Microsoft has released a free trial of its cloud-based relational database.

The community technology preview (CTP) of SQL Azure Database was made available Tuesday, along with a preview of an SQL Server driver for building PHP applications for the Azure platform.

The Azure Services Platform, first announced at a developer conference last year, is Microsoft's move into the rapidly growing cloud-computing market. As with all cloud platforms, the idea is to provide scalable, hosted services on a pay-per-use basis, running remotely in Microsoft's data centers.

(Credit: Microsoft)

SQL Azure Database, a key component of the platform, is a rival to Amazon.com's SimpleDB. Unlike that service, however, it is a relational database.

Other components of the Azure Services Platform include Windows Azure for running applications and storing data, .Net services for linking the applications to the distributed infrastructure, and Live services for linking Azure to Microsoft's Live web applications.

"With SQL Azure, developers building Web 2.0, ASP.Net and PHP applications can use familiar tools and data models to develop on a pay-as-you-grow, secure, scalable and highly available database service at minimal infrastructure cost," Microsoft senior program manager David Robinson wrote in a blog post Tuesday, adding that "there are really no comparable solutions available today."

SQL Azure's relational data model supports Microsoft and Sybase's proprietary extension to the SQL database language, Transact-SQL. Robinson said there is a high degree of compatibility with SQL Server, allowing for easy migration of business and Web applications to the cloud.

The free trial of SQL Azure Database will last until November, when the service is fully launched. There will be two editions, a Web Edition that stores up to 1GB of data for $9.99 per month, and a Business Edition that stores up to 10GB at $99.99 per month.

"Once you set up sync from the Tools menu, Chrome will then upload and store your bookmarks in your Google Account. Anytime you add or change a bookmark, your changes will be sent to the cloud and immediately broadcast to all other computers for which you've activated bookmark sync," programmer Tim Steele said in a blog post Monday. Steele introduced the Chrome bookmark feature less than three weeks ago.

I set up the bookmarks feature with no trouble on version 4.0.201.1 of Chrome for Windows; note that to get it to work, you must specifically enable it at launch by adding the "--enable-sync" option to the launch command. The wrench menu (think tools) offers the new menu item to synchronize bookmarks. Clicking on it springs open a dialog box that prompts you to log in with a Google account; doing so then sends the bookmarks to the server.

The Mac version of Chrome--which by the way now has enables by default plug-ins such as Adobe Systems' Flash and has grown much more stable--didn't yet support bookmark sync Monday night, so I couldn't test the actual synchronization itself on my present home setup.

Google doesn't draw much attention to version numbers, using them more as developer placeholders than beacons for marketing or support purposes. Google updates Chrome automatically, so users often get new versions without even knowing about it. But the new versions can indicate when the company is making significant changes behind the scenes.

Conspicuously absent thus far from the bookmark sync feature is any mechanism to synchronize with Google Bookmarks, the company's cloud-based bookmark service that can be used through the Google Toolbar or the Web site itself. Google has said it's focusing on the basics first with Chrome.

It's intriguing when Google adds new cloud-based services, given its interest in moving people away from dependence on individual PCs and toward Net-based services hosted on central servers. In that same vein, Google is working on several other features for that expand what the Web can do via an upcoming version of its underlying language, HTML 5.

Among the HTML 5 features set for Chrome 4.x are Web Workers, which let the browser perform background processing tasks without interrupting a Web application's user interface and local storage, which helps a Web application work even when a computer is disconnected from the network. Another HTML 5 technology, built-in video and audio that doesn't require a plug-in such as Flash, began arriving in Chrome version 3.

HTML 5 is very much in flux, though. Microsoft, maker of the dominant browser, has only recently joined the HTML 5 discussion in earnest. And last week, Google's Aaron Boodman raised a broader issue, questioning the merit of labeling many new HTML features as version 5.

"I would like to propose that we get rid of the concepts of 'versions' altogether from HTML. In reality, nobody supports all of HTML5," Boodman said in message to an HTML 5 mailing list. "Instead of insisting that a particular version of HTML is a monolithic unit that must be implemented in its entirety, we could have each feature (or logical group of features) spun off into its own small spec. We're already doing this a bit with things like Web Workers, but I don't see why we don't just do it for everything."

Version 4 of Chrome also is slated to get a top-requested feature, the ability to recognize when Web pages offer an RSS or Atom feeds and to subscribe to them with a service such as Google Reader.

One of the best ways to protect your online security is to have strong passwords that you change periodically. But that's easier said than done. Coming up with hard-to-guess passwords is hard enough, but it's even harder to have separate passwords for different sites and to remember new ones after you change them.

One way to create a password that's hard to guess but easy to remember is to make up a phrase. You could type in the entire phrase (some sites let you use spaces, others don't) or you can use the initials of each word in the phrase, for instance, "IgfLESi85" for "I graduated from Lincoln Elementary School in '85." An even better one would be "MbfihswE&S" for "My best friends in high school were Eric and Steve." You get the idea--upper case numbers, letters, and symbols that are seemingly meaningless to everyone but you. Microsoft has an excellent primer on passwords and a password strength checker.

But even if you do come up with a clever and hard-to-remember password, don't use it for every site. Since lots of people do that, there's the risk that a sleazy site operator--or a sleazy person who works for a legitimate site--could use it to break into your accounts on other sites.

Password managers
One solution is to use a password manager. There are several available programs and Web storage services, but the ones I'm most familiar with are RoboForm and Lastpass. These programs can generate passwords for you and remember them so you don't have to. Both programs are, themselves, password protected, though you have the option of running RoboForm without a password or having Lastpass remember its own password on your PC. That's OK as long as no one else has access to your machine. I recommend that you manually enter your master password on a laptop that could more easily fall into the wrong hands.

RoboForm has a free trial version that's limited to 10 passwords after the trial ends. Lastpass is free.

RoboForm has been around for a long time, but Lastpass is a relatively new offering. Company CEO Joe Siegrist describes the program as a hybrid because it stores your passwords and usernames both on your machine and on the Web. You can download the browser plug-in to a PC or a Mac to work directly with Firefox on either platform or Internet Explorer on Windows, but there are also ways to use it with Safari and Chrome. Because it has a Web interface, it can work with any Web-enabled device, but the plug-ins for IE and Firefox make it easier to use.

On Firefox and IE, Lastpass records your usernames and passwords when you first enter password-protected sites and then enters them for you automatically for subsequent visits. Passwords are stored in a "vault," which is actually a Web page stored on your PC, as well as the company's servers, so you can access it from any device, including a borrowed machine. The password vault on your machine is automatically synchronized with the server, so you don't have to worry about synchronizing or backing up your data.

Password data, according to Siegrist, is encrypted on the PC and on the servers. He said that no one--himself included--can decrypt them without the master password that only you know. Assuming the encryption is as good as he says it is, this should protect your security even if their servers are compromised. The company provides a lot of security information on its FAQ.

There are also versions for Blackberry, Windows Mobile, and Android as well as a Web site for phones and browsers that aren't supported directly.