There’s no doubt about it, I’m in love with the cloud. Some people might not share my fascination with storage-in-the-cloud and compute-in-the-cloud models but I can’t wait to have the same computing experience regardless of the computer or device I’m using to connect to the Internet. I’ve taken it upon myself to change my workflow and digital lifestyle to get as much of my data online and make use of web-based tools until that utopian time comes. Here’s how I do it and you can do the same. [Thanks to Paul Simpson for suggesting this post.]
Fat Pipe
The first step to living the cloud life is having a fast Internet connection at your primary residence. Fast in this context applies more to your upload speed than your download speed. Subsisting on the cloud generally implies initially uploading your data to various sources online (described later) and syncing or doing smaller updates from then on.
Unfortunately, Fiber-To-The-Home Internet connections are not offered everywhere. If you’re really ready to jump in, you can generally get a business class cable connection with about 5mbps of constant upload bandwidth for around $90 USD (in the United States at least). Otherwise, you could also attend a top university where you will no doubt be offered a top-notch connection in the dorms or at least the library. For example, Georgia Tech ties directly into PeachNet, a Georgia-wide 2Gb/s fiber network connecting universities.
As I have mentioned countless times before, my current connection is a FTTH offering by DirecPATH, capable of over 80mbps down and over 20mbps up during non-peak times. It makes being on the cutting-edge of cloud life all the easier.
What’s the most important thing you need to be able to access everywhere? Email. And if its not, I would like to know what is the most important thing for you online. When Google released Gmail For Your Domain in early 2006 and subsequently the Google Apps suite later that year, I switched over from Gmail. Google Apps lets me use Google’s secure servers and pristine webmail interface with my own email address in addition to providing a suite of applications like Google Docs and Google Calendar.
While Zimbra’s webmail offering can be considered superior to Gmail/Google Apps Gmail by some, it’s a bit too much for me. Furthermore, the Google Apps suite is the hub of my workplace.
I import all of my email accounts into my Google Apps Gmail account. For my Georgia Tech email address, I would rather not have it get mixed in with my primary inbox so I created a filter that archives emails sent to my school address to a Georgia Tech label that I check regularly.
Why is webmail better? I don’t like having Mail.app or Thunderbird open at all times consuming system resources or making bootup times any bit longer than they need to be. Furthermore, if my laptop is somehow compromised anyone would be able to look at thousands of saved emails on the hard drive. If my laptop is ever stolen, and worst case scenario already on and logged in, I would be able to go to another computer and sign out all of my Gmail sessions, thus securing my email archives from a potential identity thief.
As for other reasons to use Google Apps, you can sync your Google Contacts with your iPhone through iTunes. In addition, Google recently added support for CalDAV to their Calendar app, should you be so inclined to use iCal and have it sync with Google Calendar.
Documents
Continuing with the Google Apps theme, I maintain and work on most documents with Google Docs. The exception being work documents that are stored on a company Basecamp account and documents I don’t access often. Ever since Google added PDF support, I have begun storing my PDFs (things like technical reference) on Google Docs. This gives me quick access to a rudimentary PDF viewer, as well as access to the original file. You can’t get cheaper than free document hosting.
If you use Google Gears, you can work with Google Docs in offline environments. Other documents that I don’t need to access often are stored on Amazon S3, described later in this article.
- Thoughts on Google Docs PDF Support
- Google Docs: Changing the Way I Work
- An Open Letter to the Google Docs Team
Precipitate: Google Docs, locally
To complement my Google Docs workflow, I use a Mac application called Precipitate.
Simply put, it logs into my Google Docs account and creates Spotlight-indexable executables correlating to each document. This allows me to search locally for documents on my Google Docs account and then launch those documents in my browser.
Data
I’ve talked about it many times before – I use Amazon S3 to store the bulk of my data online. Being the control freak that I am, I manually manage my files on S3 with Transmit for OS X (S3Hub is free though). I imagine that most people will be content with an application like JungleDisk, as described in How I Use Amazon S3.
Why’s that? JungleDisk can automatically sync files and provides a more user-friendly front-end with WebDAV. Just drop your files into a folder on your desktop.
I’ve talked about my Amazon S3 uses numerous times in the past so I’ll just link to related articles. If you maintain your own server be sure to check my article about how I backup my server.
- How I Use Amazon S3
- How To: Bulletproof Server Backups with Amazon S3
- Transmit App Gets Amazon S3 Support
- Why I Started Using Amazon S3
As for other backup utilities, I’ve heard good things about Dropbox but haven’t yet tested it out first hand.
Music
Ah yes, my favorite category. How do I access my music library regardless of where I am and what computer I have? I use a few tools but I’ll begin with Bandwagon.
Bandwagon lets me not only backup my iTunes library and all of its related metadata (ratings, play counts and all of that fluff) to Amazon S3 but also sync between multiple computers. I only use one computer primarily so Bandwagon serves the role of iTunes backup for me. Bandwagon backs up everything including movies, music videos, TV shows, iPod games and DRM-protected iTunes Store songs.
Next up, I also use Anywhere.FM. With Anywhere.FM I can put my entire iTunes library online, complete with playlists. That is, so long as my library is only MP3 files – currently the only supported file format.
The primary benefit is being able to access my music from any computer simply by logging into a website and using their familiar, almost iTunes-like player. In addition, Anywhere.FM lets me share playlists with friends.
When I’m on the move but still want access to my entire iTunes library, there is Simplify Media and their accompanying iPhone app. After creating an account and installing Simplify Media on my computer and iPhone, I can stream all of my music to my iPhone instantly. However, more often than not I just fire up the Pandora iPhone application instead.
For the times when I get tired of my own music collection I usually head to Pandora, TheSixtyOne or TheFeelGood.
- Why I Pay for Music
- First Impressions: Amazon MP3 Beta
- Bandwagon Launches Online iTunes Backup
- Bandwagon DIY Emerges from Closed Beta
- iTunes Add-on: Tangerine Enters a Crowded Market
- iTunes Add-on: Qloud Makes iTunes Tagging Possible
- iTunes Add-on: Soundflavor = iTunes Meets Pandora
Photo Editing
Now that productivity needs have been covered with Google Apps, I have the occasional need for quick photo-editing for a blog post. My general photo-editing needs include cropping, resizing, adjusting levels and applying a slight unsharp mask. Fortunately, current web-based photo editors are easily capable of such tasks.
The two that come to mind are Aviary Phoenix (free) and Photoshop Express (free).
Aviary Phoenix Image Editor
Photoshop Express Image Editor
If I have the luxury of being on a computer with Photoshop installed, I won’t hesitate to use it instead of a web-based tool but for simple tasks the difference is becoming negligible.
Photos
I keep all of my photos on Flickr. Easy as pie. I don’t shoot in RAW, which Flickr doesn’t support anyway, so I don’t have any problems. The more involved photographers that want to keep their original RAW files need to find their own backup solutions. A few photographers I know use Adobe Lightroom and retain all original RAW files on either a custom RAID hard drive setup or a drobo storage array.
Of course, RAW images are just files as well and can just as easily be stored on Amazon S3. Unfortunately, it isn’t easy to preview thousands of photos stored on an S3 account without some yet-to-be-developed software that knows how to deal with such files and a front-end that can preview them in a photographer-friendly way. I’m waiting on Adobe Lightroom Hosted™ before I tinker with uploading RAW files.
- Adobe Releases Lightroom
- Flickr Video: Thoughts from a Beta Tester
- HOW TO Quickie: Embedded Flickr Slideshows
- Gift Ideas for the Flickr Fanatic
- Top 7 Techie Flickr Groups
- 5 Steps to Getting that Flickr Group off the Ground
- How To: Flickr Slideshow Badge
- flickrSLiDR – My Flickr Slideshow Embedding Tool
- Photojojo Time Capsule Launches
- Review: Eye-Fi Explore Geotagging SD Card
- Review: Eye-Fi Wireless 2GB SD Card
Browser Config, Syncing
Last but not least – the user experience afforded by one’s main browser. You know what I’m talking about. Going from your customized Firefox configuration with tons of bookmarks and extensions to a clean, untouched Firefox install at your campus library just feels weird. For the first issue of taking care of bookmarks, I use the delicious add-on and Cmd+D my bookmarks to the web.
Then there is Mozilla Weave. Weave is a Firefox add-on that allows users to sync a lot of their browser’s data and configurations in hopes of being able to provide the same browser experience regardless of the computer. It is an early-stage Mozilla Labs product but I think it will be something to watch in the coming months.
Weave registration is currently closed as it seems Mozilla’s services server has reached its load limit. On the bright side, Weave uses a fairly standard WebDAV configuration with user authentication to store data, so you can make your own Mozilla Weave server. That being said, I’ve tried many times and I can’t get Weave to accept my configuration. Consider this a work in progress.
If you’re interested in creating your own Mozilla Weave server, you can change the username by going to about:config in Firefox and then changing the value of extensions.weave.username. Enter in your desired username, setup a WebDAV server (link below), provide Firefox the URL in the Weave preferences and hypothetically you should be set. Once I can nail down a solid Weave server config, I’ll be sure to write about it here.
If anyone can setup and configure a Weave-friendly distro with user authenticated WebDAV over HTTPS, I’d love to use it as an Amazon EC2 image. It probably wouldn’t be too hard to setup an EC2 Weave server and sell out spots to users for a few dollars..
Thoughts on Living the Cloud Life
Living in the cloud, as trite and overused as that already sounds, is not for everyone. Even if everyone had gigabit connections, there is not yet enough software or innovative web services to take advantage of cloud-hosted personal files and media. Time will tell.
How do you use the cloud or dare I say, gasp, “cloud technology?”
If you read this far, what’s your favorite type of cloud? I quite fancy lenticular clouds and clouds shaped like elephants.
Do you forward your email to your hosted account or do you fetch it?
I’d love to take advantage of all these cloud based services, but that really isn’t a great solution when the fastest connection I can get here is 5mbps down. So for now I’ve got Mobile Me for basic email/contacts/calender syncing between devices and that’s pretty much the extent of my cloud life.
I have all my email go through GApps as well. Ingo, you don’t need to forward anything, you set your mx settings at your web host to use Google Apps.
I really like the Zoho suite as well, similar to Google Docs but many other features – including the recent ability to use macros in your spreadsheets, etc.
NetVibes/Google IG are also good solutions to be able to access links/info from any system.
I use Toodledo for my todo list, but have been playing with my friend’s little project called <a href="http://scribbleit.net">Scribble</a> – just a little todo list app that you can access anywhere.
Great article! I’m looking forward to trying a lot of the good services you talked about (Precipitate, Bandwagon, Anywhere.fm). As for my use of cloud technology, it so far consists of Flickr, Google Docs (mainly for class notes, my expand for more in-depth stuff, thought Docs still feels a little clunky), and Foxmarks & Delicious for bookmarks. Foxmarks syncs all of my bookmarks, and Delicious is for my interesting and shareable bookmarks.
Thanks for another great post (or should I say article?) Paul! The way you use the cloud and its technologies probably will be a common scenario for more people in the future, as these services (and many others) will persuade more people to go from offline to online and “feel” the same…
Personally, I use a much more simple approach to the cloud. I subscribed to MobileMe, since I find it very appealing to be able to manage all of my “net assets”under the same interface and to sync automatically and flawlessly.
Now, flawlessly isn’t the perfect word to describe my MobilMe experience for the last 3 weeks. Me.com mail and calendar are not working, iDisk has more downtime than uptime and Apple tech support keeps apologizing (now offering a 2 month free extension). But when it works, MobileMe is just what I want. I keep there an essential set of my current work files, my address book, photos and a small beautiful personal site and I use the same looking Safari with all my bookmarks in either my mac mini or macbook pro.
However, I am not blind to all other (and often better) services. GMail will remain my primary email, not because of Me.com current problems, but for Gmail’s superior interface and flexibility. And I keep an Flickr account to share images with my amateur photo team.
But Google Docs are still pretty basic for me. My radiology residency involves a lot of paper writing, which also means I need decent bibliography support. Therefore, I regularly use Word and Endnote saving all my documents and .pdf articles directly to iDisk, so I can work from their offline copies in my MBP anywhere. Moreover, I’m looking forward to access all of these files through my iphone when it hits Greek stores probably in September.
So, my workflow is pretty basic right now, but I think that a working version of MobileMe is the right place to start exploring the clouds…
This is one seriously awesome post, Paul. Like you I really appreciate having as much stuff online as possible; not for the ability to access my files/settings on other machines, because I take my macbook just about everywhere with me, but for backup, and the ability to easily share with others.
But thanks to this post I now realize I haven’t been doing nearly as much of this as I could have. This is the first I’ve heard of Precipitate, and any of those music/media storage services.
Thanks for the entry.
Oh, and my favorite type of cloud would probably be fair weather cumulus clouds that take on interesting shapes. I also like….tag clouds.
I like to think of myself as rather net savy, but you seriously just blew my mind. This post is def bookmarked and will be revisited often as I venture into a few of my yet unexplored sections of the cloud.
77000 kb/s ??? I’m close to 5000 kb/s ?? holy smokes! it would take forever to transfer my 3500 .mp3′s up online :)
But – although there are a few things I never heard of before … what if you are NOT in the USA and don’t have access to Amazon S3? Are there any alternatives?
Looks like gmail doesn’t work great for you, i suggested you write this article months ago, no reply! :P
The cloud software has not quite made it there yet for me to sell my house back here on the ground, but I can see that it has the potential.
The problem I have is that, I’m not always connected to the cloud and I most certainly can’t take my FTTH connection with me. Have you tried to use some of these services on a WWAN connection? I can’t imagine trying to use Avairy on a slow connection like that.
Like you said, you’ll need around 5 Mbps and until we have those speeds everywhere over WWAN, I’ll keep the core of my data local.
My big question is what happens when you get locked out of your GMail account (which seems to be an all too frequent occurrence for some people)? Do you keep any kind of backup of your mail?
I have a similar process to you as far as keeping my data in the cloud (especially in regard to Amazon S3) but the music options were new to me. Thanks for that!
One thing I’ve recently added that has kind of rounded out my data storage options is Evernote. For all those random bits of information that aren’t easily or efficiently stored as files (from the perspective of being able to search and retrieve them later) it works spectacularly.
Just one more thing you might want to add to your own bag of tools. :)
Paul, if you need Dropbox invite I can send you one. :) I asked (and got) bunch of invites from developers to give out in my blog (did review post on Dropbox) so I still have some left.
My opinion that service is size-constrained (at least until they offer paid subscriptions) but very easy to use.
Instead of Gmail for email, try Zenbe.com — it can pull in all of your email accounts, has calendars, todo lists, and Twitter, and is hella pretty.
I have similar tastes in the cloud atmosphere… I use Gmail, Gdocs and Flickr mostly.
^_^
Animoe.net
Good article. I appreciated the suggestions on moving your music library to the cloud. Been using Jungle Disk for S3 and it suddenly stopped being able to access my buckets.
I have a 6TB server for all of my media (HD movies, pictures, music, etc.) I would love to move this into the cloud, but the cost is just way too high and the download speeds (and file accessibility) are no where close to what a local solution offers. I do backup all of my impossible-to-recreate files offsite, but the rest lives on redundant drives in my house.
Good article, but as already pointed out, there’s a serious flaw to your method. Not everyone has access everywhere they go. I’m often out in the mountains with my laptop. No connection. I get a ton of work done but wouldn’t if it was stuck in an unavailable cloud.
I prefer a semi-cloud method. I can get to all my email online through gmail, but if it’s down, or I have no connection, or gmail decides to delete my account, I still have my email on my laptop. I simply don’t have interesting enough email for anyone to sort through it all if my laptop was stolen.
There are negatives to everything, and certainly, at this point to living in the cloud.
Great post and I hope this gets picked up elsewhere. I haven’t read a better tutorial on how to live a more untethered lifestyle. I was a power Outlook user and Outlook WAS great and webmail products couldn’t touch it for a long time… until now. I’ve happily ditched Outlook for gmail and now my exchange accounts are sent to my gmail account too.
.PST files are a nightmare to manage and even though google’s calendar and contacts functionality isn’t great — I’m a pretty happy camper. If only my google contacts would synch with LinkedIn and Facebook… but oh — I forgot — that data isn’t mine. Facebook owns my friends not me right? LinkedIn owns my contacts right? Right…
Paul,
Great piece of literature you’ve written here. I’m all forward to the “cloud life” as you are. Back in 2006, i would call the cloud life medium the “webtop”, and it coined my blog’s name, “webtopmania”.
However you really outpaced me with your use of S3 and music online storage. I’m still reluctant in using paid services, though I feel i’ll get to use them somewhere in the near future :)
I like seeqpod.com to hear to my favorite playlists on my desktop, or on my iphone (though their iphone webpage could use some improvements…).
I also use a cool free service called http://tarpipe.com that looks like yahoo pipe at first, but in fact, it allows you to upload stuff to the cloud in a very efficient manner by using email and/or gtalk (kind of like a fusion of ping.fm and yahoo pipies). I use it to send photos to flickr and then to send a twitter with a tinyurl to the photo from my iphone. It’s pretty nifty …
And as for my favorite clouds, well :) They’re white and fluffy, and running free under an intense blue sky.
Cheers,
Paul, as I saw with this post you made a lot of people re-considering their view about the “Cloud” and how to use it or even more be part of it! Congrats man! (see the lots trackbacks/pings)
P.S.: Problem with Anywhere.fm is that I have only 24mbps connection that means a bit more than 1mbps upload via good servers here at Greece. It will take me ages to upload 6500+ .mp3 songs!
Cumulonimbus, baby!
Great post Paul. Don’t have a Mac, so miss out on Bandwagon, but am on Anywhere.FM right now.
Nice (and long) post. It’s amazing (and scary) to see how much of the Internet world Google controls. An online maifa, if you will.
Heaven help you if you forget your anywhere.fm password though … no way I can see to reset it.
Hey! I also suggested this!! I got the e-mail from Skribit and everything.. boohoo.. :’(
Credit please?? Pretty please?? http://www.darjon.co.nr
Anyway.. great post.. erm I mean.. I suppose.. ;)
Great article. My tastes are very similar – yet I never really got into aviary. Gonna have to check out Bandwagon too. I’m a little skeptical on Anywhere.FM.. how do they support themselves? Let alone TONS of space and bandwidth .. the legality of it as well o_O.
Paul: What’s this Live Q&A stuff on the bottom? Is there an article coming on this? I think it’s rather annoying.. even more so that it isn’t something I’d use. Also from a design basis.. like layout (I see your header top left first, and then my eyes dart down to “Live Q&A”). What’s the purpose? I get the whole question&answer thing.. but why here?
Useful article Paul. I’m pretty close behind the cloud life you lead, though I’ve not done Amazon S3 or stored iTunes online mainly due to both costing money. If it’s free I’m using it. So my 5gb account at 5 box.net has been put to great use. Another is videos, I love vimeo for that and for finances, mint.com. Otherwise, I think you’ve got it just about covered.
This is a great post Paul. Keep em coming!
Well since my last name is Cloud I guess you could say I’m living the Cloud life :)
“Cloud computing apps are for suckers. If there is an alternative that runs locally on your own machine, it will always be better.” – John Dvorak
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2328299,00.asp
I love this post! So much great content.
I also began using Google Apps, and am moving toward having most everything there. I was a little hesitant at first, but more comfortable now that I’ve been using it for a few months. Very easy to do, and you can’t beat it not clogging up system processes and the hard drive.
Long live the cloud…. :)
This is an excellent post . Thanks a lot . I am grateful to you .
@jerry – yeah that’s Dvorak for you. He’s known for always taking the “controversial” side of arguments entirely in hopes of receiving better traffic on his blog.
First thing that came to mind reading your cloud fascination is that you’re a good target for a ‘cloud pc or notebook’.
I won’t be surprised to read that you’re also a wanderlust and hardly stays in one place. It just makes perfect sense if only I have the same blazing connection.
Best.
alain
mor.ph
I currently do many of the things you posted however have never seen the advantage of Amazon S3 over a VPS server. I currently have an unmanaged VPS with a large amount of excess disk space and bandwidth, and the provider does daily backups. It work out about a 3rd of the price of S3…am I missing something here?
Great article Paul. Great to see someone else who doesn’t break out into a fit when the word “Cloud” is used!
What VPS service are you using? Ricky?
@Ricky Mills – thanks for the comment. In regards to:
Your own VPS server starts with a monthly cost, might not be as secure as S3 and even with backups hardware failures can still occur – how long does it take to get in touch with the hosting company to restore the drive and do a backup restore? For me I like to have all my data on something unrelated to my VPS, and being on Amazon’s architecture it’s very secure (much more than just a password.. certs and then if you want your own encyprtion on top of that). The main point is it’s cheap as hell! No reason not to use it.. you can’t have too many backups either, maybe use both?
I keep re reading this and still can’t convince myslef to make the ‘jump’. At the end of the day I just don’t like the idea of handing over responsibility for my data to someone else I guess.
My current workflow means I spend a fair amount of time up in the clouds, but I return to base each evening.
Thanks for sharing how you do it! i’m definitely still torn between the 2 worlds, but dream of the day i can have everything online.
one issue is work. i work for a co. that is on outlook and every thing else MS. it will be a while before large organizations adopt a completely ‘cloud computing’ lifestyle. though it will come some day.
i hope Mac comes out with v2 of the air some time this yr or early next. when that drops I’m all over it.
btw … this is my 1st time to your blog. nice to meet you and thanks for putting out some good reading.
–
http://twitter.com/franswaa
This guy is a true web Ninja with a capital N. I want to study his samurai ways and learn to use the Internetz just like he does.
Now that Anywhere.FM is gone, what are some other alternatives?
use google chrome to sync all the settings, extensions, themes etc etc :) much better right ?
Another odd example in combating ‘physical’ fuel feeding DRM:
Apple has also applied for a patent to – no joke – extend digital rights management to tennis shoes and other articles of clothing. “What is desired,” the patent application says, “is a method of electronically pairing a sensor and an authorized garment.” It continues:As used herein an authorized garment is a garment sanctioned to be electronically paired with an authenticated (i.e., certified) sensor. Once the garment and sensor are electronically paired, the sensor can receive (and in some cases process) sensing information (such as garment performance data or user performance data) received from the garment. Since only authorized garments are configured to electronically pair with authenticated sensors, a user (or manufacturer) can be assured that the sensing data received by the sensor is both accurate and consistent with its intended use (a sensor designed for use with running shoes can not properly be used with dance shoes, for example).Apple views tennis-shoe DRM as a way to head off what it sees as a potential plague of sneaker hacking. “Some people,” the patent application observes, “have taken it upon themselves to remove the sensor from the special pocket of the [iPod-linked] Nike+ shoe and place it at inappropriate locations (shoelaces, for example) or place it on non-Nike+ model shoes.”
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Thanks for sharing
regards .
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How To: Live the Cloud Life: http://twurl.nl/3wxzbt
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Reading @stammy ’s article on living life in the cloud. http://bit.ly/WsZdc Thinking of doing the same.
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