About Cloud Storage

What do you know about Cloud Storage? Everyone is talking about it, some people are using it, some aren't sure if they are, and as with any major shift in technology or computing, there's a lot of folklore and wives tales swirling around the concept. So let's talk about it straight.

Straight Talk

The questions on everyone's lips are, "Is it safe to use cloud storage," and "how will this change what I do when I save documents and media files," and "which cloud storage choice is best for me?"

In the first place, when we talk about cloud storage, we're actually talking about a place in some company's data center where your data resides. This is in contrast to your own hard drive in your own safe, secure home computer or home office.

But is it safe? Cloud storage seems to put your data out of your reach, and in someone else's control. How can that be good? On the other hand, just how safe is your data on a hard drive at home? Let's tell the truth about that first.

Infographics and the Rise of a New Intellect

I'll be honest. I love infographics every bit as much as the next hungry information consumer. I adore the snapshot presentation of facts that gives me a glimpse of the impact and reach of certain phenomenon. (In fact, I'm producing a science show for kids that uses this approach very heavily.)

BUT -- I also know that one must be careful to check the underlying facts and the methodology with which the picture in an infographics is assembled. There is an old saying that "figures don't lie, but liars can figure." If you also consider the timeworn saw that "a picture is worth a thousand words" you can deduce that liars who can figure AND who can create infographics have 1000 more ways to lie!

Here's one from an article I saw recently.

Following the Discussion

Over the time that online discussions have been around, there has been an evolution in the way we read things. Near the dawn of "social media" the metaphor required that you first find the right discussion, and then you could see what people say. (This was the way it worked in the BBS and "discussion forum" days.)

The current fashion is to start with the people (presumably that you know and trust) and then delve your way into the discussions (which, presumably would be the ones of interest to you). We progressed from "who's talking about my topic" to "what topics are on my friends' minds?"

The mechanism that allows us to use the topic or idea to discover people, and of course to explore the ideas themselves is the #hashtag. Here are some of the things we've learned about the use (and abuse) of the hashtag.

Who is this about, anyway?

One of my most long-established pet peeves about web content, and presentation of information on the web is what I call Header Fluff.

Early browsers were often plagued with this unsightly condition. But even if browsers have grown somewhat free of this heartbreaking life challenge, content designers can still succumb to it for their individual efforts.

Here's a page we encountered recently.

The news story is in there somewhere. Even with a generous definition of other parts of this page as useful content, the total proportion of meat is around 15% here I think.

I want this publication to succeed, and I hope they wake up to the imperative that they lead with content.

Why all these short URLs?

...I've been using a service that takes a long URL and turns it into a size that's compatible with Twitter. (For instance the unruly http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdFSXRgiJlk becomes
http://cli.gs/zuLYT3 which is much easier to include in a short tweet.)

There are a number of such services, but I've chosen Cligs.

I like using Cligs for two reasons. One is that I can rename the shortcut myself if the name I like has not been chosen. So I've created:

• http://cli.gs/tlwtop - enterprise education blog, The Learning Workforce
• http://cli.gs/48hfpsjc - summer film festival, the San Jose 48 Hour Film Project
• http://cli.gs/amyo - singer/songwriter friend, Amy Obenski

It's cool to me that I can type these in by hand easily in many cases. and if I'm posting the link systematically over time, it's nice to have something I can easily recall.

Figure 1: Cligs traffic metrics

But there's a bigger reason to use a URL shortener for posting links. If you choose one that supports it (and most of them do), you can track the response to the link after you post it. This is the major reason I use Cligs. I like the metrics they collect and I like the presentation.

Cligs shows me the total number of responses I've had to the link, it draws me a graph of activity over time, and it shows me a world map with responses depicted by their contry of origin.

So the image I see of a link posted to a friend's online film looks like the page you see in Figure 1. (click on the image for a closer look).

Figure 2: A clig with multiple
recent mentions.

A page that has been mentioned several times in the preceding weeks, might look a bit more like the second image you see in Figure 2. You can see the upward blips that occur around the time the link was mentioned on Twitter or Facebook.

What's especially useful about the map is that you can see how many of the mentions came from each of the red countries. In the live map, putting the mouse over a country will produce a flyout such as the one you can see in Figure 2.

Below this graphical depiction of activity, there is a list of specific sites from which the clig was accessed. For instance, if there is a specific page on LinkedIn that exposes the clig, you'll see some number of clicks that originated there.

The information is advisory only and there are often assumptions about the origins of the traffic, but the overall story it tells is a useful one.

I must point out that there are something like a dozen similar services and you can easily find a comparison of their features. I used bit.ly for a while, but switched back to Cligs in spite of the things I find tedious about their site.

If you're interested in knowing how widely your voice carries in the social media space, it's a good idea to choose a URL shortner and use it for a while to track responses. You'll certainly find something interesting as you do.