In the Cloud

Have you ever heard Cloud Computing? It looks like you’re doing computer work up in the air. If Superman is emailing his precious Louis Lane while flying, or maybe doing some private Instant Messaging, that would pass as Cloud Computing because he’s using computer work way up there among the cloud. I would love to have that. Not the flying part, but the wireless Internet he’s using. I mean what kind of Internet service he’s using up there? And where do they get Cloud 9 terminology from? Why nine? For all I care I like to put four or five because that’s my favourite number, because when I was young, you can combine this number into a boy’s face. I forgot how the song goes; it’s like “Tiga campur tiga, saya jawab enam. Cikgu kasi rait, saya boleh pulang.” kinda thing only different. Yeah, it comes with “counting your walk” territory. I still sometimes do that with no apparent reason.

Anyway, back to cloud computing. Smoking weed pass that term don’t you think? I mean, you’re chatting or emailing your friend, surrounded by them “happy smoke”, and people outside of your apartment panicking calling the fire department because smoke coming out from your little apartment thinking it’s on fire. No I’m not on weed, I get high just sipping too much sugar.

Cloud computing, as term by Wikipedia, is computation, software, data access, and storage services that do not require normal people like us, to know physically the exact location and configuration of a system that delivers the service. There are many cloud services available on the Internet; Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail fit the description. You store your email on the server, not on you computer. Though I prefer having my mail downloaded directly onto my computer, read and reply them offline. But this is just a minimal use of technology, at least to me. I’m more of a hardcore cloud user. There are another two services that I use frequently which are 4Shared and Dropbox.

If you have a really big file you wanted to send over the Internet, 4Shared is the one to use. Most email would only except up to 5MB of file size. But with 4Shared, you can share really big file. I mean really huge, it can go up to 2GB, though I do wonder what kind of file you’re sharing if it’s 2GB in size. I normally share 100MB file, mostly documents. You get to have 10GB of free storage. That’s a lot of storage, I’m still having problem getting my 2GB flash drive to fully fill. And I have two quarter fill 2GB flash drive and one empty 4GB. Still, I only use this service for emailing big files.

Now Dropbox is another thing. The good thing about this service is that I get to have copies of my files on my computer stored in a server. Which mean, in the event that I don’t have my computer with me or my laptop ran out of battery, I just access my files online. Any files that were edited on my computer would be copied back to my Dropbox account automatically. Beat using a flash drive no? Another wonderful thing about this is that I could share the content over multiple computer and devices. Imagine this. You are using Mac or Linux at home and you store your work on Dropbox folder. In the office, running Windows, the moment you boot your computer, those files you edited at home get updated instantly and you could resume where you left. You can even update your work on your devices. Currently synchronize my Dropbox folder between my Mac, Linux, iPhone and Windows. Yeah, I’m running Windows virtually on my Mac sometimes. Some of my works still rely on that OS. All you have to do is register for their 2GB free account and download the software to have your files updated automatically. Head here to get your Dropbox account.

There you go. No more stuck in a jam just because you want to send over a 100 plus MB of files or wasting your 700MB CD just to send over 25MB size file. No more “I lost my work on my pendrive” problem. The only thing you have to worry is not having Internet connection, in which case my flash drive is still a good backup.

So, your server room caught on fire is not considered as cloud computing. Sorry.

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