Continuity with Technology

The generations of portable storage mediums have changed over the years, and it is interesting to contrast them with current innovations such as cloud computing.

Recall back 10 years ago when floppy disks were still heavily used for day to day portable storage needs. If you are were working on a document that needed to be ‘on your person’ for portability and ease of access, floppy disks, 10 years ago were the thing. Flash forward a few years and although USB Flash drives existed for a few years, they start making a stronger appearance as they become more affordable and more readily accepted. I can still remember the marketing pointing out that the standard 64 MB USB Flash drive was similar to carrying 60+ floppy disks in your pocket!

That being said… we currently are living in interesting times.

• MacBook Air
• Everex Cloudbook
• Increasing Wireless LAN density
• Google Docs
• Zoho

It is easy to find a wireless hotspot. Even rural communities are participating. Mobile devices and networks are also becoming increasingly sophisticated.

Our lives have changed forever. Floppy disks, while they rest in peace, are a good reminder of the humbler beginnings of most technology. The point where we are now, is far from where we will be 1, 2 or 5 years from now.

As a follow-up to the article, Brief Introduction to Cloud Computing, which I recently wrote and posted on Keenpath, I am releasing into the public domain a brief presentation document I used while giving a presentation on Cloud Computing.

You are welcome to download the presentation and distribute or use as desired.

Cloud Computing Presentation (.PDF)

Email is not secure. Unless you explicitly encrypt your email message and attachments, the content of your email will bounce across servers and the Internet unencrypted, and in readable text.

Most people have a false sense of security when it comes to email. It is common for emails containing sensitive information, to be quickly drafted and sent to the destination address. It serves well to think of an unencrypted email as a postcard being sent through the postal mail. Each letter carrier can potentially read the contents of the postcard. With email, the same basic concept applies because the message, once sent and received, is likely to exist on at least two email servers, after passing through multiple network segments which could be prone to network sniffing. The origin and the destination.

[Read more →]

As learned from past events, computing in its purest form, has changed hands multiple times. First from near the beginning when mainframes were predicted to be the future of computing. Indeed mainframes and large scale machines were built and used, and in some circumstances are used similarly today. The trend, however, turned from bigger and more expensive, to smaller and more affordable commodity PCs and servers.

[Read more →]

Google’s feed reader, Google Reader, is undoubtedly popular among the GTD crowd. One of my favorite features, Google Reader Trends, gets some, but not a lot of attention by the aforementioned. That aside, to avoid cluttering and overwhelming yourself with too much syndicated material (RSS, Atom) to read and comb through, turn to your trusty Google Reader Trends.

[Read more →]