In this tutorial we describe various products which are based on the cloud technology.
Panda Cloud Antivirus –The first of its kind, Panda has launched an antivirus based on the cloud technology.It is very light weight as the setup file is only about 237 kb odd and during installation only, it downloads other modules which are required, so making it very easy to install and use.
So during virus scanning, it sends the data about the malicious files to the Panda server for analysis and hence saves CPU’s processing power and RAM.The Only trade off is that you can require an internet connection to use the antivirus. Other than that with the with sleek interface it provides and takes up only 10 mb ram when idle and 60 mb when scanning , it is a good antivirus to use.Another recently launched antivirus of the similar kind is immunet.
Cloud Printers: Now no need to purchase a card online /paper online and then get them printed manually.HP ensures that through its cloud printing technology. These printers which range from $99 to $299 will have email address too and so one can send email to the printers through computers or mobiles and thus it eliminates the need of any intermediaries like computers or printer servers and even printer drivers. .Also the printers (wired/wireless) can procure documents through Google cloud (which include Google Docs and Apps).HP also plans to start an e-print web service which will allow users to schedule the printing of their documents and birthday cards.
Cloud Operating Systems:
a) Chrome OS: Chrome OS is an extreme example of an OS which is entirely on the desktop, but with applications which are entirely on the cloud.The product has been developed by google and has its base kernel as ubuntu and it is open source and free. www.chromium.org. It boots up in approximately 5 seconds and wants only google account to be created to access chrome.All the data is stored on the cloud,even user preferences are synced with the cloud.The only application that ChromeOs ships in with is the the Chrome browser with an integrated media player.
b) xPUD:It is another cloud based Os built around firefox.The OS comes with a very few applications installed by default namely firefox browser,gnome-mplayer and a file manager. But The repository of applications include Dropbox(an application to sync your files with cloud),openoffice.org,Text Editors,Skype etc.
c)SlimCleaner:SlimUtilities has recently launched a product which uses cloud technology and feedbacks from the community to gather data to tweak and optimize one’s software and computer. The hijack section scans a computer to locate all start ups ,internet settings ,network & system settings and windows registry settings that may have been modified by malicious applications and then uses the aggregated scan results results(collected through community) as a standard to make recommendations or improvements.
d)SlimComputer:The program has been launched by SlimWareUtilities removes unused or pre-installed software from new computers for faster start-up and improved performance. It also maintains stripped-away programs in the cloud for re-install later, if required by the user and its cloud storage technique lets consumers choose the programs that they want to install for a richer user experience.
SlimDrivers software stabilize, update and repair the connections between an operating system and hardware devices such as printers, bluetooth, video cards,lan cards and other peripherals like keyboard, mouse etc. SlimDrivers uses community feedfack(technical term crowd sourcing) to collect and aggregate millions of devices. SlimDrivers ,using the cloud technology automatically detects when the driver needs an updating and also install the required driver for the hardware.
Mint is personal finance tool which manages your money using cloud technology.It was launched around 3 years back and since its inception has won many critical acclaims and awards from CNN Money,Time Business Week and what more it is free to use.You have create an account and you can access all the balances and transactions even through IPhone, ie. All the utilities like Credit card,Loan,Stock and brokerage under one roof.
Google Apps/Microsoft SharePoint/LotusLive: Google Apps includes Gmail(the email client),Google Sites(a simple CMS to build websites),Google Calendar(A calendar cum scheduling application),Google Apps for writing cool scripts to enhance the functionality of apps,Google Videos(not in standard edition) for private video channel unlike YouTube and Google Docs(Provides cloud based editing and viewing of spreadsheet and documents online).Google Apps in editions standard(free expect that you need to have a registered domain to use it and with some missing features),educational,non-profit,governmental and premier edition for premium users(they get the maximum features).A similar product offered by Microsoft is Sharepoint and by IBM is LotusLive.
Windows Intune:For small business features of Windows Enterprise editions are too expensive to use, to cater to this Microsoft has come up with a product which has a console to gather information from the client PC’s to view the overall system configuration (Hardware & Software),information about drivers, the overall memory usage from the far away server. The server can also provide remote assistance to the clients and install software in each of the client PC’s and also make them virus free.
MyPhone Cloud Service:Lanuched by Microsoft,this service allows the users running Windows Mobile 6 operating System on their phone to backup their data upto 200MB(free storage) in the cloud.The website also allows the syncing and retrieval of data. ‘Cloud’ has become the buzzword now.Started by Amazon initially,now all the major giants like Microsoft,Google,Oracle(Sun Cloud),IBM are offering their proprietary software now as a software as a service through cloud as this is a cheaper solution. The above list is just a drop in an ocean!
