Living In The Cloud
So lets assume on a good day you have four computing devices you juggle about. Home desktop, work desktop, laptop, and mobile device. Each of them have their own place in your life, but you generally conduct many of the same activities across the board. Considering at any given moment at least one (if not two or three) of these devices is definitely within arm reach, it’s pretty easy to say that your life literally revolves around them.
In the past, all of these devices have stayed fairly isolated from one another. Sure you might have an active home network and maybe you sync your mobile device daily, but those are pretty tiny bridges that are still relatively isolated. What if all your computing devices were all connected seamlessly through some sort of magical web? What if they were all simply terminals to the soul of your online presence, rather than each operating as individual units? It’s true that in many ways they already are, but average users have barely seen the tip of the iceberg. It’s only been in the recent few years or even months that total synchronization and unification of our online/computer/digital selves has become possible.
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Remote desktop.
Technically speaking, a solid remote desktop application is all you need to bring every one of your computing devices together. It gives you 24/7 world-wide access to virtually control your PC as if you were sitting in front of it. System files, documents, applications, bookmarks, FTP, etc. Real-time interaction takes place using the mouse and keyboard, viewable through any PC or Mac browser. What’s even more incredible is also controlling your full-resolution, fully functional PC using your mobile device. You can zoom, click, scroll, type, and pan around your desktop computer using the same flawlessly intuitive multi-touch commands on the iPhone we already know and love so much. And when you load it up on an iPad, it truly feels magical. Any desktop computer is now a tablet PC at your fingers.
The possibilities of remote desktop is endless. You could be sitting at a friends house and have the ability to retrieve a specific file from your hard drive at home. You could start a torrent as you’re leaving work and have it be finished by the time you’re home. You could snag those files you left on your desktop at work. Or in my case, I check on weekend 3D renders and even slap-comp it and send over a Quicktime. You could even continue working on that Photoshop or 3D project after you get pulled away from your computer. Call it an obsession but what gives!
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Music Streaming
You know how Pandora streams music to you all day and all night long, no matter what computer or device you’re on? And you know how Grooveshark lets you pick what song you want to listen to and even save a library and playlists? Well it’s time to move both of those aside. Why piecemeal your playlists and hunt the internet for your favorite stuff when you know you already have exactly what you want sitting on your desktop computer at home? Instead, stream any song you have at home, to any device, with the speed and quality of Pandora. Choose songs and create playlists on the fly. Now add videos to that mix. All your downloaded DivX movies and TV shows. In your palm. Anywhere. Instantly. Unlimited amount of audio and video media at your fingertips from anywhere in the world using mycast.orb.com. Oh yeah and it’s built into WinAmp now too. Bringin’ it back.
Time to ditch that iPod and clear all those MP3s and MKVs off your iPhone. That 32 gig iPhone seems a bit silly now, huh?
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File Sharing/Sync
Leave that flash drive at home. You don’t need it anymore. Unless you’re going somewhere ancient of course. DropBox is a free 2 gig FTP service that will instantly synchronize a pocket of files across all your PCs. You designate a location on your hard drive and create whatever kind of sub-folder structure you like. Then any file you drop into it will instantly get uploaded and re-downloaded to each active PC and mobile device on your account.
This concept can be used for more than just transferring files to/from work. Anything you do that actively reads a database or some kind of common file can now be synchronized across all your PCs. Since it automatically syncs every time you update a file, anything you’d normally consider local can now also live in the cloud. Application settings, software UI setups, Windows themes and preferences, etc. As long as the application references a path to it’s preferences database, it can live in the cloud. Hell, you could probably even install basic programs, especially portable apps, right into your DropBox.
Next step? Find something similar to work with your own private FTP. Unfortunately I have heard that there is actually quite a bit of magic happening under the hood of DropBox. You could probably piecemeal a system together, starting with Tango-DropBox which lets you drag-drop upload to any FTP, but there is no interface for viewing or retrieving from the FTP. If you have any information on options here, I’d love to hear from you.
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Xmarks
I could of added web bookmarks to the uses of DropBox above, but XMarks takes care of it. It’s a cross browser plugin that synchronizes your favorites between computers. There are other options like FireFox Sync that also brings history, passwords, and settings, but XMarks feels much more fool-proof. Not to mention bringing your entire web browsing history from home to work might not always be the greatest idea.
Xmarks has a brief shut-down scare, apparently due to lack of funds to continue the operation, but users stepped up and helped prevent that! Awesome!
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iGoogle
Widgets (gadgets) for your home page. With as many gadgets available as there are apps for the iPhone, you are free to fill your home page with anything you want. Personally, I have RSS feeds for news and blog sites, a weather.com forecast and radar, multiple to-do lists, search bars for my favorite sites like newegg, amazon, wikipedia, & dictionary.com, photo of the day feeds, deals of the day feeds, and a couple of games. Oh and of course there’s the fully featured Google search bar.
It exists inside your google account, with quick access to your gmail and Google Docs, which brings me to the next bullet.
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Google Docs
Do a lot of writing? Take a lot of notes? If you’re anything like me, your e-mail’s “Drafts” folder is filled with half written blog articles, notes for work, and other quick scribbles you need to save temporary or permanently.
Well those days are over, because that is what Google Docs is for. Trusting you are using the gmail interface (if not then shame on you), you already have direct access just by clicking “Documents” up at the top. It isn’t just some crappy Notepad-esque thing, it’s a fully featured web based word processor that’s par with OpenOffice and Microsoft Word. It of course is fully compatible with those as well, saving in .DOC and all other common word processing formats. You can even create PDF and HTML documents.
Did I mention it also allows you to create fully functional spreadsheets, forms, Powerpoints, vector & raster images, and comes prepared with a plethora of templates? You’ll never forget your document at home and you’ll also never lose work because it auto-saves every 5 seconds.
Some people might recommend OpenOffice as a Microsoft Office alternative, but I say skip that and just use Google Docs.
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Anyway, even this is only the surface I think. There are better computing methods being developed every day, and there is always something new to discover. The point is, though, that living in the cloud will heighten your computer experience and make you a more efficient person. You are not truly living in today’s 21st century unless you take advantage of cloud computing.
