Synchronization, online storage, or both: Which cloud type are you?

The virtual disk Dropbox offers cloud computing as a textbook. Twice in a row won the popular services such as the choice for online service of the year at the colleagues of Netzwertig.com. Just yesterday I read of three similar services who want to repeat the success of Dropbox: Insync , SugarSync and Accellion .

I am a very mobile person, have a computer in the office, a laptop at home, two phones and I travel a lot. And yet I do not use Dropbox. Not because I could not abgewinnen the service. I need it not just easy. I use private cloud rather in the form of synchronization services. Often it is only on second glance, that it is about actually constitutes cloud computing. Type a question?

Active and passive cloud

Gmail as I use at home, at work and on the go. For my company I use Exchange mailbox. Both cloud computing, and yet neither of them is interested in how I consume lots of memory there. Since I use WordPress to work (which is also a kind of cloud computing), I use almost no more Office program. If I am forced by others to some games, I mostly use Google Docs . Since Simfy has improved its synchronization service, I add new songs to the desktop version and get them automatically sent to my smartphone. Things that come to my mind, I think on a smartphone or a computer with Evernote fixed. A service that synchronizes my account permanently. Save posts that I like, I both on the road on my desktop in Read-it-Later list . List wonders on my computers and the iPhone reminds me of what I have to do.

In all cases there is cloud computing, but I save them anything knowingly in a virtual drive. A memory for music in the cloud such as Amazon, Google or Apple, I do not need. For this I use Apple's icloud, without interest me, how many gigabytes of data stored for me in my virtual directory. It is good but wonderful to sync your contacts or appointments.

Dropbox, however, offers more control over their own files. I can access my photos, documents, accessing songs without that they would be stored in a corporate giants such as Google. Maybe there are two streams that flow side by side: the active cloud, in which one manages its own directory, and the passive cloud, where you mainly synchronize its data. Both have in the past two years, gained considerable popularity, and I see a trend towards passive cloud. How do you use cloud computing and if there is such a thing: Which cloud type are you?