Making the issue of the Cloud rather more cloudy

We hear a lot about “the cloud” these days and I’m not really sure that everyone knows what it is. Some people just use it as a synonym for the internet, but more properly I use it to mean stuff that’s on the internet, which isn’t usually found there.

So you would expect a company called icloud to have something of a clue about what and where the cloud is. This Swedish operation, in the great Scandinavia style of Opera (actually Norwegian), has put an entire operating system into the cloud that you can access through any browser.

This week it has updated its first icloud, which it describes as an online computer, adding a task bar, to make it look just like Windows, a universal search facility to search all files, improved sharing capability and released the whole thing in 26 languages. The company so far has 200,000 users after launching just six months ago, and its catchphrase is “extending the life of aging computers”.

That’s not really an idle claim, since an old operating system that can get you on the internet, but no longer do much else, can get you to a web location where the system, through your browser, feels just like a new operating system and where other programs can be acquired and used online.

icloud says it has improved the desktop with what it calls Super Search and a new start menu that looks more like Windows. Super Search is a way of integrating internet search with simultaneous search of private files on the icloud servers. The new major release also introduces Universal Sharing, so that just about any file can be shared with as many friends as you like, turning icloud into a bit of a social network too. It can support membership of all the various social networks like Facebook and Twitter, as well.

It’s not that we haven’t come across companies which give you free web space, Duh! There’s Google for instance, but making you feel like you have an entire computer when you are on someone else’s, is a strong metaphor which makes it very simple to use. icloud will be just right for many people who either cannot afford a computer, or have an old out of date device, and of course it can be available on a phone or netbook just as easily.

icloud claims its key differentiator to other Cloud Computing services is its Application Virtualization technology enabling software delivered as a service, but much of the processing cycles offloaded to the local computer. This preserves data centre resources and reduces bandwidth consumption.

Daniel Arthursson, founder of icloud says, "With icloud, everyone in the world can afford to have their own computer, it's free and always accessible". Go here to visit icloud

icloud comes with 3 GB of storage for documents, photos and music
50 applications like office, mail, music, video, instant messaging and games and file sharing and you can mount your virtual desktop to appear to be another drive on any physical computer. Founded in 2001 the company which provides icloud is called Xcerion and says it has 22 pending patents.