The advice to back up your data is something that is probably said at least once every 5 seconds by some random person on the internet.

Every person who says this is 100% correct. You should back up your data often.

However what isn’t ordinarily covered is how to back up your data that you have out there on the internet, i.e. external or cloud data. Examples of this are blogs, photos, e-mail and anything else you specifically store online-only.

Here are two glaring examples of the worst possible scenario:

Continued

From DesktopLinux.com: "gOS Cloud can boot in seconds, into a barebones browser-based environment not unlike the locked-down "kiosk" set-ups at libraries and cafes everywhere. Yet, here, the browser has taken on OS-like features, such as the familiar Mac OS X-like application dock shown in the screenshot below."

You’ve used several locked-down forced environment (i.e. "kiosk") systems and probably didn’t even realize it.

A few examples:

• Automated Teller Machines (a.k.a. the "ATM")
• Video game consoles
• Cell phones
• The menu system for DirecTV, Dish Network, Verizon, etc.

All that stuff is kiosk-style.

The good

With a proprietary OS environment, operation and apps are all supposed to work optimally.

Any kiosk-style system is designed with speed first, "fluff" second (this is good).

It’s a Linux distro so you can get into the "guts" of the OS easily.

The bad

There is a such a thing as "too much cloud". If it ever gets to the point where the OS simply will not function without internet, that’s not good.

The reality

gOS states on their web site:

Cloud allows users to switch to the main operating system with a single click, or just power off.

If you’re already using Windows or Linux, what’s the point of even using it then other than boot-up speed?

I think it’s a safe bet to say most people (including beginners) would prefer a "full" OS like Windows or Linux instead of a forced environment.

Incidentally, this is why many people jailbreak iPhones. When you force users into a controlled environment, that’s not the true spirit of computing – and people will find ways to break the chains every time.

What is a "cloud" application?

It’s any application that has the power of a desktop (as in installed locally to your computer) app – except it’s all on the web.

You probably use cloud apps already and probably didn’t even realize it. Do you use Gmail, Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail? That’s all in the cloud.

But this is about Photoshop, the famous high-priced image editor.

Except this one is free – and it’s still Photoshop.

Photoshop Express is an Adobe product available here:

https://www.photoshop.com/express/landing.html

As with most cloud apps it does require you to register an account in order to use it.

Here’s a quick overview. (Click each image to enlarge)

Above: The sign-in screen. If you don’t have an account you can sign up from there.

Above: The landing page. I have no images in here yet so I click the "Upload Photos" button at the top left.

Above: I cancel the upload on purpose because – LOOK AT THAT ON THE LEFT – there a Flickr login (as well as Photobucket and Picasa too!) Nice. I choose Flickr since I use that already.

Above: I’ve validated my Flickr account and loaded in an image – direct from Flickr. Very cool. Now I can start editing.

Above: I chose the "Crop and Rotate" tool and selected a portion of the image.

Above: I clicked the top right green check arrow to see the edit I just made.

From here I can either continue editing, save it, do whatever I want, etc.

Seriously.. this is frickin’ cool.

This is what cloud apps are supposed to be like. Simple, friendly, powerful, and of course – free.

Adobe Photoshop Express is without a shadow of a doubt one of the best cloud apps I’ve ever used.

Try it out – you will love this.

While it’s true we see a ton of innovation on the internet (it’s what drives it to begin with) there’s been some stuff that was just nothing but a miserable failure from the word go.

Here’s 5 of them. Some are old, some current.

WebRing

The concept: To "join" web sites together in a circular structure (the "ring")

The reality: A bunch of crappy web sites that don’t relate to each other at all desperately trying to whore each other out for the sole purpose of generating web traffic.

WebRing actually still exists and it still sucks. Granted, this was one of the first attempts to connect web sites with common interests, but it ended up being nothing but a big ball of fail.

Tag cloud

A tag cloud is a "weighted list" of a jumble of words where visually bigger words are discussed more while smaller words are discussed less. See examples here.

The concept: Visually bigger words (like bike instead of bike) mean people are talking about that particular whatever-it-is more often.

The reality: These words when clicked lead to articles/sites/pages that usually have nothing to do with that word whatsoever – OR – the words presented are so unbelievably generic that it never leads to any useful you were looking for.

The tag cloud is one of those Web 2.0 things that just doesn’t work. It doesn’t matter if you have it enabled on your personal blog or use a big-site way of doing it because tag clouds suck.

LinkExchange

This, much like WebRing, was a failed attempt at connecting web sites with similar interests by putting "badges" somewhere in your web page/site. The only difference is that it was more corporate and required cash.

It didn’t work.

Microsoft bought this, realized it sucked and changed it to be part of Microsoft Office Live. In its current form it has absolutely zero resemblance (thank God) to the old LinkExchange.

Badges

The original "internet button" was a 88×31 graphic.

Remember these? 

In the Web 2.0 version this was made smaller into an 80×15 "badge".

Badges look like this:

For whatever reason someone thought it was good that with ever-increasing resolutions on computer monitors to make graphics smaller and harder to read.

Stupid? Yes.

"Splash" pages

This is more of a web usability thing than anything else but it bears mentioning because it still happens today.

"Splash" pages, a.k.a. the "skipintro", is some dopey Flash-based "introduction" to a web site. This has been widely panned on web pages like Web Pages That Suck because it serves absolutely no purpose other than to annoy people. It’s not "cool" or "hip" or anything like that whatsoever.

If you have your own web site, I have three words of advice for you concerning the intro page: Don’t do it.

Google is at it again. This time, they have released what is called Google App Engine. In short, this is a web application platform to allow developers and businesses to host web apps in the cloud (meaning online). Google launched the product in it’s own new blog yesterday.

Google’s blog post describes the service quite well:

Google App Engine gives you access to the same building blocks that Google uses for its own applications, making it easier to build an application that runs reliably, even under heavy load and with large amounts of data. The development environment includes the following features:

• Dynamic webserving, with full support of common web technologies
• Persistent storage (powered by Bigtable and GFS with queries, sorting, and transactions
• Automatic scaling and load balancing
• Google APIs for authenticating users and sending email
• Fully featured local development environment

Google App Engine packages these building blocks and takes care of the infrastructure stack, leaving you more time to focus on writing code and improving your application.

This is a poke in the eye of Amazon. Amazon Web Services is also a platform for developers to run their web applications. Amazon offers S3 (for mass storage), EC2 (for virtual servers) and SimpleDB (database). So, Google App Engine is basically taking on Amazon. But, as Techcrunch is reporting, the Amazon package is more loosely coupled than the Google setup. Amazon allows developers to pick and choose what they need whereas the Google setup is pretty much all-or-nothing. In other words, Google App Engine is designed for people who want to run their apps entirely on Google.

Profy.com says that Google has “jumped the shark“, though. While Google is offering free service up to a certain point (500 MB storage, 10 GB bandwidth daily), Profy points out that Google made a mistake by using Python as the programming language rather than Ruby. They also point out that this is just another “me too” move by Google. They saw Amazon making money and decided to try to “one up” them and give some of it away for free (in classic Google style).

So, has Google really jumped the shark? Is Google App Engine really the next big thing, or is this just another temporary excitement designed to get bloggers excited over nothing?

I can tell you one thing Profy is right on: Python? Yuck. Google, for their part, says they will soon be supporting other languages, but I wouldn’t be interested in this until I see some Ruby or PHP support.