“In the Cloud” – Now Part of the Modern Lexicon

As a publicist with Inphorm, the Public Relations division of Adworkshop, a considerable amount of my everyday life is spent ingesting digital information. And because of this, my vocabulary has grown to include words that did not exist 10 years ago.

I routinely say "Facebook me" or "Did you see this Tweet?" and I find it both strange and natural that the way we interact online should impact the way we interact with each other, off line. We are saturated with information every day. From blogs, RSS feeds, Twitter updates, Facebook posts, news feeds – the sheer volume of information available with just a few keystrokes is remarkable. Easy access to information is a must. As a PR professional who works in the office, at home and on the road, I find it increasingly necessary to access my files on the fly. It appears I'm not alone. Welcome to the cloud.

The cloud allows you to store your files – from music to photos to word documents - on a remote internet server, and then access it from any device with an internet connection. Sites like YouSendIt.com, Cx.com, Google docs, Microsoft's Cloud Power and DropBox are just a few that I have come across in the past. Just this week, Steve Jobs' introduced Apple's newest burst of genius - the iCloud.

Jobs presented the iCloud as the new "digital hub of your digital life." The iCloud will store all of your information, and then push it wirelessly and automatically to your devices. Your "digital life" – your pictures, documents, projects, calendar and email – are all in the cloud. Revolutionary and so simplistic – where has this idea been?

Truth is it's been around for a while. Most people just didn't find an applicable use for it or found the idea irrelevant. So why the buzz about the cloud now? Well, Vernie G. Kopytoff's article in the New York Times titled "Data Grows, and So Do Storage Sites," on Sunday pointed out one key factor in the growth of remote server storage: necessity. Kopytoff says that online storage sites may have been around for a while, but not every internet user found it necessary to use one. More and more, we are discovering how nice it is to work on a document in the office, hit save and access it from your home office. 

Another key factor: the devices themselves. Walter S. Mossberg made a great point in his latest post on the Wall Street Journal, titled "Learning about Everything Under the 'Cloud.'" Mossberg points out that most people are using lighter weight, less powerful devices like smart phones and net books, in place of laptops and desktop computers. Your smartphone or iPad is an incredible tool – but it just doesn't have the memory capability to store all of your data in a way that is easy to access. The cloud makes this irrelevant by storing your documents off-site, so that your system isn't bogged down and your devices work faster.

No more emailing documents to your personal address to work on over the weekends. No more web-mail accounts. No more thumb drives. Information is evolving. Naturally.

See you in the cloud.