I’ve dabbled in “the cloud” for some time. The majority of my digital photos were (publicly) hosted on Flickr until I tired of repeated theft reports and Yahoo censorship incidents. And for awhile, I was backing up on Mozy’s servers. More recently, I tried to replace iDisk, MobileMe photo galleries, and Mozy with a SugarSync subscription – but it hasn’t really met my, perhaps unreasonable, expectations.
Also, there’s the matter of cloud privacy and longevity… Most services extol the virtues of their data protection schemes. Yet, most are protected by a simple password. Which can be lost. Or that encrypted data may inadvertently be shared. While data loss and downtime can also be issues, a bigger concern is companies pulling the plug. And this isn’t an issue limited to failed startups. Both HP and Yahoo are shuttering cloud services this month. Not to mention Yahoo sucked the life from and then blew up the top worldwide Internet photo repository. If you can’t rely on a major Internet player like Yahoo to keep their doors open for service, who can you trust?
Bringing us to the concept of a “personal” cloud, which probably begins with local networked storage. While many computer geeks are comfortable tunneling home or “terminaling” in, we’re starting to see some more consumer-friendly solutions come to market. Apple’s recently updated MobileMe service ($99/yr) facilitates access to a Time Capsule or external drive (“airdisk”) via Back to My Mac. While the concept is good, the execution appears to be lacking. Gizmodo reports connectivity issues and only OS X is supported.
At CES, I spent some time checking out the promising Pogoplug ($80) – which is both a device and a service. The small Linux device, available next month, turns any USB drive into both local and remote networked storage. Accessible from a variety of operating systems, web browsers, and the iPhone. I hope to take an early look at this hybrid cloud solution (your drive, their web service) in the near future.
One of the selling points of true cloud storage is off-site backup. Which isn’t really addressed by a home cloud solution. Perhaps, it’s time for the distributed storage of a “family cloud”. And maybe more generous broadband caps with a bandwidth meter, Comcast.
