There are a lot of things that are different about how we all use computers these days. One of the subtler things that have slid under our door is the idea of the ‘cloud’. Cloud computing and cloud storage are already in use, and in many cases, by you, even if you didn’t realize it.
When I got my latest computer (an ASUS EEEPC…a NetBook), I realized that I was loading up fewer programs than I usually do with a new computer. It seems that I use a lot of online applications and even some online storage. My needs for programs resident on my computer ($$) has grown to nearly zero.
There are many ways that this sea change has taken place, for instance, off-site storage (if only for some security) is a quickly growing utility for most users. There are sites like Mozy and Carbonite which allow you to make complete backups of your system (for a little over $50.00 @ year). Mozy (as with a number of other sites) also gives you 2 gigabytes of online storage free to use for backing up some of your important documents.
I also use DropBox, a similar utility to Mozy or Carbonite, except that it also allows collaborative work. I use it to keep some important documents synced up between all of my computers (it also is free for a 2 gigabyte of storage, there is also a professional version). All of my EverNote files are also backed up online.
If you have a Microsoft Live account (i.e. MSN network, or a Hotmail email address….) you can also get (for free) Windows Live SkyDrive with 25 gigabytes of free storage, If you have a Google email address, there is over 7 gigabytes of free storage in Gmail, there is also Picasa with 2 Gigabytes of space to store pictures. As a matter of fact many of us store a lot of pictures online in a variety of places (Flickr, Photobucket, Panoramio, and many others.
There are online document applications (Google Docs, Zoho suite, and soon even Windows Office) that work through your web browser and offer free storage for all of your documents. So, you can see that many of us already are getting pretty deep into using the internet for many kinds of storage, along with quite a few online applications.
In the last several weeks I have been working, on and off, as a substitute teacher in some of the local middle and high schools. At one of these schools I was working in a social studies class that had to do some group work. Groups of four students were supposed to collaborate on a project. Traditionally this would have been done using Microsoft Word. Now I saw this take place, but over half of the groups were using Google Docs (an online equivalent that stores the documents in the cloud). These students seem to have come up with this adaptation themselves. This method of collaboration doesn’t take anything but a computer on the internet; there is no need to spend hundreds of dollars for MS Office, or for students to have to purchase flashdrives.
This may be a real testament to the fact that this will be taking over in schools regardless of what school administration do… This is a topic that may require me to cover some of the upcoming changes in typical users online experiences. Google is supposed to be coming out with something in this arena soon (as in expect a flashy paradigm shift, or words to that effect).The future is coming up a bit sooner than we expect…
