I really love the idea of putting frequently accessed documents in the cloud and sharing them with others. Scribd and Box.net are two services I’ve used this year. If you haven’t tried either service, they are worth checking out. It simply allows you to upload all types of documents, tag, share, and embed them onto other pages. I’ve used Scribd the most in a limited fashion this year.

I still have some problems with online storage. First of all, it’s not fast enough. It still relies on your Internet connection. If you want to open up and view each document, it requires time to either download or view in a Flash player type interface. For instance, I uploaded 20 old English exams I created into both services, and I wanted to quickly look through each document and see which ones I might want to update or delete.   It took too long to go through each one to see what was inside it. It would have been much easier on my desktop to open and look through them. Ultimately, it made me realize that I need to review each document on my main computer, delete and/or update the documents first, then upload them when they were perfect.  Forget editing the document online simply.  I also had trouble with tagging documents in Scribd. I uploaded a bunch of documents and tagged them incorrectly by mistake (leaving out a comma for example: teaching classmgt). Revising my tagging mistake was not easy because Scribd could not find any documents with my mistag, to allow me to reselect all and then change the tags. I became quickly frustrated with the time intensiveness of the interface and speed of each service and walked away for the day.

The  living in the cloud completely is still not a reality for me today.   It’s funny when I hear people talk about really doing it and abandoning operating systems.  This will not happen for a long time.  I want speed and privacy. I would not feel comfortable uploading drafts of my writing or major design projects.  I would not upload personal passwords or financial details.  It’s fascinating that people use services like Mint.com.  Sure, if you are just starting out and you create everything in the cloud, you should be fine. But if you already have created a lot of content or use professional level software like Photoshop or Flash, forget it. I’m relatively open minded, but as a power user, I am open to using cloud computing for what it’s good at.  Getting everything into the cloud is not that fast to accomplish, even if it is easy. Like all online services, sometimes it takes time to figure out all the nuisances of an online service (and there is no telling if it will disappear in ten years), to really test out the limits of the tools. Then you can see what works for you, and what is still needing improvement.