Cloud Computing and Me

What is cloud computing?  There are many definitions of cloud computing:

According to Wikipedia,

Cloud computing is a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet . Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure in the “cloud” that supports them.

According to Berkeley RAD Lab,

The services themselves have long been referred to as Software as a Service (SaaS). The datacenter hardware and software is what we will call a Cloud. When a Cloud is made available in a pay-as-you-go manner to the general public, we call it a Public Cloud; the service being sold is Utility Computing. We use the term Private Cloud to refer to internal datacenters of a business or other organization, not made available to the general public. Thus, Cloud Computing is the sum of SaaS and Utility Computing, but does not include Private Clouds.

Ok, so what extractly is cloud computing?  I’m sure you can figure it out by searching from the web so I’m not going to pretend as an expert.  In general, popular cloud computing services are services from Google (such as Gmail, Google Reader, Google Documents), Dropbox, Moobee, Photoshop.com, etc. (I can easily name over 50 popular cloud computing services)

When I start Firefox, I have 3 default pages need to open: Gmail, Google Reader, Facebook.  However, I have Remember the Milk displaying the todo list on the right hand side of the Gmail page.  Other than Firefox, I have DropBox, Spanning Sync, and MobileMe running in the background to help me pushing my documents, calendars, and contacts back to the clouds.  I also backup important files to MobileMe iDisk and Amazon S3.  When I receive documents within emails, I use Google Document to open them.  I also share documents with friends and co-workers using Google Document as well.

The more I wrote and the more I figure out I don’t use thick client as much as before (i.e. Microsoft Office).  95% of the thick clients are replaced by cloud computing services.  Of course, that’s why I can only carry a 8.9″ Acer Aspire One with me most of the time (instead of the 15″ Macbook Pro).

How about you?  How tie you and your cloud computing services?