Over the past couple of years, I have been making more and more use of cloud based services. As one of my uni modules focuses around this topic, I've decided to see just how much of my daily life can be done through the cloud.
Up until the new wave of Windows Live Essentials I’ve been using Live Mesh to keep all my various documents etc. in check across different PCs and also accessing the odd file when required via the web. I've since adjusted this to use Windows Live Mesh (Sameish name, sameish product, but in a way different).
I am more than aware of the Google Docs way of doing things, but I have always found myself drifting back to Windows Live/Microsoft based services for one reason or another.
When it comes to doing work, OneNote's SkyDrive integration has been exceedingly handy, especially when taking lecture notes. The other added bonus to this is that it allows for me to not lose notes etc. and makes retrieving them much easier as well.
Personal entertainment has changed a great deal over the past few years, with services such as Spotify, making it easier than ever to realise how many crap versions of Bohemian Rhapsody exists (Pan-pipes anyone?) and of course there’s the BBC iPlayer, which has become my normal method of watching Top Gear or listening to the Radio. I mean, who needs a £1 FM Radio from Poundland when you can spend upwards of £400 on a PC to listen to it on the net eh?
However, with this entire integration means it's harder to escape things when you go out. More than once have I found myself sat in the pub helping someone fix their iTunes library via emails synced to my phone or fixing some rouge setting in WordPress.
I'll probably make another post later on that makes more sense than this, possibly including pretty pictures if I can be bothered, depicting a personal cloud for a uni student in the UK.
This was originally posted to a previous version of marksuth.com in October 2010
