Living in the cloud

My colleagues Chris Dawson (see Living in the cloud…How did it go?) and Zack Whittaker (see Live blog: student in the cloud for 48 hours) are experimenting with working entirely in the clouds, that is using only applications and data stored on a remote host and accessing it only with a Web browser. It appears that both of them learned nearly all of a person's day to day activities can be supported using tools available on the 'net.

Although some would say that this is cheating, as a telecommuter and later as a member of a virtual company, I've been living this way for years. Although the tools have changed over the years, it is getting easier and easier to access one's Email, calendar, address book, to do lists, organizational applications and one's documents without also having a requirement to have much more than an intelligent, network enabled device.

Chris and Zack mentioned the tools they chose, I'd like to add another major tool to the conversation. Open-Xchange.  I've used this collaborative suite for years. I won't take the time to discuss how I use each and every feature of this powerful tool. I will point out that over the years, I've accessed it using my much-loved Treo 650, my irritating HTC Advantage and even my iPhone.

Depending upon what a specific person needs, living in the clouds is workable and in some cases quite pleasant. It was wonderful being able to go through security at airports without fiddling with my briefcase to take out a laptop. It also was rather fun presenting at conferences using only my smartphone. I imagine todays new netbooks would make this process a bit easier.

I'll be watching to see how the guys do. Good luck!