I’m going to introduce you to the cloud.

Here we go.

If you are currently on a PC, download the free ZumoDrive application available here. And then, if you have an iPhone, go to the Apple app store and get the free ZumoDrive application there. That’s it. You’ve just added a free 1GB drive to your iPhone and to your PC that will automatically sync and share whatever files you put in it. Got a bunch of music files on your PC? Drag those files into your ZumoDrive and you now have all that music on your iPhone as well – and on any other computer with a similar installation of ZumoDrive. Very simple. Very cool.

Currently on a Mac? Download the free Dropbox application available here. And then, as soon as the iPhone Dropbox application becomes available (it’s on its way), you can download that application and do the same thing with Dropbox that the PC people can do with ZumoDrive, except more. Dropbox users get a free 2GB drive to sync and share their files. And, even better, if you are on a PC, you can use both Dropbox AND ZumoDrive — right now — for 3GB worth of free storage.

But you’re not done yet.

Fire up Firefox (and if you’re not using Firefox, why aren’t you using Firefox?) and download and install the free “Drag & Drop.io” add-on. IPhoners can then go to the Apple app store and download the free “Droppler” application. With the Firefox add-on in your browser and/or the Droppler app on your iPhone, you can now go and explore all the features of the free and quite remarkable online drop.io service.

Online storage like that provided by ZumoDrive and Dropbox (and, in a somewhat similar way, by drop.io) means you don’t live in your computer anymore. You live in the cloud. And not only do you live there, you do stuff there.

You can make up email addresses on the fly; you can do your taxes (maybe even on time); you can edit all your ugly photos; and you can move all those various desktops on all your old and dreary computers to this.

Of course, you don’t really need the cloud to do all that – if you have a computer, you can do all that without the cloud. But (here’s the good part), once you have the cloud, you don’t need to buy a new computer every three years. Because computers won’t contain all the new and good stuff. The cloud will contain all the new and good stuff. And all you need to do is connect to the cloud.

And how much exactly, you might be wondering, is it going to cost you to connect to the cloud?

Well, here’s what I can say about that: ZumoDrive is free; Dropbox is free; drop.io is free.

Enjoy it while it lasts.

Jump to comments | This entry was posted on Friday, March 6th, 2009 at 11:33 am.