You will probably have noticed the average price of storage memory falling year after year… and it will continue to do so for a while yet. While cheaper material and production costs have played significant parts in this, another contributor is the ‘cloud’. We now store more and more of our files – be they music, pictures or documents – virtually… or should I say, in the ‘cloud’!
What exactly is the ‘cloud’ I hear you ask. In simple terms, it is Internet storage – content saved to an area that can be accessed online. To put a real life example in context, take for instance this article. I started writing it on my iPhone while waiting for a train… continued it on my work laptop once I arrived in the office… and completed it on my personal computer when I returned home – all by saving the file to the ‘cloud’ and not having to worry about using a portable USB device or the like! This is one of many ways you can benefit from the ‘cloud’ or ‘cloud computing’ as it is also referred to.
Before I go into other ways you can benefit from the ‘cloud’, I will give a few examples of how you can store content in the ‘cloud’. I will preface this by saying this list of options is by no means exhaustive nor am I advocating for any one in particular.
A few examples and associated benefits of how I use ‘cloud’ services:
- Apple’s iCloud – For those of you with Apple devices you may already be familiar with this service. It allows you to save and/or backup content created on your phone/computer to the ‘cloud’ so it can be accessed by your phone/any computer capable of going online. If I had enabled this sooner, rather than later, I would not have lost all my contacts on my iPhone!
- Dropbox – I use Dropbox to save documents I create on my laptop and pictures I take on my phone. The added benefit of this service is the ability to then share an individual file or entire folder of files with others via email, Facebook or Twitter!
- Virgin Media ‘Backup & Storage’ – I use the Virgin Media service, which comes bundled with my cable, broadband and telephone package, to backup my important personal files. It was the first lesson in IT I learnt nearly a decade ago, and it continues to serve me well today… backup, backup, backup! You never know when your phone might drop in a glass of water, or a virus might destroy your hard drive!
As mentioned, this is merely an introduction and so I advise you to look for further information, ironically, online!