If you have Kindle on more than one device . . . . .

[Stinky The Clown]

. . . . you have a hint of what Apple's new iCloud is about.

The process is pretty simple for the user. I have no clue how it gets done at the technical level. If you have Kindle on, let's say, your phone and an actual Kindle device, and you're reading War and Peace, when you turn the page on one device, it turns the page on the other device.

The cloud is in touch with your devices and keeps everything in sync.

I suspect the "how" of the Kindle example is different than will be the "how" of Apple's new service, but the basic "what" is pretty cool.

[hlthe2b]

1. I love that... I have kindle on Iphone and laptop...

and had them both on concurrently to watch how it worked.... Amazing, really.

[alpizzy]

2. Same with Google books. n/t

[midnight]

3. I'm so slow to digest tech... But my apple has started advertising this sevice..

At least I think it is a service will be available to me via my apple.. I will have to look at it more closely... Do you have an apple?

[Stinky The Clown]

4. Yes, I do

All Mac here - desktop, laptop, iPad, iPhone

[HopeHoops]

5. Apple's iCloud is about admitting that a shitload of stuff is illegal. Read on.

Of that $25 fee, 70% goes to the movie and recording industries as compensation for the things that have been illegally ripped and copied. They've denied that it is a problem for so long that it is rather amusing to see them coming to terms with it with such a strong but informal "settlement". As for how it gets done, when you sign up (and periodically afterward), their server scans your devices for non-iStore files and uploads them so they will be available on your other devices. Each device is uniquely identified on their server so by registering them you gain access. I didn't see anything about limits on the number of devices, but I assume they must exist to prevent, oh, say and entire dorm full of students all using the same registration.

The concept of a cloud has been around for a LOOOOOnnnnggg time and M$ tried it at least ten years ago. They still offer "cloud" backup capability. I prefer my external drives and burning DVDs, thank you. At least I know where they are. DVDs are easy to store off-site for really important files.

[Stinky The Clown]

6. We talked about this - our company uses the cloud. In fact, we use MobileMe.

We store a lot of files we use in common. Proposals, contracts, marketing materials, some job files, calendars, contacts/phone lists, etc.

What we do not keep there is financial data of any sort.

Our preference for disaster recovery is to use our own equipment for back-ups and recovery files. Here's what we do:

We each do a local, incremental 15 minute backup 24/7.

We each do a system local backup once every 24 hours. I personally add a second local backup of my backup.

We each copy that 24 hour backup to another office's server once every 24 hours.

Our offices are in different states. In the event of a disaster to any one office, the worst that can happen is we lose 24 hours worth of data.

The backup for each office (we're a very small company) is in the 100Gb range. Of that, perhaps 10 Gb is stored on MobileMe.



But this is, as Jobs described it yesterday, just a big hard drive in the sky. We also have a few subscription programs we use that are truly in the cloud and operated locally in our browser using M$ Silverlight.

[HopeHoops]

7. The way you use it makes sense - takes advantage of it while retaining secure information locally.

Off-site at another office is always a good idea.

As for Jobs describing something - it is ALWAYS a big something in the sky! :evilgrin: