After all the rain lately, I couldn't face blogging about a grey cloud! I have found this module really interesting, and probably out of all the modules I have completed so far I have learnt the most from this one. The Wikipedia article on Cloud computing was full of 'tech speak' and not particularly helpful, but i found the video on this topic enlightening. Some of my favourite comments, that most helped me understand the concept of Cloud Computing were:
"Everything we think of as a computer today is really just a device that connects to the big computer that we're all building" - Tim O'Reilly, CEO O'Reilly Media
"We still have to think about how tables are structured and how we're couriering things and how we're gonna scale our webs and how much network and space and electricity we have. Ideally it should just be like 'the Carebears' in the cloud - perfect and happy. Someday I hope we'll be there." - Matt Mullenweg, Cofounder Wordpress
"Cloud Computing - it's a way to deliver services rather than applications, completely independant of platforms and physical hardware - and I hope it works!"
" If you need software, it's not cloud computing. If you need hardware beyond your laptop/pc, it's not cloud computing. All of the activity you want to do should take place on a remote server elsewhere and all you should need is an internet connection." - Maggie Fox, CEO Social Media Group
Next, Google Docs (GD). I have a document that is currently being edited at the moment by fellow CCL Learners, and will post that to my blog when it is done. I think GD has lots of benefits, and some negatives as outlined in the above document. I did find that if I tried to copy and paste a word doucment in to GD that had pictures in it, the pictures would not paste in, and I needed to save them as seperate jpgs and insert them into the document that way.
Google Calendar seems like a great application. I don't plan to use it at this stage as I already have an electronic diary in Outlook for work, a paper diary for work and a paper diary for home (and still forget to check them all sometimes, don't think I need to add another to that mix)! I do like that you can email invites to friends and they can accept via email (so they don't have to have Google Calendars) and that you can access a mobile version of Google Calendars on your mobile phone. Finally, offline access to your calendar is a fantastic idea, as this is one of my concerns with web-based applications when the Internet doesn't work (having experienced it today I know how frustrating it can be!) so offline read-only access is great.
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