In Which I reply to a forum post concerning Clouds

You may not know exactly what it is, but chances are you use some form of cloud computing. This trend has accelerated as we move to smaller, more mobile devices. I read and commented to this interesting Nokia Conversations post about cloud netbook operating systems. I disagree with the commenter Illusionado that Nokia has lost its mind with regards to computing. I see Nokia embracing web/cloud technologies and it is right to do so as they are the perfect complement to their smartphones.

Original netbooks only had a couple gig of storage, and cloud connectivity made sense. Most now are seen as laptop replacements and have 160GB hard drive, so these "Cloud OSs" don't make a ton of sense. What does make sense is to have that cloud data cached or sync'd to the local machine w/ all its space so it is there when either you or the service is offline.

But that older netbook-style of computing translates perfect to the new smartphones, that can do some things, are always connected, and therefore fully augmented by the cloud computing infrastructure.

And the other important trend of which Nokia appears to be aware, these services need to be available to users of less feature-rich phones.

Ovi Files is a perfect example of this type of service.

If you don't know, Ovi Files allows you to make 10GB of your files available at anytime via a web browser, even if your MacOSX or Windows computer is turned off; even from your phone! And if the computer is turned on, you can access the entire hard drive from your mobile browser with click links to download, email, or share the files with other people. This is true mobile computing on the go.

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