Living in a Cloud

Cloud computing, in DVC's case via Google Apps, is what our mail accounts moved to about 18 months ago.  Our new Intranet will be crafted out of Google Sites, a component of Google Apps -- all cloud based.  For DVC one will have to have a DVC mail account to access much of what will be on the intranet site -- which will be everything that we all need to run our practices. 

I believe that this is the future of computing for many reasons among them:

• The files are stored in the Cloud, on remote servers not on your hard drive
• File sharing without having to send documents back and forth is far easier and more efficient
• Calendars are efficiently shared.  
• All future Google Cloud Apps (Operating System, e-mail, Web Browser, calendar, documents, invitations, pictures, blogs, news feeds, YouTube for video, etc) will be tightly integrated  -- this Blog is running via Google's Blogger.
  
• You don't have to purchase or upgrade common windows programs like Office
• All are available on Mobile Apps like the i-phone or Blackberry
• No more worries about back ups
• With a scanner you can upload virtually all of your paper documents -- business and personal -- as long as you have a DVC or gmail account. 
  

Perhaps best of all if you totally embrace the cloud as I have it makes no difference whatsoever what computer you are using. In fact when I believed my Windows laptop was at the end of its useful life, sometimes giving me the "blue screen of death", I went out and bought an Apple Macbook Pro to replace it. When the Windows laptop finally crashed completely I just moved over to the Macbook and kept right on. All my files and programs reside in the cloud and not on my computer so I had no need to re-install anything. Life is good. 

The New York Times has a nice article on Google's new Operating system, the cloud and their Chrome Browser which is pretty slick. When they have a Mac version I will probably move from Firefox to Chrome.  I have noticed that MS Internet Explorer sometimes does not work as well as Firefox or Chrome with Google Apps.