What is “Cloud” and what does it have to do with my device or computer? - Part 1

Cloud computing has been around for awhile now in some shape or form. It’s basically the internet and storing user information online so that they can access it online.

Users already store information online with emails, photos, etc. It has only garnered interest in the public recently with big companies like Amazon, Google and Apple adopting the word for their services. They are expanding the service to include stuff like movies and music and allowing users to interact to their content online from multiple devices.

It is basically a large collection of your personal data, hosted and stored on a company’s online server, so that you can access it anywhere from any device you own that supports the service. The information is stored on secure data centers run by the company you choose to have the service with. It is protected and can only be accessed by the user.

So why are companies and consumers interested in Cloud technology? Big companies are adopting it because it makes it easier to access information or data, from anywhere and any device. And that is an impressive thing to have for something like music, pictures and software a user has bought. Itunes with Icloud will be offering a way to access your music from anywhere and any device, Ipod, Iphone, Mac, PC, etc. without any wires or connection to a computer, but by simply accessing your Icloud account and updating your last saved settings.

I will be posting more on this topic over the summer while introducing readers on how consumer companies like Microsoft, Apple, Google, etc are using this technology.

My First Computer

I was looking through some pictures of old PC's on flickr.com when I though of my first computer. Luckily I found a good picture of an Apple IIe computer from flickr.com that came with 2 Floppy drives, the CPU and a monitor that consisted of a black back ground with green dots to represent text and animations. This was the same set up I used.

You had to swap disks sometimes to let the computer load programs and ran them to a command prompt type of system. My dad had got it from his company cheap when they switched to x186 computers.

I remember playing games like Pacman, Karateka and Digger. It was probably what sparked my interest in computers and technology.

What was your first computer?