cloudsYou’ve probably been hearing the term “Cloud Computing” a lot lately. For those of you who are not aware of what it is, let me explain. Cloud Computing is the idea that instead of having a consumer buy software for their computer, companies will create that software to work as a web application and then the consumer can subscribe to the service. A consumer can subscribe to use hardware, such as a server, as well. It’s a very revolutionary idea that’s begun to take hold of some major internet companies such as Google, Yahoo, and Amazon. If you’re an entrepreneur this should be of the up most interest to you as we will be seeing major movements towards this type of thinking from all walks of business. Once we’ve gone through the pros and cons I want to discuss how it will effect blogging and web 2.0 and also how it will define web 3.0.

Pros:
- Consumers only pay for what they use.
- Computers only need enough to run internet connection and memory.
- Updates to software or hardware are preformed solely by the vendor.
- Issues will be fixed faster as bugs will be more trackable.
- Scalable to usage almost immediately.
- Business’ who are contributing to the cloud have lower overhead.
- Support will most likely be live or forum oriented.

Cons:
- Heavy use could cost more that actual product.
- Updates to software or hardware are preformed solely by the vendor.
- Security will need to be sure-compliant for large companies to be on board.
- Some entities may want to have software when it’s no longer available.
- Less face-to-face business interaction.
- Plugin and modifications will need to be regulated.

How this will effect blogging:
Unless you use text editing software such as Microsoft Office to write all your blog posts, there wont be a big change with blogging in a cloud environment. Blog designers, such as myself will see some tangible changes though, some from the open source sector of the internet. Sites such Aviary.com provide web applications based off of Adobe products (Photoshop and Illustrator mainly) that are free to use, however still in beta release. Sites like Kompozer offer an open source WYSIWYG editor that’s more user friendly than Dreamweaver. It’s not a far cry to predict that a Code/WYSIWYG Editor will show up as a web app. It could actually work more seamlessly that current software and tie directly into server space, eliminating upload and download time. There’s a lot to be said about open source by itself and I see it playing into cloud computing more and more. WordPress has educated a lot of people in the online community about how open source can be very profitable. Rolling that type of thinking into a cloud environment is a half step in a similar direction.

How will this effect Web 2.0
Web 2.0 will soon be Web 3.0 and cloud computing will be a big part of that transition. We’ll be bringing a lot of what we learned with us of course. We’ve refined the peer-to-peer connection with things like facebook, twitter, and linkedin. What we will see is privatizing and better content quality. Social networks that work more as country clubs could be very benefitial to professionals. Like minded groups that essentially work as industry related thinktanks could change a lot of the stodgy thinking that come to light in the recent recession. Realize with me that cloud computing wont be restricted to “computing” it could easily translate into a pletheora of different industries (ie. staffing… check out Scriptlance). Essentaill,y cloud computing can and should be cloud thinking, where a person reaches into the cloud and pull out what they need without effort. This is what I see Web 3.0 being.