Cloud computing.  Cloud services.   Software as a Service.  The cloud is not nearly as mysterious as we all make it out to be.  Most of us have been computing in the cloud to some degree for years.  Remember Hotmail?

The cloud is, basically…the internet.  The World Wide Web.  Or as my 19 year-old-son likes to joke…the Interweb.  Gmail is cloud computing.  Yahoo groups is cloud computing.  Google docs is cloud computing.  Cloud computing means data storage and processing happens in the cloud.  If you’re just storing stuff on the web and processing it on your computer, it’s not really cloud computing, it’s just storing it in the cloud. 

By the way - Apple’s new iCloud product is really not cloud computing.  The iCloud is more like streaming media.  Storing data in the cloud…er…on the web.  And then using it on your computer.   I love Apple and I’ve been a die-hard convert since March 2009.  But come on.  I’m a developer (former developer) so I’m offended along with all the other geeks that Steve Jobs and Apple took the term ‘App’ which was short for application and changed it so it now means mobile application to everyone on the planet.  Now he’s changed the meaning of the term cloud by making it his own.  Now we have to come up with a new term for the cloud.  Shouldn’t be too hard.  How about ‘the Fog’?  Yes, from now on, we’ll compute in the fog.