Cloud computing is not "stupid"

Web Technologies 0 Comment

The founder of the open source movement, Richard Stallman has claimed that cloud computing is stupid. His reasons being that one day we’ll be locked into proprietary software and costs will increase for the end user.
This may well be the case for the enterprise but surely services supplied by the likes of google and yahoo will always be free to the consumer?

Google is essentially an advertising company, with their best asset being the amount of registered users they have. This makes it easy for them to sell advertising. Yahoo is basically the same if a little less successful.
The point I’m making is that cloud computing will always appeal to consumers for 2 reasons:
1. They are usually free;
2. They are always available on online.

Let’s take a different approach. Office apps are always going to be less powerful in the cloud, than their desktop rivals. Does this make them less useful?
I don’t think so, afterall how often does anyone make full use if MS Word?

Who provides better email and calendar services, MS or google? I believe it’s google. Therefore my email and time management is better served by the cloud.
Does it matter that gmail is proprietary? Not to me. While I rate open source software, at the minute its presence in the cloud is limited.

Then there are other services such as Flickr, picasa, twitter, IM and even voip.
These are services that compliment your existing setup and really can enhance your technical skills.
The question around data security remains, but it doesn’t worry me because, why should it? If someone wants my data they will get it eventually, I just make sure I don’t publish sensitive information to the world.

Cloud computing is useful, it is not a fad, but you should ensure that you choose which services you use carefully, so that they best match your needs.

Cloud computing

Desktop, Web Technologies 0 Comment

I bet you've heard this being thrown around the media lately. Know what it is?
Didn't think so.
So what is cloud computing?
I've talked about it in this blog before, so it must be something techie!
Well cloud computing is really about taking desktop apps away from the desktop. An obvious example is gmail or webmail in general. This is an application that has traditionally always been tied to a pc, but not anymore. Webmail is a great product simply because the user can access their email from any device which connects to the net. Ok, so there's the downside (you have to be connected to the net) but is that really a downer? I mean, these apps are only going to be used by people who are connected. That's the whole point.

What else can cloud computing do for you? Well think about every day office tasks. These too can be taken away from the office. Google docs and other web based apps are getting better every month. Why shell out for a MSFT licence when you can get the job done for free?
The real teaser here for businesses is home working. We've been hearing about home working for ages now. Well cloud computing can finally enable this for a whole host of occupations. When you tie voip services to cloud computing, home offices all of a sudden become very cheap.

There are plenty of other uses for cloud working such as photo editing and social networking. One thing to remember though, this has only just begun.