My Hub is The Cloud

I made an attempt to write about this while at the office, but a suppression of the backspace key made the original version of this post go off into the ether.  Sad.

What even more sad is that this version is not necessarily the 2.0 version of the post.  Rather, it's the same post informed by a conversation with my partner who is a public health professional.  She's someone who still uses a Palm Handspring Visor (which I graciously bought for her so I could have a device to laugh at). She keeps me in check by telling me that this degree of complexity might scare off some folks.

My hub tends to be the cloud by way of my Blackberry.  I need access to my data and that access tends to be in locations other than my desktop computers (work and home).  More often then not, when not the Blackberry, that access needs to be achieved from my old iBook G4 (which I need to replace before the end of this year due to bar exam software compatibility).

So, without further delay, let's begin:

• Backup:  Mozy is the tool I use for on-line backup of work related product.  The free account is enough for the items which I think are irreplaceable such as documents and photos (I'm currently using an external firewire drive to backup pictures and music at home).  One drawback of Mozy is the slow restore time (e.g. you're downloading your data from the cloud).
• Storage:  Dropbox is a tool which allows me to have a traveling file share wherever I go.  The documents in my Dropbox are accessible through either a "folder" on my Windows or Mac AND through a web based interface so that I can access items from the Blackberry in a pinch.  Google docs receives a very honorable mention and is installed on my phone for instances when I need to collaborate on a document with other folks.
• Notes/Clippings:  Evernote is where I put web-clippings, drafts, and notes.  There is a web based client in addition to a pretty good fat clients for Windows and Mac.  I've used this as a replacement to Circus Ponies Notebook or Journaler (both Mac specific applications).   The mobile client works well.  They have a slick looking iPhone version of the application.
• Calendar:  Google calendar with the Google Sync application for Blackberry
• Contacts:  Funambol syncs to my Outlook at work and Apple Addressbook on home and notebook computers.  Syncs with Blackberry as well: the Blackberry uploads calendar information to the funambol server so that I can have remote access to my Contacts and Google Calendar from one web site.  
• RSS Reader: Google Reader.  There is a mobile version for phones.  Don't use the mobile version much unless I'm waiting at the doctor, dentist, or shaman's office.  From the web client, sharing a story makes it available to Facebookers and Tumblr accounts (the power of RSS)
• Updates to Social Networks: Twitter. From the desktop, I use the Adobe Air application Twhirl and, when I need to really focus, IMs to Identi.ca so that updates are one way.  From the Blackberry, it's TinyTwitter.  I had tried Blackbird but didn't really like it.
• Mail: I use Google apps for domains to handle my mail and domain specific jabber account.  I don't think I could give up the search facility and integration with calendar.  The Gmail client for Blackberry is pretty good and gives me the search functionality I need.
  

That's the short inventory.  It seems a little complicated; but having thought about what it would mean to rebuild some of that content were these systems not in place takes substantially less time than setting this up so that when the phone or notebook breaks or is stolen, I can be back to where that device was, as a hub of information, within a reasonable amount of time.

 

Additionally, being able to update things once and having them appear across multiple networks is really a time saver and fulfills the goal of new technologies, namely, doing more in less overall steps.

Discuss.