I keep pictures in PicasaWeb and use Gmail. But I also synch Gmail to Outlook on my PC, and the pix are backed up at home. So I use the cloud, but back up locally too.

Stallman has control issues (amongst others) – LOL :)

The way I see it, cloud computing’s OK as long as it’s not a walled garden (ahem, FaceBook?)

As long as you can export the data back from he server to the client in some kind of open format, it’s acceptable to me.

For example, I export my WordPress blog (.XML) and my Google contacts (.CSV) regularly for backup purposes.

quick guess is that ringcentral is running asterisk in the background…

http://www.asterisk.org/

For a service like RingCentral, which is a virtual PBX system complete with extensions, voicemail, voip and other phone company features including fax, many of these are not available on the desktop. Cloud computing is the only way to have all those features in one place.

As is so often the case, both camps are correct about the extreme positives and negatives possible… but it’s the “third way” in between that is the best way to go: use “the cloud” but do so on your own terms, and keep hold of your data.

As an example of how we do it and how it works for us, my Windoze laptop recently failed to go into hibernate properly and after travelling with it running the harddrive physically crashed.

I was on the road, but bought a new harddrive the next day, inserted the boot CD for Kubuntu that I had in my bag for just such a situation, and within a few hours of discovering the problem (after only an hour of simply typing apps that I wanted into Adept package manager and clicking “install”) I was back working as normal.

All of my tools are “in the cloud” to some extent: IMAP email, SVN code repositories, Google Docs (backed up automatically to one of our servers) and other Web Apps like those from 37Signals (which again give you very easy interfaces to get all of your data off of them – again to backup yourself on a separate server) and some internal tools we’ve made ourselves.

Obviously I don’t need to run the hardware (I’ve worked in hosting before, and I’m happy for someone else to deal with it!), but that doesn’t mean sacrificing either your data or your ownership of that data. The best of both worlds is readily attainable, and if you have a problem with a specific provider (i.e. Google) then just use one of their many competitors.

As an added aside given the nature of this site, it also allows me to do 80-90% of my work on my HTC x7500 with VGA-out and ThinkOutside bluetooth keyboard and mouse!

IMHO it depends on YHO (your humble opinion). I’m a big fan of RMS but some of my personal info are not in the cloud nor in my mac. Having been following your blog for a while I think you are a true believer when it comes to using the right tool for the task. I think this means that if the tool is on the cloud than you have to trust the cloud. Stretching RSM’s idea anybody should run his own mailserver and, why not, own a Telco company to get access to the internet. Not such a handy solution, IMHO. Clearly this, I think, is not taking away any value from freedom-respecting-computing.

The cloud is useful and allows the regular folks all to leverage its power especially for online collaboration, secondary storage, email etc etc. The cloud will continue to be increasingly present in our lives. HOWEVER, I will NOT depend on it for sole access to applications or data. That path is strewn with risks that I cannot accept. For the foreseeable future I still intend to balance the power of the cloud with the power of controlling my apps and data in an off-line world.

While I agree that cloud apps and data have their place, we are living in an increasingly dangerous and unstable world. The public network is itself a target.

Clearly, cloud computing would be improved if it adopted standards for a more robust model of data replication and region-service availability. We must remember the Internet started as a DoD concept of robust survivability in a very imperfect word.

@Ben Smith

Your blog says “IMHO, his idealistic views lower his credibility of the subject…” with respect to Stallman.

Your idealistic view that Google will never own all of our data may be equally idealistic and by your own (weird) logic discrediting of any opinion that you may have.

I’ll make you a deal. If you know who Robert David Steele is without asking a search engine then I’ll bow to your authority on Stallman, otherwise, I recommend that you use the Internet for more than just posting opinions about repackaged news about opinions… like say RESEARCH.

I fully agree with Stallman. My biggest thing is our precious data is at the mercy of someone you didn’t hire, haven’t screened, can’t depend on to keep your stuff secure. With the pay cuts IT jobs have taken in the last couple of years, who knows what the caliber of the person that has been donned with the task of maintaining a server environment that your data resides on. Cloud computing in the business segment is not likely to happen anytime soon, which is not a good outlook for the netbook market.