It's all in the Cloud. Now, if you could just get to it...

There are two big buzzwords in the realm of mobile computing: the Cloud and Presence. Presence is where the contact info I have in my phone gets updated with where you are, or what you're doing, or both. The s60 app for Jaiku does this very well. But today I am going to write about the Cloud and what it is or what it can do for you, if anything.

The Cloud (okay, last time I will italicize that) is this magical place where all your important data (music, photos, documents, resume, biology notes, e-mail, etc.) is stored. And not only that, but it is accessible at anytime from anywhere. Yes, that means that you can get to your resume at a moment's notice via your phone and send it to the director of HR with whom you just spent two hours flirting, or you can use your mother's computer to pull up the latest and greatest pics of her new grandson, or you can get to the same music from your work computer, your laptop, and your mp3 player, all without having to transfer it manually.

This is what you want, right? Your data, anytime. It sounds easy, but is apparently really difficult to accomplish. If you are a Mac user, you may be familiar with Apple's iLife setup. This is a pretty good example of your life in the clouds. That was their macbook offering, and coupled with the .mac service, it allowed those initiated into the Mac culture to keep much of their data online and available from various Apple products. Now, with the release of their new, underwhelming iPhone, they are unveiling a service called MobileMe, which looks to be an enhanced version of the .mac platform.

Nokia is slowly releasing their online cloud service, called Ovi. Right now, it has Share on Ovi, which is the pictures and video sharing site. They have also released the N-Gage portion, which is the gaming service, allowing you to play other people over your mobile phone like an X-box live kind of thing. Location is a big thing for Nokia, so they have also integrated the Maps functions into this one-stop site. Music is there, kind of. I guess it works if you are in the UK, as there is not really a "U.S. site" for Nokia Music. (I do not understand the idea of a country-defined music site. I say just put it up there and if I like it, I will buy it. I am sure the backwards-thinking music companies are behind this restriction and we will have to live with it, or just download the music elsewhere). However, I have had a really difficult time trying to get anywhere with the music portion. Partly because it requires Internet Explorer and that is not readily accessible for me, and partly because it only marginally works.There is a desktop client (think iTunes) and it just crashes on me when it tries to scan my music collection.

The problem with the Nokia Ovi suite is that it is so disjointed. Each and every one of those applications above require a different login account. Even if they all worked perfectly, I would still find the necessity of multiple different login accounts a major barrier to actually using the service. But this place really has the ability to turn the Nokia handsets into the premier personal organization and data device. If Ovi had a single login account, and if Ovi allowed you to connect multiple devices to it, and if they integrate their acquisition of Avvenu into the gamut of services, this will truly be a useful cloud.

For the Cloud to work, it needs to work seamlessly, requiring at most for the user to enter their credentials once and then it should just start synchronizing the data on the device (phone, laptop, computer, chumby, etc) to the cloud.

And for Nokia to make their Ovi service to work, it should be open to all devices, not just the high-end Nokia Nseries and Eseries lines of devices. It would be smart for Ovi to allow all devices to connect. Of course, I think it would be great if it "just worked" with any device someone wanted to connect; but, realistically, it would make sense to offer, say, a subset of features to some devices, and provide the full experience to those devices which this service is promoting.

In sum: the Cloud = your data, anywhere. But the skies are clear at the moment.