole number update, there are plenty of new features off the bat, including support for full resolution photo downloads, iPad mini and iPhone 5 support, as well as a completely revamped interface. Full details, as well as the all-important download link, can be found after the break!

Microsoft’s SkyDrive cloud service has been knocking around for a while now, and having been given a native iOS app a couple of months back, it has now arrived – fashionably late as with most apps – over at the Google Play Store.

All of the big guns are looking to get in on the cloud computing act, and Microsoft is no exception with its SkyDrive service. As per the MSDN blog, much work has gone into improving SkyDrive over the course of the last couple of months, and now, a preview of the SkyDrive desktop client has been released, along with a plethora of improvements to existing services.

Remember those leaked SkyDrive features I touched on in yesterday’s editorial? Well, much of them remain in rumor territory. However, Microsoft has confirmed two things: One, a major SkyDrive update is in the pipeline, and two, the rumor that we’re getting a SkyDrive desktop client is spot-on. In a Building Windows 8 post written by two SkyDrive program managers, Microsoft detailed the SkyDrive Metro app, the service’s tight integration with Windows 8, SkyDrive on the desktop, and fetching files through SkyDrive.com.

Over the weekend, there were two leaks revealing that a major SkyDrive update is in the works. The first one revealed that SkyDrive will be offering three tiers of additional storage — 20GB, 50GB, and 100GB upgrades to the existing 25GB for $10, $25, and $50, respectively, along with a desktop client for Windows and OS X — and the second revealed that SkyDrive will be getting URL shortening, direct sharing to Twitter, an increase of the individual file limit to 300MB (on par with Dropbox), support for OpenDocument formats, and the ability to manage BitLocker recovery keys. All in all, a pretty major upgrade showing that Microsoft is taking its cloud file storage service seriously.

Things just got very interesting in the world of cloud storage, especially if you own an iPhone. Microsoft has today released a new ‘SkyDrive’ app for both Windows Phone and iPhone, bringing iCloud and Dropbox-like file management and syncing to Microsoft’s own mobile operating system as well as Apple’s hugely successful iOS.