Cloud Computing

Last week I was helping a friend how to store documents online so it can accessed by her blog readers. We talked about Microsoft’s Skydrive and Google Docs. These two free online storage website will allow you to save pictures, music, and documents in a folder online. You can decide whether to set the folder to public or private. Think of it as a virtual hard drive. To access them, each file/folder has its own unique web link.

So what is cloud computing?

People call the Internet the Cloud because when you illustrate the Internet with its computers, routers, storage, and servers inter linked and working together it tends to resemble a cloud like complexity.

So when we talk about storing documents or running program off from the internet we talk about the Cloud. Cloud computing.

Let’s just say, cloud computing is doing your computer stuffs over the Internet (word processing, editing presentations, storing, gaming, and more..). A sort of like a partnership between computers and gadgets that performs different tasks to come up with a specific result.

A good example of cloud computing is the Bar Code App that runs on iPhone. This application will turn your iPhone in to a barcode scanner. All you have to do is scan an item, and instantly have access to a bunch of online prices and information. By scanning a book’s bar code, you will have access to countless of book reviews online written by people who have actually read the book.

Since the iPhone does not the have the power to do all the cross referencing and to store all those barcodes in its memory, a server located somewhere in the cloud will do that for you.

Today, companies are developing devices and technologies with the Internet in mind.

Net books are specifically designed to perform minimal computing and to conveniently access the Web from almost anywhere. Google is developing their own operating system called Chromium OS. Their premise is, since the browser is the most widely used program on your computer, why not build an operating system that is dedicated to web browsing.

There’s also this company (forgot the name) that is developing a game that will allow you to use an inexpensive low powered device to do gaming. All of the work of the game will not be done by your low powered device but by a computer somewhere in the cloud. And the video will be sent back to you.