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Can You Go Twenty-Four Hours Without the Cloud?

by J. Conor Sullivan on May 16, 2012 · 1 comment

It’s hard to believe that the cloud has come so far that we’re addressing this topic already. Less than a year ago we were busy writing posts introducing the general public to the concept of cloud technologies and cloud storage. Now we’re going to prod your skull on the likelihood of whether or not you can go a full day without tapping into a cloud-computing product. You may be thinking that you clearly can, but we’re willing to bet that it’s not quite as easy as it sounds.

Cloud technology has found its way into almost everything we Internet users do as a digital culture. One of the first questions you should ask yourself, regarding getting off the cloud, is how long you can survive without your smartphone? Almost everything that makes your smartphone run, is thanks in part to the cloud. Do you download apps? If so, guess what? Apps are all digital files that you download from a remote server. Thus, they are stored in the cloud. So, if you’re cutting the cloud from your life for a day, you gotta cut your smartphone apps too.

How about streaming music? Do you stream music from Pandora, Spotify, or anywhere else? If so, you’ll have to quit that for a day too. The music you’re streaming is being stored on a virtual server, making it available to you through virtual storage and streaming.

Next up you’ll have to spend a day without your streaming movies, TV shows, and on-demand features on your television. All of these digital assets are completely reliant on virtualization.  Without virtual storage, Netflix would have nowhere to store their database of movie files, to shoot them directly to your living room, phone, and PC.

Have you grown accustomed to driving with your GPS? If so, you better be prepared to unfold an old-fashioned map. GPS technology is fully integrated with the cloud, and the pinpoint location technology is only half the story. All the data in a GPS regarding road names, addresses, and detours is all part of a real-time updated cloud library.

If you remove virtualization from your life for just a single day, you’ll have to spend that day without your smartphone capabilities, your streamed music, your on-demand movies and television, and you’ll have to teach yourself how to get around town all over again.

Now, we’re not saying this is impossible. Clearly, there’s going to be a time (hopefully) in all our lives where we can “get away from it all” and find ourselves camping next to a lake with no cellphone signal, while reading a good book by the campfire. So, yes, there is probably going to be a day where you will avoid using the cloud. Just good luck getting to a remote location without your GPS and smartphone!

Cloud Quiz: How Long Does the Average Hard Drive Last?

by J. Conor Sullivan on April 25, 2012 · 1 comment

When talking about cloud storage, one of the primary concerns is figuring out why you would rather have someone else watch over your files, instead of getting an external hard drive. The simple answer is: an external hard drive will eventually breakdown, whereas your data in the cloud is backed up three times over, and is at no threat of ever crashing.

This week’s cloud quiz will test your knowledge on the life expectancy of your hard drive; which may give you a little more persuasion to move your files into the cloud as soon as you finish with the quiz.

So, without any further delay:

 

Q: What is the average lifespan of a hard drive?

A. Three Years

B. Five Years

C. Seven Years

D. Nine Years

Just in case we created a state of total panic in some of our readers, we’ll quickly let you know that answer A. is incorrect. Your hard drive should last longer than three years, so there’s no need to sprint off to the nearest computer store (yet).

Next, we’ll address any false sense of relief you may be feeling if you guessed answer D. Nine years is well above the average lifespan for a hard drive. Nine years would be pretty nice though, as you’d be able to use one external hard drive to transfer data on several generations of PCs and laptops.

This leaves us with two options: five and seven years. I hate to be the pessimist and leave you with a bad taste in your mouth, but the answer is B. Five years. According to LIVEdigtally, you shouldn’t count on your hard drive lasting much longer than five years. Of course, these numbers vary from case to case; but we’re going with an overall average here, so this is what you should expect.

The scariest thing here is that you can never know when your hard drive is going to go. So, even if you’re extremely diligent with backing up your files, you may always be a step or two behind when your hard drive crashes. This is why cloud storage is such a beneficial technology. You can easily and constantly back up your files onto your cloud server, just by using a simple desktop application. Your files can be dragged and dropped into the cloud and be fully uploaded moments later.

If you’re anywhere near your five year threshold, just take a second and think about the benefits of the cloud. Once you’re in the cloud, you’ll be amazed at the feeling of freedom. You’ll never have to worry about the state of your files again, and the fear of a computer crash will be as obsolete as your latest dead hard drive.

Nomophobia… The Side Effect of the Cloud

by J. Conor Sullivan on April 9, 2012 · 1 comment

The cloud presents a plethora of benefits for all of its users. It has helped integrate the digital experience with users’ everyday lives in an increasingly seamless fashion. But has the convenience of cloud computing created new expectations for instant digital gratification? This week we will discuss nomophobia (no-mobile-phone phobia) and its roots in the cloud.

The term nomophobia is new to the lexicon, and was recently given a pretty lengthy write up at the Indianist. The concept has been around for a pretty long while now, as we’ve all seen movies and TV shows for over a decade featuring business-type characters who cannot get away from their cell phone. However, nomophobia doesn’t limit itself to the overachievers of the world.

Due to the importance that many people place on social networking, it’s very hard for some to exist without constant contact to their networks. Now that Facebook and Gmail are synced up with many of today’s most popular mobile devices, the social-web experience is becoming synonymous with daily life. We all notice people sitting alone at the coffee shop, and instead of reading a book or the paper, we are seeing people staring at their 3×5 inch mobile device. The mobile smartphone has replaced so many media mediums, that people can completely rely on it for being a complete entertainment and communication device while away from home.

So, is nomophobia a real issue? Are people actually living in fear of not having their mobile devices on them? I’d argue that yes, it absolutely is becoming a reality. E-mail, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter have quickly gained audiences so devoted, that there is almost an addiction. The services update in real time, so the information is never-ending. The fear of missing some vital update is a real concern for some users. Is this a rational fear to worry about? No, probably not. However, many fears are irrational; but they still do exist.

However, can we blame the cloud for all of its enhancements, for creating this “need to know now” anxiety? No, I don’t think that’s fair. The cloud is a service, an evolution to technology, that was inevitable. There may be some side effects to its convenience, such as hoards of people staring at tiny plastic and glass screens all day, or people living in fear of losing their tiny plastic and glass screens. The fault cannot be put on the cloud as a technology, but more on us as a species. We have a hard time letting go of something that becomes routine for us.

Checking Facebook and Twitter every ten minutes has seeped into the routine of many Americans, and as a result, Americans are living in fear of breaking that routine. This is a small side effect, in the march to the greater good. So, my advice to all of you nomophobes out there: suck it up; the internet will still be there when you find your phone.

Cloud Media vs Physical Media: Are Consumers Ready?

by J. Conor Sullivan on March 29, 2012 · 1 comment

The cloud’s ascension to becoming a staple of the modern Web experience has been fast to say the least. Today users are buying their music directly from cloud-based stores — such as Amazon and iTunes — and CDs are quickly becoming an obsolete medium. Movies are being streamed on Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, and YouTube at an ever-increasing clip, while DVD sales slowly diminish, and the Kindle and iPad are quickly becoming printed-book killers. Earlier this week, we discussed the cloud movement within video games, and decreed that the physical video game will soon be a thing of the past.

What does this all mean? How much longer are businesses willing to continue to produce physical products that aren’t actually necessary? Today we will discuss whether or not it’s fruitful for businesses to alienate consumers who aren’t “in the cloud” just yet.

A statistic that should shock most people reading this article from their internet connection, is that only 78.6% of people in North America are internet users. Last November, Gizmodo published an article that stated that 3.5 million Americans are still using dial-up internet. These are very large demographics, and not ones to be ignored.

Any Internet-based media not only requires an internet connection, but more often than not, it requires broadband service. This means that any company that is currently making their bottom line by producing physical media, would be potentially eliminating a large percentage of customers by going cloud-only. Until these statistics narrow a bit, no business should make the leap to cloud-only media just yet.

However, this is different for start-up media businesses. For companies like Apple, who never sold physical media, a virtual store is a great option. They don’t have any existing bottom line to risk, so the absence of a physical location creates a purely profitable marketplace. This is the same for the solely Internet-based game company, OnLive. The market for cloud-only consumption is there, and if a company is getting their feet wet in the personal-media sales game: cloud-only service is a great way to keep overhead low.

In closing, although the cloud is clearly the future of media, I don’t think that the world is ready to eliminate physical media options just yet, because the demand for them is still too high. There’s also many people who don’t like change, and would rather do things the way they always have. The Internet’s dominance is evident, and years from now, we’ll be seeing CDs and DVDs on display at history museums. For now though, it’s beneficial to keep familiar options available.

Are Video Games Headed to the Cloud?

March 27, 2012

If you were born after 1975, you have been a first-hand witness to the rapid evolution of video gaming. Beginning with simple, large pixelated games like Pong, video games quickly grew to feature 8-bit characters with distinguishable faces, which would later progress into 16-bit realms that resembled animated cartoons. Today, gamers experience worlds that frighteningly [...]

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Cloud Quiz: Personal Records Compromised Every Year

March 26, 2012

The safety of your files and information is of the utmost importance when surfing the Web, and the internet is all too full of creepers lurking for your personal data to use for all sorts of unsaid devilish activity. This week’s Cloud Quiz will test your knowledge of personal security breaches you may be shocked [...]

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Cloud Quiz: How Many Searches a Month Are There for “Cloud”

March 15, 2012

Cloud computing and storage have not only become an integral part of the Web experience, but they’ve also become hot-button search items, and as the its technological advances become more and more prevalent, the term is finding itself ever more embedded into our societal lexicon.  So then, how do we find out just how relevant [...]

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Privacy vs Security: The Modern Compromise

March 7, 2012

Three of our regular In the Personal Cloud editors have been given the task to sound off about the Security vs Privacy debate. On the one hand, users want the ability to determine what pieces of information about themselves are accessible and to whom. On the other, users also want the ability to conveniently access [...]

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Cloud Quiz: Do You Know the Cloud When You See It?

February 23, 2012

The cloud is increasingly becoming an indispensable part of the Web experience. It’s now such a standard tool to personal Web browsing that we’re pretty sure you’re using the cloud a lot more often than you realize — and don’t even know it. This week’s Cloud Quiz will test your knowledge of cloud-storage technologies, while [...]

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Cloud Quiz: When Did the Cloud Get Its Name?

February 15, 2012

“The cloud” is a two-word phrase we’ve been tossing around since the advent of this blog. It’s a term that’s officially part of the modern day lexicon, and everyone understands what it refers to (or so we hope). So, when did “the cloud” originate? How long have we been hearing and referencing it? This week’s [...]

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