Sometimes I can't help but speculate

I am loving working in the software industry. I simply can't learn enough and I am always, always pushing myself to learn more about emerging technologies and software trends. As of late, "Cloud Computing" has been a big topic of discussion. I would explain cloud computing as data storage and services running in data centers stored somewhere other than your physical location or directly on your PC. For example, QuickenOnline stores your financial information on a servers and databases behind highly secured firewalls and other security devises. Intuit manages or outsources the management of these data-centers to host other services that are accessed via the web browser.

What this allows us to do is to store very little on our computers and have an internet connection. Cloud computing has stimulated a large technological change. For example, the netbooks or mini-computers require few software programs installed or even data storage (i.e.: most commonly called Hard drives). They simply process the browser and you can virtually run a word processing program like GoogleDocs, other applications provided through the browser.

I have been speculating myself about this growing trend to run software in data-centers through the browser without installing software on individual machines and think that one day most if not all software will be run in data-centers in "the clouds". This, of course, has its down falls to which I will explain in a minute. I came to this conclusion by watching more and more software written to be run using a web browser an not installed on individual machines. These browser run programs could be written to run on mobile devise browsers too. Consider iphone applications, browser add-ons linking to web applications, and stand-alone web applications.

Without a ton a research done in this space I blindly assumed that this will be one of the next great technology shifts. However I recently come across some news articles that explain why it may not happen as fast as I think or possible not at all.

Jonathan Zittrain of the New York Times writes the following, "Internet evangelists insist that it's only a matter of time before we stop storing information on our PCs and instead keep it online-or as the geeks say, "in the cloud," said Jonathan Zittrain. At first blush, this seems like a "sensible and inevitable" development. With your stuff in the cloud, it's not a catastrophe to lose your laptop, anymore than losing your glasses would permanently destroy your vision."

But the cloud "comes with real dangers." For one thing, the Internet is far more vulnerable to hackers - just ask folks at Twitter: a hacker who guessed an employee's password was able to snoop through "a trove of Twitter's corporate documents stored too conveniently in the cloud." What's more, thanks to the Patriot Act, federal investigators can track your online wanderings via your Internet service provider without you ever knowing about it. "The FBI's own audits have shown there can be plenty of overreach" in such searches. Now imagine how much more nosy an authoritarian government like China's could be. Some consideration of unintended consequences is in order before "we fly directly into the cloud." (excerpt taken from the Week - July 31st 2009)

This is a fun trend to watch and I hope cloud computing technologies overcome the technical difficulties and go on to expand even more the definition of being mobile. I love the thought of accessing all of my data, services, and applications through the internet. So, we wait and see...

Pixetell: Another exciting technology coming soon

Today I was going through my outrageous unread rss feeds and found this awesome new offering called Pixetell through a VentureBeat blog post. The company name who created and offers this offering is Ontier Inc. I would love to see this be adopted. Here is the demo.