We all want to carry out daily tasks efficiently, without having to really understand the technical stuff that goes on behind the scenes. This is where cloud computing comes into the picture. Cloud computing provides easy, on-demand access to users, utilising shared resources from remote servers.
What this means for the end-user, is that one will be able to use the same service, across all platforms, from all locations with an internet connections.
Check out the few services that have caught our fancy:
1. Dropbox - www.dropbox.com
Dropbox allows you to upload & share your documents across multiple systems. It supports Windows, Mac, Linux & Mobile devices like iPhone, iPad, Android & BlackBerry, giving you access to all your files, wherever you go.
The proliferation of mobile devices like laptops, netbooks, smartphones & tablets has ironically lead to the storing of our files & documents in multiple places. Searching for these documents inevitably results in a waste of precious time. Attempts to manually transfer these files remain a major hassle.
With Dropbox working in the background, all your files & documents will be automatically synchronised across all your devices. This way, you will never have to worry about where to find your documents.
To top it off, Dropbox may even help locate your lost mobile device as all connected devices will have their last known IP address logged into the Dropbox system. While you may not know what to do with this IP address, it may just be the key piece of puzzle for the relevant authorities.
*Check out ADrive as well, it's offering 50GB of cloud storage, free!
2. Mint - www.mint.com
How do you like the idea of viewing your savings, credit cards, checkings, retirement and other financial account, all in one location? This saves you tremendous amount of time on bookkeeping and data entry, and in addition, provides you with a complete picture of your financial status.
You can set budgets based on your actual spending. The showing of your savings by cutting back on various categories aids in the meeting of your goals, and you can do this for one-time only expenses or recurring monthly expenses. Topping it off, you will know exactly how much you have at the end of the month or year. This helps you plan early to meet your future financial goals.
What if you tend to be forgetful and need constant reminders to meet your goals or bill payments? Well look no further, for Mint will be there to nag at you, when you fail to meet your set goal or you have an upcoming bill. You can even set Mint to send an alert, if you like to keep track of charges made to your account, especially useful in the prevent of credit card fraud.
3. Evernote - www.evernote.com
Evernote, you can type a text note, clip a web page, snap a photo and even grab a screen shot. And all of your work done with Evernote will be automatically captured, processed, indexed and made searchable via keywords, titles, and tags. With Evernote, notes about all the happenings around you can be taken and shared across all your devices, making it extremely easy to maintain a log of all your activities.
If you like, you can even organise notes into different notebooks (think Folders) for ease of use. In fact, Evernote magically makes printed and handwritten text inside your images searchable!
4. Google Docs - Take a tour
Everyone has heard of and used Microsoft Office but what are the alternatives in cloud computing? Google Docs has a web-based user interface and is supported across most computer systems. Google Docs supports most common office functions like text, presentation and spreadsheets which is used in our daily lives.
A particularly useful function of Google docs is serves as a collaborative tool for editing amongst users and non-users in real time. In particular, the documents can be shared, opened, and edited by multiple users at the same time. In other words, you do not have to worry about editing your part before sending the file to other parties before they can make changes on their end.
So the next time you are working on a project with multiple collaborators, Google Docs may be a useful alternative that speeds up the sharing of your documents.
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