Cloud Computing:
To deliver supercomputing power over the Internet. – businessweek

The idea of relying on Web-based applications and storing data in the “cloud” of the Internet – technology review.

A network of services and connections that exist on the Internet – ars technica.

A term used to describe massively scalable computing that is made available to end users over Internet Protocol or other access method (i.e. “as a Service”) – wiki

I dont know if this is the future of computers as we know them today but it could be. I know this idea is not new. I remember the dummy terminials my dad worked on in the 80’s that were all connected to a mainframe somewhere else in the building. You could log into any computer on the network and all of your data and files are right there just as you left them.

Imagine this on a grand modern scale and the internet is your network. It seems to me to be a bit inefficient for everyone to have their own powerful computer, need to purchase and update software for every machine, apply software updates to every machine… Why not spend less money and resources on terminal machines and have your entire computer available to you from anywhere there is a terminal machine? Your work, your friends house, the library, the bus stop… why not?

Why stop at just having terminal machines? It seems that the computer industry is fully merging with the cell phone industry. I’m sure in a few years most phones and computers will only differ in the size they come in.

This idea will not work with the current technology we have today, but there are several applications and companies that are moving in this direction. Microsoft has released online software called Windows Live for its popular hotmail, photo-sharing, file storage, and other applications served from new data centers. Google has Google Apps with the very popular gmail and google calendar and some other good ones. Of course there is also Yahoo and IBM developing in this direction.

A very cool new one I also recommend is Photoshop Express. It is a free simple version of Photoshop that you dont even have to download. You use it right in the browser. It is similar to the Flickr photo editor called Picnik.

So try these out: