The Year of the Cloud

Seems as if this is the Year of the Cloud - my personal year of the cloud, anyway. Without so much as an actual plan, I found myself having moved much of my personal computing out of my computer(s) into the cloud - not a big deal when you're always on.

• Mail-wise, I've been in the cloud for quite a while now, using GMail and - to a much lesser degree - my good old shell account with SDF. Yes, accessing and managing a mailbox through a SSH connection is cloud computing, too, albeit rather old school. Also, my calendar is being handled by Google.
• To GTD, I've been using Remember the Milk, a cloud based service with more sensible bells and whistles than one can think of. Although I like it very much, I've switched to Google's task manager, not the least because it integrated rather nicely with both GMail and Google Calendar. And I've never really needed most of the bells or whistles.
• Word processing, spreadsheets? You find me at Google Docs (known as "Google Texte und Tabellen" to German users). I probably wouldn't use it for huge documents with complex layouts, indices, change management - but for my personal needs, it actually works. Privacy implications we are going to discuss sometimes else.
• File exchange and backup - that is Dropbox for me. This is partly due to a very restrictive security policy at my workplace, where plain old USB sticks are prohibited by default, so I'm using Dropbox even to send large files to my coworkers (deleting them as soon as the coworker has downloaded them!). Actually, I even used Evernote to do the same thing but found it to complicated and much to powerful for simple file exchange.
• Speaking of Evernote: It is powerful, more than any other similar service I know. Still, I seem to be switching to Memonic, a service by a Swiss startup company which doesn't have a desktop or mobile client and also lacks many of Evernote's other features, but sports a clean and simple interface - which I seem to prefer over the power solutions recently.
• My mindmaps are done with MindMeister, whenever I need them. It's not as comfortable as a desktop application, but it exports and imports data to and from the most popular formats which is kind of important in my work context. Also, I have access to everything wherever I am connected.
• Finally, the newest addition to my cloud activities has something to do with my current project which keeps me from blogging so much recently. I'm dabbling with PHP and MySQL, and started doing so on a local MAMP installation on my desktop, testing the newest additions on a rarely used web server at SDF. Over the weekend, I discovered Kodingen - an online development environment for more than just PHP. Kind of interesting - you have a sandbox installation where you can test your code without having to FTP it anywhere first. The editor obviously is not as responsive as the editor of your choice at home - but you have your development environment with you all the time. But that's just a hobby - serious developers might not take this as seriously. Also, Kodingen is in an early beta stage and might not be ready for mission critical work.

What do I still need my desktop computer for? Any data-intensive computing such as working with images, sounds or videos, obviously. And I believe that these needs will stick around for a while, so my Year of the Cloud (if it really turns out to be one) won't be my year of the thin clients as well. Nor would be the year after that.

Having written that, I'm leaving the cloud, heading out under the real clouds, as found in the real world.

My SQL, your SQL...

Just to let be known (in the newly-minted tradition of German Tagebuchblogging - diary blogging): Apparently, working with SQL databases is exactly like riding a bicycle: you learned it once, you never forget how to do it.

The last time I have designed and implemented a SQL-based database myself was in 2002 or 2003, in Database 204 or so (we used - shudder - MS Access in class). Since then, I've worked and played a lot with ready-made databases - after all, most weblog systems use MYSQL or similar dbs. But when I designed a small CMS of my own two or three years ago, I settled for a PHP-based solution with all the data stored in the UNIX filesystem - out of plain fear of SQL databases (apparently, those classes had their effects, after all).

Wrong. It turned out the system was rather slow (and not too secure, come to think of it). And, even more revealing, it turned out that designing and implementing a database (I used MySQL Workbench to develop the db) wasn't that big a deal, either. And - even the PHP code now is much shorter and more elegant and flexible (or, to be honest, less un-elegant and unflexible...).

So why am I writing this? Just because I'm happy that it took me but one day to remember what I've learned years ago and have fun at the same time.

And once I'm done, I even may post a link to the finished project.

Re: The iPad

No, I haven't followed His Steveness' keynote (had to work, focussed). Yes, I did notice that Apple Inc. is about to sell something called iPad, more or less a tablet computer, an oversized iPod touch, a fancier e-reader. Yes, I've read many of the articles which ended up in my feedreader over the past five hours. Yes, I like the way vowe put it all together.

And here's my opinion on it, not based on my own experience, not based on the technical specifications of the iPad, and certainly not based on other reviews:

It may be that, with the iPad, Apple again can change the way we use computers. It most certainly will happen - as it did with the iPhone, the iPod etc - that the second generation of the iPad will see many of the things still missing from the iPad. It even may be that it will take us a while to really recognize the impact of the iPad.

Or maybe not.

When the iPhone came out, I immediately wanted one. It took me some time to get over the price, so I ended up buying an iPhone 3G. In the meantime, I've moved beyond the iPhone, but I still remember this Must. Have. The. iPhone. feeling, and I still consider the iPhone an incredibly sexy piece of technology.

With the iPad? No so much - actually, even after reading all those reviews, the question "Why?" still dominates my idea of the iPad.

But hey, that's just me and my guts.

Travelling with Android

In response to Christian Leumund's Wie mich das iPhone auf Reisen begleitet (in German).

I have to admit: I'm not travelling as much as Christian, and certainly my trip schedule is less interesting than his (Berlin - Bonn - Berlin, Berlin - Bonn - Berlin...), but I, too, have a faithful travel assistant in my pocket. In my case, it's not an iPhone anymore, but rather an Android-powered device. Here's how I use it:

I keep my schedules, work-related and private ones, in Google's GCal service which syncseffortlessly with the built-in apps of my HTC Hero. I keep my shopping list - together with everything else I need to remember - in Evernote's app for Android. Whenever possible, I opt for email-based boarding passes (Lufthansa have those, Air Berlin doesn't); otherwise I keep a backup of the boarding pass printout in Evernote. Public Transportation info comes through fahrplanDE, an Android app made by swiss company elui; weather reports are built into HTC's Sense GUI - other Android phones will have to rely on any of the many weather widgets available. After touchdown, navigation tasks can be done with Android's built-in Google Maps app, although I'm very much looking forward to Google's navigation app coming to Europe. All the other activities Christian tackles with further iPhone apps don't fit into my schedule - and TeuxDeux, Christian's favourite GTD app, is not available for both the iPhone and Android, so I've settled with GTasks, Googles own, admittedly simple solution (available as an Android app!).

So far, I don't miss my iPhone. Sorry, Steve!

Kabinenroller Reloaded

Apology Included

2010 - The Year in Preview

About two weeks ago, in a blog far, far away (actually, the old, pre-reboot version of bluelectric.org) I've let 2009 pass once more in my personal technical review. In short: Apple lost during my personal 2009 (got rid of MacBook, iPhone and MobileMe-Account), Google won (got an Android phone and revitalized my Google accounts).

Since looking back is more fun when you can check your own predictions (and see how dead wrong you were - even more fun when doing this with other people's predictions, but still...), I'll make some uneducated guesses on what 2010 will bring to my technical world.

• Apple: Hopefully another year with my trustworthy Mac Mini; no iSlate (or whatever name the much-anticipated Apple Tablet will finally bear); no other fancy new lifestyle products; OSX forever, wherever!
• Google: Possibly another Android phone when my cell phone contract is up for renewal - or maybe not; finally a useful application of the still fascinating but rather underused Google Wave concept; possibly (but not very likely) Chrome OS on my netbook; increased, but still uneasy feeling that my data are safer with Google than with any provider under any European authority
• Blogging/net life: Further consolidation of platforms and service; less presence, more quality (I hope!); Increased use of cloud services, data availability from everywhere; Internet usage increasingly over WiFi and UMTS (3G)
• Telecommunication: Even less landline-based phone calls; the cell phone as personal all-purpose communicator 
• Transportation (yes, that is technology, too!): Less personal, more public (not necessarily thanks to, but rather in spite of S-Bahn Berlin GmbH)
• Workplace: Pretty much the same as before. Always good to have constants in your life. No, wait: a PC with more than 512 MB would be nice