Experiment: Diving Into The Cloud

Sean — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 22:21:30 +0000

I’ve decided to try out a little experiment: I’m going to try switching off a lot of desktop applications that I normally use, and start using web applications that meet the same purpose. Why? I’m curious to see how far some web applications have developed, and how well some of them can actually replace desktop applications. Really, most of what I want to do connects via the Internet as is.

I’m not going to totally dive in head first with everything, though. For example: I’m not about to live with just Pandora and Last.FM when I have a perfectly good music collection. I’m also not going to be able to replace some applications like Photoshop, and many games. However, things like IM, Twitter (although I am counting browser-plugins!), IRC, productivity software, e-mail, etc… will get moved over to help make the browser the main focus of what I am doing online.

So, while I already use Gmail as my e-mail client, and Google Reader for my RSS feeds, I’m going to try out a few other services.

Google Docs will take over my productivity software (although Zoho might be a better choice), and while I have used it in the past, I haven’t much.
While technically a browser-plugin, I am counting it… Yoono will handle IM, Twitter, and other social networks.
Mibbit will handle IRC – and it seems to be doing a much better job of it than I could have ever expected.

So, while this isn’t a huge list – granted it covers most of what I do online/on my computer – I am interested in other options. So, if you know a spiffy web application, or any other neat web services, post it up in the comments! I’d love to give it a shot.

OnLive Might be Real – And Good

Sean — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 19:10:43 +0000

While I talked about OnLive yesterday, it has certainly been the talk of GDC so far this year, and as such, I feel compelled to provide an update as more information has been coming in about the already-hugely-hyped service taking gaming into the cloud – oh, buzz words, how wonderful you are. While I stated I was skeptical of the service, and I still am, Sam “QforQ” Houston has been Twittering about the GDC expo floor, including his experiences with OnLive. He tweeted a few images of Crysis being played over the service, along with the dongle connected to the display, which shows that it is actually being played through the device. According to him, the game did seem a little pixelated, but played with seemingly no lag at all.

It sounds like this whole OnLive thing might actually be real. Of course, they also might have a heck of an awesome connection there and a server in much closer proximity than we will see when it launches.

Update: A video of the OnLive presentation is up here.

Emergent Future » cloud computing

Experiment: Diving Into The Cloud

OnLive Might be Real – And Good