Thursday, February 26, 2009
The clouds the thing even with interruptions
Last week Google mail, called Gmail, went down for the sixth time in eight months. It was down from two and one half to four hours depending upon what story you read. All services have outages. “Downtime” is inevitable when you are using computers.
But when a Google service goes dark, even for only a couple of hours, it is news. The company has gotten so big and people have gotten so dependent upon it, an outage can affect many people.
Gmail is part of what has come to be called “cloud computing.” In essence it means accessing software and servers (storage devices) over the Internet. The “cloud” is the Internet itself.
Cloud computing allows you to store less on your computer and makes your material accessible from anywhere you have access to the Internet. It also means you can work from different computers on the same project. You also share the project with others who might be anywhere in the world.
Google has applications, maps as well as Gmail in the cloud. Google Docs, for example, is the company’s answer to Microsoft Word. You can write and save your documents online. You can share it with a co-worker or call it up from home if you want to continue working from there.
Outages like the one with Gmail last week do cause ripples in the net as bloggers question the strength of the system. But cloud computing is inevitable. As the use of small “net” laptop computers increase in use, the cloud will be the place to be.
These small “net” laptop computers are smaller, lighter, with smaller screens and have smaller hard drives. Some have small solid state flash drives instead of disc drives. This makes them more shock resistant and adds to the weight reduction.
Small computers like this are specifically designed for Internet access through wireless connections. They are good for business people on the go in airports or even your neighborhood coffee shop or bagel bakery—anywhere that offers wireless service.
Coupled with cloud computing, they can be an extension of your office, home or dorm room.
In future columns I’ll talk about changes in our photo gallery on the Web site and cultural phenomena’s like Twitter the social Web site that allows you to share your thoughts with your friends or the world in 140 characters or less at a time. It started as a geek think. Now celebrities, reporters and even politicians are getting into it. I understand that former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich “tweeted” during President Barack Obama’s speech to Congress. He mistakenly called it a state of the union speech which it wasn’t that error was quickly picked up by those following his comments.
Tweets can be worse than email for publicizing your typos. They are dashed off quickly and once sent, can not be retrieved.
But more on that later. Maybe I’ll start twittering myself one of these days.
But for now, you can reach me at rpolk(at)chespub.com.
Richard Polk is the Online Editor of the Internet version of The Star Democrat. It is located at http://www.stardem.com.
But when a Google service goes dark, even for only a couple of hours, it is news. The company has gotten so big and people have gotten so dependent upon it, an outage can affect many people.
Gmail is part of what has come to be called “cloud computing.” In essence it means accessing software and servers (storage devices) over the Internet. The “cloud” is the Internet itself.
Cloud computing allows you to store less on your computer and makes your material accessible from anywhere you have access to the Internet. It also means you can work from different computers on the same project. You also share the project with others who might be anywhere in the world.
Google has applications, maps as well as Gmail in the cloud. Google Docs, for example, is the company’s answer to Microsoft Word. You can write and save your documents online. You can share it with a co-worker or call it up from home if you want to continue working from there.
Outages like the one with Gmail last week do cause ripples in the net as bloggers question the strength of the system. But cloud computing is inevitable. As the use of small “net” laptop computers increase in use, the cloud will be the place to be.
These small “net” laptop computers are smaller, lighter, with smaller screens and have smaller hard drives. Some have small solid state flash drives instead of disc drives. This makes them more shock resistant and adds to the weight reduction.
Small computers like this are specifically designed for Internet access through wireless connections. They are good for business people on the go in airports or even your neighborhood coffee shop or bagel bakery—anywhere that offers wireless service.
Coupled with cloud computing, they can be an extension of your office, home or dorm room.
In future columns I’ll talk about changes in our photo gallery on the Web site and cultural phenomena’s like Twitter the social Web site that allows you to share your thoughts with your friends or the world in 140 characters or less at a time. It started as a geek think. Now celebrities, reporters and even politicians are getting into it. I understand that former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich “tweeted” during President Barack Obama’s speech to Congress. He mistakenly called it a state of the union speech which it wasn’t that error was quickly picked up by those following his comments.
Tweets can be worse than email for publicizing your typos. They are dashed off quickly and once sent, can not be retrieved.
But more on that later. Maybe I’ll start twittering myself one of these days.
But for now, you can reach me at rpolk(at)chespub.com.
Richard Polk is the Online Editor of the Internet version of The Star Democrat. It is located at http://www.stardem.com.
# posted by Richard Polk @ 7:10 AM 
