Cloudy Mountain Is Born!

I’ve been trying to tie all my toys and applications together and it got harder and harder to come up with a plan that was simple enough to keep the in my head all at once. It turned out to be amazingly complicated. I’m talking about:

Applications

• “Office” Stuff
• E-mail
• Photos and videos
• Tasks and checklists
• Plain old phone
• Contact list(s)
• iTunes
• Shared general “cloud” storage
• Blogging
• Personal and family finances
• E-books
• Information services
• Etc. etc. etc.

Hardware

• Laptop computer
• Desktop computer
• Media computer
• iPhone 4
• Kindle
• iPod Touch
• Apple TV
• Entertainment Centre

It's amazing that a retired, 63-year-old couch potato can generate a major IT project from fairly ordinary information tastes. You get some terrific gridlock happening on both the client side (iPhone etc.) and the “cloud” side (iTunes, Google applications etc.)

For a few days, I wrestled with hooking into my substantial investment in the tractor trailers of the information highway like Microsoft Office, which integrates its various components pretty well (I was trying to leverage over 20 years experience with this way of doing things). But hooking it up on multiple machines across all my toys turned out to be a nightmare.

As the old school approach starts to show its age, there’s a growing backlash against the pain of keeping up with the never-ending updates to these monsters. People said a big “no” to Windows Vista and are reluctant to try Windows 7 (which is at terrific system if you have time to learn it and money to buy it). People said “no” to Office 2007 and “hell no” to Office 2010 because the old stuff did a pretty good job and who has time to fix something that’s worn but not broken. People want applications that they can learn to use by using them for a few minutes. Applications that are actually fun to use. Applications that ooze with insightful design but are free for all practical intents and purposes (Even so, you see reviews of "apps" that complain about the "high price" of $5.99 software!).

Gradually, it was dawning on me that I’d be better off basing my project on “cloud” applications. In particular, it looks like big players like Apple and Google have got most of what I need. Both vendors tie their own stuff together quite well and talk to each other in ways that are easy to set up and use. I'm still fighting to maintain the powerful and elegant Office applications, but the integration core has moved from the LAN to the “cloud” where things slap together very nicely.

As an aside, I’ve been blown away by how these components are so slick and easy to use. It would be fun to build them or even to learn how to design them. I’m starting to get the entrepreneurial itch again J I really hated building web-based apps that replace nice, snappy desktop apps with clunky, confusing browser apps. But I think I’ve been looking at things the wrong way around. You can have your slick interface – far niftier than anything we did on a PC – and still have an integrated “back end” beyond the dreams of the old database-cenetred designs.

I finally tweaked onto why there's so much excite met s and a growth market for “cloud-based” business applications. My last job at the University, my job was all about getting uncooperative applications to come to some kind of consensus of what the hell was going on in the real world. For example, it seemed that every one of more than two dozen departments felt the need to maintain their own "people" list. The old network and database approach was strangling in its own complexity, constantly pushing the limits of diminished returns, but we differed in our opinions about what to do about it. While there were still business application developers being paid to crank out COBOL applications (no kidding!), kids are writing games with fantastic animation that let you play against people in other countries for free. Eventually, business applications will catch up, but the trend in business applications seems to be to pile on added “features” in the hope that we’ll someday reach the promised land – the perfect app for the job you need to do. If you've considered re-training a few thousand users to use Windows 7 or Office 2010 when they're happy with they've got, you know what I'm talking about.

I realized that this can’t work when I looked at the huge job I was mapping out just to meet the personal needs of a retired 63-year old.

I could visualize some interesting personal projects in areas where I can claim to be an application domain expert. Things like stock options, inventory control, GPS applications and aircraft maintenance have always cried out for cheap wireless, hand-held “client” devices, cheap and reliable networking and big, cheap everyday “plug-ins” for everyday jobs. The tidal wave of PC applications absolutely depended on the fact that more and more people were more or less familiar with PC applications. With more and more people wandering around with ear buds and their attention focused on some hand held gizmo, this factor will trigger a new wave of re-imagined business applications. One measure of how crazy this is getting is the recent trend to actually make it illegal to mess with your smart phone while driving with the remainder of your mental bandwidth.

Of course, we’re well into this trend, but we ain’t seen nothing yet. Now that businesses are handing out Blackberries like pencils and staplers, you know things are in for a big change.

I’m thinking about poking around with iOS, the platform used by Apple for the iPod, iPhone and iPad. You don’t need to commit to Apple stuff – there’s lots of portability built in to the whole approach. For example, you can get Kindle services on just about anything. My guess is that you could go far by just having some expertise in iOS and Android for client applications and the appropriate web server side technology. You could start very small and grow to a comfortable size using a social network model rather than the current business structures that haven’t changed that much since the time of the Romans.

Do you have any thoughts on this subject? How are your own adventures in the cloud coming along? Are you making any progress on turning your wanderings in the cloud into a business?