Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Services "in the cloud" make it much easier to access our files over the Internet any time we want from wherever we are. It means documents are no longer locked in the prison of a single computer.

The Yet Another Related Posts Plugin has suggested these Posts for you too:

1. Cloud Computing At the recent Engage your Community conference in Hamilton, Mike Riversdale ran a workshop about using the free Google Apps (word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, calendar), rather than using Office applications...
2. How to share photos easily with Dropbox You don't need an expensive online service just to let friends look at photos from your last holiday — use Dropbox instead. ...
3. Introducing Leopard Spaces for work and play Over at my MacTips archive I’ve begun a series about Spaces. There’s one instalment each week: Leopard has Spaces for work and play: Imagine you’re at home, sitting a the...

Everybody is talking about The Cloud these days. But apart from those white fluffy things in the sky, what is the cloud?

Files in prison

A few years ago, if we created a word processing document, a spreadsheet, or a photo, we probably saved it on our own computer.

If we wanted to share that document with a friend or colleague we probably put it on a floppy disk. A colleague would put the floppy disk into their computer, cross their fingers that the file format would work and then open up the document.

More recently we might exchange files by putting them on a thumb drive or a CD, or perhaps by sending them by email.

But still the document would originally be locked away on our own computer.

If we were away from our computer for some reason it would be almost impossible to access that file.

For example, we might be visiting a friend and want to show them holiday photos. With the photos locked away on our computer back in the office we’d be out of luck.

Google cloud apps.

Files fly free

That was the old days though. These days we have more options for where to save and store files. There are many many services that let us save and use our files online, or “in the cloud”.

A good example is Flickr. If we upload our photos to Flickr we can share them with certain people or the whole world, and we can look at them from any computer that’s connected to the Internet.

If we make videos we could upload them to You Tube. And just like Flickr we can share them or look at them how ever we like.

It’s not just photos and videos though. We could use Google Docs for word processing, spreadsheets and presentations, or a service such as Xero for our accounts.

Software such as Evernote not only runs as an application on our Mac, Windows PC, Blackberry, iPhone or other devices, but we can also access the notes we create through a web page.

The Dropbox service lets us setup a folder on our computer whose files are automatically synchronised with any other computer we choose. Those same files are also available through a secure web page.

Dropbox also lets us go back to see older versions of our files. That’s very handy if we accidentally save changes we didn’t mean to make.

All of these services are “in the cloud”. All of them make it much easier to access our files over the Internet any time we want from wherever we are.

It means documents are no longer locked in the prison of a single computer.

Take a look at the services I’ve mentioned above, most of them are free, and see if they’d fit with your way of working.

Written by Miraz Jordan for, and reproduced from CommunityNet Aotearoa Panui, August 2010. This article has been modified for publication here.

The Yet Another Related Posts Plugin has suggested these Posts for you too:

1. Cloud Computing At the recent Engage your Community conference in Hamilton, Mike Riversdale ran a workshop about using the free Google Apps (word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, calendar), rather than using Office applications...
2. How to share photos easily with Dropbox You don't need an expensive online service just to let friends look at photos from your last holiday — use Dropbox instead. ...
3. Introducing Leopard Spaces for work and play Over at my MacTips archive I’ve begun a series about Spaces. There’s one instalment each week: Leopard has Spaces for work and play: Imagine you’re at home, sitting a the...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

In a stiff Wellington breeze the kite surfers were out. I caught a small video of one having fun.

The Yet Another Related Posts Plugin has suggested these Posts for you too:

1. Lyall Bay Surfer I caught a few photos of a surfer in action at Lyall Bay. ...
2. Friday night slacker Grr, I pretty much worked all last weekend (paid and unpaid), and, if I remember correctly, the weekend before that. It’s 7.30 on Friday night and I’m just knackered. I...
3. Photoshop book free – for a few weeks SitePoint say: Our Sensational Photoshop book is now FREE to Download! That’s right! No catches, no samples. For a LIMITED TIME only, a COMPLETE COPY of Corrie Haffly’s Brilliant Photoshop...

There was a stiff and chilly breeze at Lyall Bay beach this afternoon when I took the dogs for a walk. The kite surfers were out though — just one to start with, and 4 by the time I left.

Kite Surfer at Lyall Bay.

One surfer sped along towards the airport, then turned back and jumped high and long into the air.

That’s when I found my Flip mino video camera and kept an eye on him. After several recordings I managed to catch him again — first with some small jumps over the waves, and then high into the air again.

It’s not the world’s best video — I fumble in the middle, and there’s wind noise and a playful dog barking — but here it is in all its 30 second glory.

The Yet Another Related Posts Plugin has suggested these Posts for you too:

1. Lyall Bay Surfer I caught a few photos of a surfer in action at Lyall Bay. ...
2. Friday night slacker Grr, I pretty much worked all last weekend (paid and unpaid), and, if I remember correctly, the weekend before that. It’s 7.30 on Friday night and I’m just knackered. I...
3. Photoshop book free – for a few weeks SitePoint say: Our Sensational Photoshop book is now FREE to Download! That’s right! No catches, no samples. For a LIMITED TIME only, a COMPLETE COPY of Corrie Haffly’s Brilliant Photoshop...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

One of my favourite things is finding ways to make my computer work harder so I can work less. A recent series of MacTips showed how to use Keyboard Maestro, macro software that can save an awful lot of work.

The Yet Another Related Posts Plugin has suggested these Posts for you too:

1. Keyboard Maestro 2.0 The final version of Keyboard Maestro 2.0 (US$20, requires Mac OS X 10.2 or greater) has been released. Keyboard Maestro can control applications, windows, or menus; insert text; open documents,...
2. Sit back and watch your Mac work with Keyboard Maestro Keyboard Maestro chains together actions so you can do less work while your Mac does more. I love sitting back watching my Mac work for me. ...
3. Power Up to Macros This article shows you how to start and offers some tips on setting up macros. [First published August 2006. Some details may be a bit dated. Update February 2008: I...

I love work: I could watch it all day — at least when it’s my computer doing it and not me.

One of my favourite things is finding ways to make my computer work harder so I can work less. Sometimes that means Applescript, or using utilities like Launchbar or TextExpander.

Sometimes it means setting up macros in Keyboard Maestro, so that I click once or type a couple of characters and then a string of actions happens as if by magic.

That’s one reason why in August I wrote a series of MacTips about how to work with Keyboard Maestro:

Keyboard Maestro action sequence.

Turn 100 steps into 1 with Keyboard Maestro

Keyboard Maestro lets you set up sequences of actions, or macros, and then does them for you. Watch your computer do the work, instead of the other way round. Let me show you how it works.

Point and Click with Keyboard Maestro

Keyboard Maestro can operate programs and point and click for you. Here’s how to avoid mindless repetitive and annoying actions.

Keyboard Maestro Triggers and Actions

Use Keyboard Maestro to work your Mac for you. Here’s how to set up Triggers, select options in Actions and quickly record a macro.

Keyboard Maestro Clipboard and Scripts

Keyboard Maestro can do some very clever things with the clipboard and that’s great for anyone who writes. It’s also a good way to run Applescripts and Shell scripts. Here’s how to get even more work out of Keyboard Maestro.

Peter Lewis is the developer who makes this magic happen. He kindly offered a 20% discount to my readers. There’s information about the discount at all the Tips listed above, and you can download the software for free to try it out.

The Yet Another Related Posts Plugin has suggested these Posts for you too:

1. Keyboard Maestro 2.0 The final version of Keyboard Maestro 2.0 (US$20, requires Mac OS X 10.2 or greater) has been released. Keyboard Maestro can control applications, windows, or menus; insert text; open documents,...
2. Sit back and watch your Mac work with Keyboard Maestro Keyboard Maestro chains together actions so you can do less work while your Mac does more. I love sitting back watching my Mac work for me. ...
3. Power Up to Macros This article shows you how to start and offers some tips on setting up macros. [First published August 2006. Some details may be a bit dated. Update February 2008: I...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

25 Tech links I found interesting in the last week. Highwire robot; solar house; night vision; probable computers; tweetup; 0.6 litres per 100 km; RFID tags; bird-proof glass; megapixels; DSLRs; mind maps.

The Yet Another Related Posts Plugin has suggested these Posts for you too:

1. Interesting tech for 02 to 06 August 2010 25 Tech links I found interesting in the last week. Graphene nanobubbles, gigapixel photos, smart bandaids, robots, wind and solar power, huge buses, satellites, bridges and more. ...
2. Interesting tech for 16 to 20 August 2010 25 Tech links I found interesting in the last week. Giant tide turbine; messages on Google Earth; wound gel; Mecca clock; care hacking; pulsars; killer paint; biofuels; iris scans; plug-in...
3. Interesting tech for 09 to 13 August 2010 25 Tech links I found interesting in the last week. Space robot, dazzling lasers, deer frighteners, iPads in the museum. ...

I write a Tech Universe column for the NZ Herald. This is a fun assignment: Tech Universe brings 5 headlines each day about what’s up in the world of technology. Here are the links from last week.

Tech universe: Monday 23 August 2010

• HIGHWIRE ACT: Balanced on a live wire hundreds of metres above the ground isn’t where I’d spend my working days. But the Canadian LineScout robot eats it up. The robot scans and repairs high power cables, all the while sending video back to base. It can navigate around obstacles too. Trapezes next?
  

  

  www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEI5LlL0lBM

• 3G LEAKS: In Israel some water meters send out a 3G signal every 11 to 30 seconds. A remote operated drone flies around reading the signals and looking for unusual rates of flow that could indicate leaks. I guess there’s no water in the dead zones.
• NIGHT RIDER: Night vision goggles convert photons into electrons that hit a phosphorous screen. An organic semiconductor detector instead displays the image on LEDs. The new device is tiny, cheap and made of plastic rather than heavy glass. Look for this soon in cellphones, spectacles or even a heads-up display in the car. A very handy piece of kit.
• PROBABLY SAVED: Lyric Semiconductor has created ‘probabilistic’ analogue computer processors. Where traditional computers deal with absolute ones and zeros, the probabilistic processor allows for other values: each bit stores a probability that a value is 1. This could be important for spam filtering, shopping cart recommendations and spotting fraud. I’m not sure I’d like my computer to ‘probably save’ my documents.
• TWEET ME UP: There are the words we use and the words we find in the dictionary. The just released 3rd edition of the Oxford Dictionary of English now includes such words as microblogging, social media, netbook, dictionary attack, paywall and tweet-up. Word up Scrabble players.

Tech universe: Tuesday 24 August 2010

• THE CAR THAT CAN: The Baldos II is a tiny red car from Sweden that can go 152.2 kilometers on one litre of fuel — that’s 0.657 litres per 100 km. It’s a single-seater whose top speed is 35 Kph. Without the driver, the car weighs 155 Kg. Pranksters will have fun re-parking that one!
• MCAFEE INSIDE: Intel plan to buy McAfee and their security software for around US$30 per share, or almost $8 billion in total. Intel want to bolster “security for the growing shift to wireless connectivity.” I feel safer already.
• SUNNY SPINNER: The Heliotrope solar house in Germany cost 1.2 million Euros. Designed to capture the sun’s light and heat through solar cells and other techniques, it gently rotates through the day. The house generates 5 times as much energy as it consumes. Forget Net Zero; energy ‘profit’ is the thing to aim for.
  Video (in German):

  

  www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtPj_nmjlSQ

• 3D ECHO: NIWA has been ‘pinging’ the ridges, volcanoes, plateaus, canyons and seamounts around NZ. Echo sounder systems send out hundreds of separate beams to build up a 3-D picture of the seafloor. Travel time of the sound shows water depth, while strength of the signal shows hardness and texture of the floor. 3D really is trendy these days.
• TIGHT FISTED: Plastic cards haven’t totally done away with cash yet, but a new wallet can make it harder to spend those hard-earned notes. The Proverbial Bumblebee Wallet buzzes whenever your bank processes a transaction, while the Peacock grows and shrinks to reflect your bank balance, and the Mother Bear contains a hinge that resists opening. Just don’t buy yourself an extra treat for managing to open the darn thing.

Tech universe: Wednesday 25 August 2010

• WEARABLE PHONE: A new slinky black cocktail dress, the M-Dress, is all cellphone. Gesture recognition software handles phone calls. Lift your hand to talk; lower your hand to hang up. The antenna is in the dress hem, and the SIM card is embedded in the dress. Just don’t throw the dress in the wash!
• TRASH TALK: In Cleveland, Ohio, RFID chips are being added to recycle bins. If a chip show a bin hasn’t been put out for weeks, a supervisor will sort through the trash for recyclables. Residents will be fined for not handling trash appropriately. It won’t pay to be reducing your trash then.
• DUST BUSTERS: Dust is such a nuisance, especially on solar cells where it reduces efficiency. A layer of indium tin oxide is what you need. Add an electric charge and the dust just falls right off. The electrodes could be powered by the solar cell itself. There’s a little bit of circular thinking there, I suspect.
• TIBETAN JAM: I hate when I have to wait through 2 traffic light changes. It’s a good thing I’m not in China where some drivers are in the middle of a 100 Km long traffic jam on the Beijing-Tibet expressway. Drivers are coping with the help of roadside food stalls. Where are those flying cars when you need them?
  

  

  www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzAYVfLhvJo

• DUMMY ROCKET: The Danish Heat 1X Tycho Brahe suborbital rocket heads into space on 31 August 2010, with a dummy aboard. The rocket has been built by Danish volunteers for non-profit scientific purposes. Live astronauts will have to stand up and will have very limited movement. Up, up and away.

Tech universe: Thursday 26 August 2010

• BIRD’S EYE VIEW: Thump, and another bird hits the window. They don’t need to any more though with Ornilux. Birds can see ultraviolet, but we can’t, so the impact-resistant insulated glass uses a special patterned UV reflective coating. Birds see a web, but we see right through. That’s smart glass.
• HORSE VEST: When falling from a horse it’s a long way to the ground. How about a bit of cushioning? Riders wear an air vest that is attached to the saddle by a cord. If they jerk the cord, perhaps by falling off, a small canister of CO2 inflates the vest in a trice. Especially handy for the water jumps.
• WATER, WATER: Drifting in a life raft at sea? Kim Hoffman’s Sea Kettle liferaft has a built-in desalination plant. You pump seawater into a reservoir in the roof where it evaporates to condense into collectors. The raft provides enough drinking water for 5 people per day. Many a drop to drink, after all.
• IPAD BEEF: Sumo wrestlers are big; cellphone keypads are tiny. The Sumo professional organisation is solving problems of missed messages by giving the wrestlers iPads instead. But, the iPad isn’t just an oversized iPhone, really.
• PRISON AID: The Assault Intervention Device shoots huge laser beams. At prisoners. In the Pitchess Detention Center in Los Angeles. It throws a laser beam up to 30 metres away where it penetrates half a millimetre into the skin. The pain makes the prisoner move away. Isn’t that rather like a cattle prod?
  

  

  www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwYvhY-g10A

Tech universe: Friday 27 August 2010

• PIXEL PARTY: Canon has a new 120 megapixel CMOS image sensor. Images are 13,000 by 9,000 pixels. The sensor can record images at 9.5 frames per second, and output full HD sized video. Both sensitive and sharing: it’s a keeper.
• SEE THROUGH MIRROR: Sony’s new DSLR cameras use a stationary mirror. It doesn’t flip up when you press the shutter. Instead light passes through the mirror to both the image sensor and the auto focus sensor. The camera focuses and records at high speed, with no waiting for mirror movement. Twice as sensitive.
• PRINT VIDEO: You don’t expect to see a video in a print magazine, but that’s what the August issue of Successful Farming has. The video, about the size of a cell phone screen, plays several ads. Readers choose which ads by pushing buttons on the page. They could just skip the print version and go all-digital.
  

  

  www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtu-vqhOOAo

• POD WHEELS: Kiwi made iPortal connects an iPhone or iPod to a powered wheelchair via Bluetooth. The device then displays wheelchair information in real time, including speed and range, compass heading, and state of the chair’s battery. Keep that iPod rolling!
• MIND MAPS: Violent offenders with mental health problems sometimes get day leave from their institution as part of their rehabilitation. Offenders from one institution in Britain wear live satellite tracking devices locked round the ankle while on leave. A control room monitors their movements and quickly spots unusual patterns. It’s good to know where the danger spots are.

The Yet Another Related Posts Plugin has suggested these Posts for you too:

1. Interesting tech for 02 to 06 August 2010 25 Tech links I found interesting in the last week. Graphene nanobubbles, gigapixel photos, smart bandaids, robots, wind and solar power, huge buses, satellites, bridges and more. ...
2. Interesting tech for 16 to 20 August 2010 25 Tech links I found interesting in the last week. Giant tide turbine; messages on Google Earth; wound gel; Mecca clock; care hacking; pulsars; killer paint; biofuels; iris scans; plug-in...
3. Interesting tech for 09 to 13 August 2010 25 Tech links I found interesting in the last week. Space robot, dazzling lasers, deer frighteners, iPads in the museum. ...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.