Is it all clear skies ahead for cloud computing?

Having your data stored online or running your servers via remote computers is taking off - but it can get stormy

\( \bullet \) TimAnderson

\( \bullet \) The Guardian. Thursday September 25 2008

Photograph: Jonny Le Fortune/Corbis

One Sunday in July, the images began to wink out on the popular micro-blogging service Twitter. The photo-sharing site SmugMug flashed up "Service unavailable". Jungle Disk, which advertises "Reliable online storage", stopped working. The reason: Amazon's Simple Storage Service, known as S3, went offline for up to eight hours. It was the second significant outage this year, following a similar but shorter incident in February.

Amazon S3 is a celebrated example of cloud computing, meant to be the wave of the future. "Using Amazon's S3 has about the same cost and complexity as hosting the images ourselves, but we had thought that the reliability of Amazon would be significantly higher. But that now seems wrong," said Lukas Biewald, who runs an image assessment service called FaceStat (bit.ly/cloudy2). Failures like this have a domino effect, and the more cloud computing catches on, the bigger the impact. Amazon does offer a service level agreement, but reimbursed fees are small compensation for loss of business.

So what is cloud computing? "There's a lot of confusion because everyone is tagging what they do with the word 'cloud'. It's the buzzword of the moment," says Tony Lucas, chief executive of XCalibre, aUK ISP which has created an ondemand computing service called FlexiScale (flexiscale.com).

Somewhere, nowhere

For some people, cloud computing simply means that their stuff is out there on the internet instead of being on a laptop or office server.Aclassic example is Google Mail - along with the word processing, spreadsheet and calendar applications called Google Apps - which can be used from any web browser. If your computer is stolen, the data remains safe on the net. Research shows that, at least in North America, 69% of web users make some use of such applications (bit.ly/cloudy3).

Google's Chrome browser and its mobile phone operating system, called Android, are developed specifically to enable cloud computing. Features in Chrome include desktop shortcuts to websites, a fast scripting engines and a set of extensions called Gears which allow web applications, when suitably coded, to continue working even when offline (…)

Is it all clear skies ahead for cloud computing?

Having your data stored online or running your servers via remote computers is taking off - but it can get stormy

\( \bullet \) TimAnderson

\( \bullet \) The Guardian. Thursday September 25 2008

Photograph: Jonny Le Fortune/Corbis

One Sunday in July, the images began to wink out on the popular micro-blogging service Twitter. The photo-sharing site SmugMug flashed up "Service unavailable". Jungle Disk, which advertises "Reliable online storage", stopped working. The reason: Amazon's Simple Storage Service, known as S3, went offline for up to eight hours. It was the second significant outage this year, following a similar but shorter incident in February.

Amazon S3 is a celebrated example of cloud computing, meant to be the wave of the future. "Using Amazon's S3 has about the same cost and complexity as hosting the images ourselves, but we had thought that the reliability of Amazon would be significantly higher. But that now seems wrong," said Lukas Biewald, who runs an image assessment service called FaceStat (bit.ly/cloudy2). Failures like this have a domino effect, and the more cloud computing catches on, the bigger the impact. Amazon does offer a service level agreement, but reimbursed fees are small compensation for loss of business.

So what is cloud computing? "There's a lot of confusion because everyone is tagging what they do with the word 'cloud'. It's the buzzword of the moment," says Tony Lucas, chief executive of XCalibre, aUK ISP which has created an ondemand computing service called FlexiScale (flexiscale.com).

Somewhere, nowhere

For some people, cloud computing simply means that their stuff is out there on the internet instead of being on a laptop or office server.Aclassic example is Google Mail - along with the word processing, spreadsheet and calendar applications called Google Apps - which can be used from any web browser. If your computer is stolen, the data remains safe on the net. Research shows that, at least in North America, 69% of web users make some use of such applications (bit.ly/cloudy3).

Google's Chrome browser and its mobile phone operating system, called Android, are developed specifically to enable cloud computing. Features in Chrome include desktop shortcuts to websites, a fast scripting engines and a set of extensions called Gears which allow web applications, when suitably coded, to continue working even when offline (…)

Is it all clear skies ahead for cloud computing?

Having your data stored online or running your servers via remote computers is taking off - but it can get stormy

\( \bullet \) TimAnderson

\( \bullet \) The Guardian. Thursday September 25 2008

Photograph: Jonny Le Fortune/Corbis

One Sunday in July, the images began to wink out on the popular micro-blogging service Twitter. The photo-sharing site SmugMug flashed up "Service unavailable". Jungle Disk, which advertises "Reliable online storage", stopped working. The reason: Amazon's Simple Storage Service, known as S3, went offline for up to eight hours. It was the second significant outage this year, following a similar but shorter incident in February.

Amazon S3 is a celebrated example of cloud computing, meant to be the wave of the future. "Using Amazon's S3 has about the same cost and complexity as hosting the images ourselves, but we had thought that the reliability of Amazon would be significantly higher. But that now seems wrong," said Lukas Biewald, who runs an image assessment service called FaceStat (bit.ly/cloudy2). Failures like this have a domino effect, and the more cloud computing catches on, the bigger the impact. Amazon does offer a service level agreement, but reimbursed fees are small compensation for loss of business.

So what is cloud computing? "There's a lot of confusion because everyone is tagging what they do with the word 'cloud'. It's the buzzword of the moment," says Tony Lucas, chief executive of XCalibre, aUK ISP which has created an ondemand computing service called FlexiScale (flexiscale.com).

Somewhere, nowhere

For some people, cloud computing simply means that their stuff is out there on the internet instead of being on a laptop or office server.Aclassic example is Google Mail - along with the word processing, spreadsheet and calendar applications called Google Apps - which can be used from any web browser. If your computer is stolen, the data remains safe on the net. Research shows that, at least in North America, 69% of web users make some use of such applications (bit.ly/cloudy3).

Google's Chrome browser and its mobile phone operating system, called Android, are developed specifically to enable cloud computing. Features in Chrome include desktop shortcuts to websites, a fast scripting engines and a set of extensions called Gears which allow web applications, when suitably coded, to continue working even when offline (…)

Young, smart and online

In 1996, company executive Tom Williams was seventeen. Designer Benjamin Carson was thirteen. Webmaster Monika Bough was twelve. If rock and roll and television defined the generation of their parents, now a new technology and culture are destined to define theirs.

At age twelve, just before Tomwent to high school, in Canada, he started his company, making and selling computer games. Shortly after that he spent three years with Apple Computer in California.

Tom came back to Canada in early 1996 with a plan to combine his programming skills, his frustration with the school system and his knowledge of the Internet. He and his colleagues created a new type of Internet educational magazine, aimed first at the schools across Canada and then the U.S. The irony is that the boy who left school at fourteen because he didn't like it, is now developing material which will help other kids stay in school.

Monika Bough's dad is in the U.S. Navy and he is always moving. The family has already lived in Japan, Spain, California andArgentina.

Now they moved to Whidbey Island,Washington, but that isn't a problem for Monika. No matter where they are she is always talking to all the members of GIRL (Girls Internationally wRiting Letters), the club she formed on the Internet.

GIRL started as a group of e-pals who were interested in writing and now it has hundreds of girls from all over the place who want to discover the world together, write poems, share secrets, and keep in touch with their pal Monika.

The Internet has also made a connection on the streets of East Palo Alto, California, where Benjamin Carson developed a slightly different relationship with the technology. In East Palo Alto unemployment is high, salaries low, and cyberspace seems to be a place very far away, until you come to the home of Plugged In. Here the staff and volunteers introduce local kids to the Internet.

It began about six years ago and Benjamin Carson was here at the start. Ben has a natural talent for design and working at Plugged In is helping him to focus on finishing school and going to university.

(…)

Definitely these kids are part of the first generation to grow up with life on the Internet.

Adapted from COSTA, Marcelo Baccarin. Globetrotter: Inglês para o ensino médio. Macmillan 2001. Page 41.