Things 20 and 21

Cloud Computing and Google Maps
I already wrote a piece on Cloud Computing here so I'm not going to replicate my musings as I've nothing new to add.

Of all the recent online applications available Google Maps and Skype are my favourites.  Funnily enough they are both ways of connecting person and place.  My sister in law from Australia visited recently.  Using Google Maps she honed in on her hometown of Mornington outside Melbourne.  She took me to her parents house, then we went down the street and saw where my sister and nieces are living and then treked down to the beach.  It was the closest thing I will get to visiting them for some time, but it was wonderful to see what it was like, and get a feel for the proximity of their lives to one another.

I highly recommend downloading the App to your smart phone if you're going abroad.  No matter where you are, the GPS locates you and can direct you to where you want to go, which makes it very difficult to get lost (though not impossible, lol!).

Here's where I'd like to be right now:

Kyoto, Japan

I became fascinated with Japanese history and culture in my teens.  Their literature challenged my imagination as I struggled to visualise these exotic lands and grasp their culture, so alien was it from my sheltered parochial teenage life.

I was in awe of the Geisha, their beauty, their sadness, their broken hearts and unfulfilled, cruel lives. I was terrified of the emperors and the Samurai, they seemed to have all the power and control but seemingly soft hearted and compassionate underneath.

Though it's thoroughly modern capital Tokyo, is thronged with businessmen and Harajuku girls shuttled on the Shinkansen bullett to neon light karaoke bars, nintendo arcades and hightech business conferences, much of Japans founding culture can still be witnessed in the tranquil settings of Kyoto. 

Traditionally clad girls immerse themselves in Ikenobo flower arranging, tourists visit the machiya townhouses, golden Pavilion, and shinto shrines maybe even taking in a perfromance from the maiko girls.  It really is a country of contrasting cultures and fortunes.
There is something serenely beautiful about Japanese art and music, despite their tumultuous past, they always act poised and composed, even their prostitutes are elegant ladylike dolls, who sit demurely playing traditional music.  A stark cry from their modern counterparts, preoccupied with tacky garish pop culture and a crassly consumerist society.  Yet beneath all that they still strive for perfection and brilliance in all that they setout to achieve.

Ahhh some day I will visit ...............I can but dream................ 

 Google Docs is an extension of the concept of wikis, in that instead of attaching and sending documents you can save a document online and let people read it there.  Less duplication and less error.

You don't need to worry about attaching different versions of the same document to different people or having to re-send once you make a change, they will access the latest version online.  Similar to cloud computing you're not clogging up your hard drive you're using web allocated space.

The fog is lifting

With all this talk about clouds, and the new Dell global research center for cloud computing opening here in Ireland, it's time to figure out what cloud computing is all about. It's a term that has floated around in computing for a few years now, but really seems to be gathering momentum of late. 

Getting to grips with the ideology brought to mind my first iPod and bringing it home to show it to my mother.  She could not understand how all my CDs were on this tiny machine. I tried to explain it was a high capacity hard drive, but she just smiled and said she was too old to figure out modern technology.  Fast forward a couple of years and she is addicted to the latest 'Angry Birds' app on her own little gizmo.  That's the crazy thing about IT, alot of the time you really don't need to understand how things work, but once you get used to a new concept it sort of becomes the norm and you just accept it and don't question it any more.
 
At it's most basic cloud computing is just a different way of storage.  Right now we are all used to having our own hard drives.  But the difference now will be that we will have an area on the interweb where all our data is stored and we can log into it from any country or device and access all our files.  A bit like a hotmail/google account really, but you can store eveything, email, photos, music, films, depending on the size you go for.  And no matter where you login from you will see your own customised desktop.

In practise all companies will be able to sync everything in these clouds, from databases to accounting packages, and according to all the blurb it should be possible to run packages such as Talis and the library catalogue in a cloud like a big virtual server.  (IT departments across the globe shudder at what that will entail!!)

In theory it does sound advantageous, as you don't need to worry about backing up data anymore.    Personally I have two big concerns, privacy of data, and threat of hacking from an external source.  What happens if the clouds get hacked? How safe and/or private is your information?   I guess these are the things that everyone will worry about so they will have to iron them out before it takes off. 

An additional concern is, what does it mean in terms of streaming data.  In terms of dropbox and torrents, how will these be monitored and does it mean your cloud can be randomly searched?  Is it really safe to hold all your music/films in it?  I am a bit sceptical about the intentions of this longterm.  Is it going to be a way of finally stopping file sharing and music/film swapping?  Or am I just being paranoid?  Could it be that these multi billion dollar organisations are benevolently trying to make our lives easier with no ulterior motive. Interesting times ahead for sure!

All this cloud talk makes me yearn for a time when life was simpler and they were just little balls of fluff that billowed across the sky.