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Your Hard Drive in the Cloud
Cloud computing may a little over-promised, but it isn’t “worse than stupidity,” as Richard Stallman would say. In fact, it’s really a very positive change in the way we use computers. Not only does it eliminate many of the barriers to using any operating system you want, but it also takes the responsibility of storing and backing up data off of the user. This is all in a very early stage, but the glitches should be worked out in a few years.
Unfortunately, it’s very hard for people to create successful web applications without backing from companies like Google and Microsoft. The problem is that when you start using, for example, Google Docs, it is very hard to switch to Zoho Office. You certainly can’t use both to edit the same documents as you could if they were stored on your hard drive. This means that you are locked into using a single application, naturally leading most of us to pick the one we trust the most. This problem also blocks out a lot of the hobbyist open-source projects that might otherwise appear as web applications.
What we need is a “hard drive in the cloud”: a personal storage space from which documents could be opened with any web application. For example, someone could create a document in Google Docs and save it to their “hard drive in the cloud.” Then, they could open that document from Zoho Office and continue working on it there.
The problem with this plan is that it would require an established web application vendor to adopt it before anyone would bother to use it, and no major web application vendor has an incentive to adopt a system which would make it easier for their customers to switch the a different service.
How will we get data portability in the cloud when companies like Google have it in their interest to prevent any such project?
Google Announces Wave: GMail Meets Google Docs, Meets Chat
Google has announced a new product that is supposed to reinvent email.
The main product combines GMail, including its chat feature, and Google Doc’s real-time collaboration. Each “wave” is like a whiteboard that involves a number of people. Multiple people can edit it at once anywhere in the wave. Photos and other media can also be added into the wave. In addition, Wave will be open-source and APIs will be released, allowing plugins to be included in waves or waves to be included in web pages.
It’s impossible to know if Wave will take off and replace email or die off like so many other Google projects, but it’s good to see someone taking a second look at something so ordinary and everyday.
Mandriva and Ubuntu both seem to think that companion services to complement their distributions are a good idea, and I agree. These services, which, so far, usually involve paid cloud storage and/or backup, offer a potential revenue stream for companies that may not otherwise make much money.
At the same time, though, these services cannot become completely separated from the distribution. Instead, these services must remain primarily a feature of the distribution. Though making the software and services cross-platform is a great idea, there should still be some incentive to use the company’s own distribution over other operating systems.
Ensuring that companion services are always a feature of the distribution is esesential to pushing the distribution foward. Without this link, the two products become completely separated and neither benefits the other.
The size of removable storage is shrinking extremely quickly. Not long ago, removable storage meant CDs or a big external hard drive. Now, though, you can get a memory card the size of your fingernail and thinner than a penny that stores 16GB of data.
When it comes to external storage size (not capacity) most people agree smaller is better, but up to what point? Today’s storage devices are already easily losable and even more easily snapped. In a couple of years, the devices will be even smaller. When is small just too small?
It seems that we are reaching the physical limits of how small our data storage devices can be. The next step, then, has to be to eliminate the device alltogether. That’s where we are headed with the cloud.
Ubuntu One Cloud Syncronization: A Viable Business Model?
Due to the nature of free software, most companies that produce free software do not make money off of the code itself but rather complementary services, such as support. Canonical has just launched one such service that, in addition to opening some interesting possibilities for the future, could provide a good revenue stream for Canonical.
The new service, called Ubuntu One, is essentially just a cloud synchronization service that is similar to Dropbox. Ubuntu One is supposed to be ready for Ubuntu 9.10 and will come free with 2GB of storage. In order to upgrade your storage capacity, you can pay an extra fee.
There are two things that make this service interesting. First, the fact that it will be so tightly integrated with Ubuntu. This means that is has the potential to create a better user experience than any other synchronization service. Second, Canonical is apparently thinking about working with application developers to let you sync your application preferences.
We don’t know much yet, but Ubuntu One certainly looks like an interesting service, and it might give Canonical some money.
New CrunchPad Highlights Future of Computing
With all the talk about Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing, one of the missing aspects is the hardware that enables this. Yes the hardware becomes less and less important, but you still have to have something there.
Netbooks are certainly part of the hardware that will enable true cloud computing, but devices like TechCrunch’s CrunchPad will most likely, in the long run, be a bigger part.
The CrunchPad is supposed to be an inexpensive touch-screen tablet that boots straight into a web browser, bypassing any user interaction with the operating system. These kinds of computers, though perhaps in foldable e-paper form, will most likely make up the majority of devices in the future.
Obviously there are some serious limitations to this form, such as the lack of a keyboard, but for casual web surfing and checking email, small, inexpensive tablets may well replace the netbook.
A ComputerWorld article expresses a concern I hear a lot about cloud computing: that it is just not reliable. It’s true that at this point, with GMail being down too often, it can be hard to have confidence in the cloud, but we have to keep in mind that this may change with time.
It’s true that you can’t be quite certain what is stored in the cloud will always be available, but local storage isn’t perfect either. Right now, it would be risky, at best, to store critical information only in the cloud. In ten years, though, ht might be different. In fact, it is easy to see a cloud computing service proving to be more reliable than standard desktop storage in the next five or ten years.
Today’s cloud computing is plagued by connection issues and various other glitches, but we cannot allow this to get in the way of its potential.
Eventually, who knows if we will even have desktop applications?
Many people who are critical about the “cloud” as a platform point out that some things can just never reach the cloud. One frequent example is a video editor.
When we are talking about hundreds of gigabytes being modified, cut, edited, and put together, how can all of that possibly be done in the cloud? Just the data transfer alone would take years, right? Well, yes. For now, that is.
Mozilla has just launched Bespin, a web-based (“cloud”) code editor for HMTL, CSS, and JavaScript. It i in very early stages, so I don’t expect anyone to be using it full time in the next few weeks, but, in the long term, it looks promising. Who would have thought that code editing could be brought to the cloud? After all, most developers have highly specialized environments based on their own personal preferences.
The point is, if we attempt to limit the possibilities of the cloud based on the technical limitations of today, you confine yourself far too much.
Imagine trying to use Flickr in the days of dial-up. It would take hours to upload the high-resolution photos and view other people’s photos. It just wouldn’t work. Today, however, uploading even the biggest photos is no problem for most people. How can you say the same will not be true of HD video in 10 years?
Limiting ourselves to the possibilities of today’s web is a mistake. Given the rapid pace of technology, the cloud appliations that might be a joke today could be the killer app in 10 years.
Why Linux Must Work With The Cloud
Right now, operating systems run on your computer. Period. Sure they can access the internet, but it is not used as a core component of the OS. Here are three reasons why this must change and why it would be good for Linux:
- It is inevitable. While the people who say that cloud computing is not reliable may be right for now, I think there is little doubt that cloud computing is the future, at least eventually. That means that either operating systems become irrelevant or they adapt to work with the cloud.
- Linux could be the first. No operating system has managed really deep integration with the cloud. I am not talking about the applications that let you interact with the web application on your desktop, but rather about deep and seamless integration right into the desktop. For example, perhaps folders might be transparently stored online or just by importing photos to your computer they would be put online. This sort of integration could be the biggest new feature since the GUI. And Linux could be the only one to have it.
- Open-source has a huge advantage. People like to know that their data is safe, secure, and private. With closed-source web applications, this basically means trusting the provider. With open-source, on the other hand, you can rely on independent reviewers/programmers to verify the safety of your data.
Because of these three major reasons, I sincerely hope that there will be an effort to bring Linux to the cloud world in more than a skin-deep way
Microsoft Office for Linux – It Just Might Happen
I bet you never thought you would hear the term “Microsoft Office for Linux” associated with “reality,” but it looks like it just might happen – well, indirectly at least. Microsoft recently announced that it is planning on bringing Microsoft Office to the cloud. Now, that might not actually be Microsoft Office for Linux, but it certainly would be Microsoft Office on Linux – at least if Microsoft complies with web standards.
This is really why I support web applications so much – it means that applications are cross-platform without the creator even bothering or wanting to make the application cross platform. For Linux, this means that if web applications catch on, suddenly Linux will have access to the same array of applications that Windows and Mac OS X have.
While I certainly don’t expect to see this cloud version of Office very soon, the possibility that it will eventually appear brings up the question of would it be good for Linux to have Microsoft Office available?
I believe that there are two main reasons to want Office on Linux:
- OpenOffice does not have perfect compatibility. While it is hard to fault the OpenOffice developers for it, it is, unfortunately, a reality that some people really need Office. This need, however, is largely filled by WINE or WINE-based solutions. Still, an official Office for Linux would be nice.
- Knowing that they could get Microsoft Office on LInux would probably reassure many new users. Apple is constantly promoting Office for Mac, despite have their own competitor. Why? Knowing that Office is available makes users more comfortable making the switch.
So, in conclusion, though you and I might ignore Office for Linux, it would have benefits for Linux and it really cannot be a bad thing.