Working in the cloud is a great fallback, until disaster strikes the cloud
Adam Turner's recent MacBook woes have vindicated his cloud-based backup systems, but he's still afraid of Google's perfect storm.
My MacBook threw a hissy fit recently and refused to see the partition containing my user files. For most people it would have meant tools down until it could be fixed, but all I needed was a browser and it was business as usual. Email via Fastmail, voicemail via mBox, calendar via Google, contacts via MobileMe, backups via Jungle Disk, instant messaging via Meebo and word processing via Google Docs. Sometimes it's handy to live in the clouds.
All of these services are synced with my desktop, and several with my iPhone. Of course the glaring exception is Google Docs. The recent Gmail outage is a timely reminder that Google isn't infallible, and I know writing all my stories in Google Docs is a potential business risk. Even so I continue to do it, because it's just so convenient. Famous last words.
I'm placing my hopes on GDrive, Google's long-awaited online storage service which is rumoured to be launching this year. I'm hoping that documents stored in GDrive will be editable via Google Docs, yet easily downloaded via protocols such as FTP or WedDAV. Then it will be a simple task to develop GDrive sync tools which automatically store a copy of my Google files in a folder on my computer. That way I'll be able to live in the clouds while keeping one foot on the ground.
Regular readers will know that I'm a tad anal when it comes to backups, but once again my paranoia served me well when disaster struck. Even if my MacBook completely refused to boot, I could have sat down at any computer, regardless of operating system or browser, and picked up working exactly where I left off. There are still a few little annoyances I'd like to iron out.
The biggest frustration about working in the cloud is the lack of decent popup notifications for calendar appointments, emails and RSS feeds. I'm a huge fan of the Growl notification system for Mac, which helps me deal with information overload. I know browser-based popups will always struggle to match the functionality of those generated by a desktop app, although I'm keen to see what the next generation on online apps running in browsers such as Chrome will offer.
Another annoyance when working in the cloud is losing access to my bookmarks, although I suspect the easy answer is Foxmarks, I've just never got around to testing it. I might try installing it on Safari as well, to make life easier when I'm jumping between browsers. This should also mean my Firefox bookmarks are synced to my iPhone, which would also be handy.
The final piece of the puzzle is an RSS reader, as I've been rethinking my approach to RSS of late. I use Apple Mail as my RSS reader, because it's the only RSS reader I've come across that plays nicely with Growl. Apple Mail sends Growl an alert for every new RSS message, whereas other RSS clients only tell Growl that x new messages have arrived, forcing me to switch to the RSS client to see what they are. The whole point of Growl is to preview things for me so I know whether or not it's worth stopping what I'm doing.
I'm frustrated with Apple Mail's RSS limitations and what I really want is a desktop RSS client which syncs with an online interface. There are a few around for Mac, such as NetNewsWire, but they don't send individual RSS messages to Growl. There's a Growl-compatible Google Reader Notifier which I've just installed, and so far it seems to get a tick in every box. Using Google Reader will also make it easy to check my RSS feeds from my iPhone.
I'm now tantalisingly close to my goal of being able to live in the clouds yet still land on my feet if disaster strikes.
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