£2.3 billion in a Cloud right above your head
I’m not altogether comfortable with this Cloud thing when it comes to clients. Lose your internet connection and your world stops. The fact remains though, we put a lot of reliance in it. £2.3billion worth of reliance new research shows.
Do you know about the Cloud?
It’s where things that you use and access are held by a third party provider. Like Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft or Rackspace.
You probably don’t realise how much you use them everyday but they are becoming more entwined with your life everyday that Rackspace commisioned a survey and found that we stash £2.3billion worth of digital resources on someone else’s servers.
There figure’s make interesting reading.
- As a group, Brits are hoarding at least £2.3bn** worth of personal possessions in the cloud (Almost a quarter (24 per cent) of UK adults estimate they have £200 or more worth of music, videos, photos in their personal cloud)
- 31 per cent of Brits say they have considered digital possessions as a potential ‘digital inheritance’ that they could leave behind when they die.
- 11 per cent have addressed their digital entities with care – e.g. they have left passwords to their digital treasures in their will – or are at least planning to do so
- Over half (53 per cent) have what they consider ‘treasured possessions’ in cloud services such as Hotmail, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr
- Two-thirds (66 per cent) of us have our head in the clouds – we are unaware we regularly use the cloud (even though 1 in 10 spend more than 5 hours a day in it – more than 76 days in total over a year***)
Rackspace’s full details can be found here
What ever the findings I’m still not 100% comfortable in passing over control in a business setup, it has its merits but when one of our clients lost their internet connection recently I was relieved that his files were on his local server and they could continue to work.
Perhaps my viewpoint on reliance on a service is wrong, had the electric gone off they would have stopped altogether. Perhaps my discomfort is misplaced. The fact remains Cloud is here and here to stay and offers many benefits. Remember though all that glitters isn’t gold and when in business you need to way up the pro’s and cons consider all scenarios. And if it’s all just little bit to geeky we are here to help.
P.S. See how Rackspace have used Social Media Marketing to promote their products and services. And here we are, sharing their information. 
Could your business do the same. Perhaps we can help you with a cunning plan.
Ice Cream Sandwich anyone?
No sooner has the iPhone 4S hit the market and already demand has outstripped supply now Google has stepped up to the plate with the release of their new operating system called Ice Cream Sandwich and Samsung have made the first phone to run it. This is the software that runs your Android phone.
More high tech features are promised with this new software with facial recognition to help sort your photos and more. There’s even NFC, near field communication for all you normal none geek people. It did get me thinking.
On the iPhone 4S is the digital assistant to make my life easier called Siri. And to be honest other than it’s novelty value it is mostly very ‘siri’ indeed. It is flawed in a fundamental way. To use it I’ve got to press a button. So when it would be most of use, when I’m hands free for example it still needs me to be hands on.
Yes it dictates my messages and looks up the weather for me, but when I want to reply to my wife’s text asking how long too I’m home the background noise in the car renders it next to useless.
Technology is great at making your life easier and Android and Apple are great at doing that but don’t let the bells and whistles detract from something being fit for purpose. I hear on the rumour mill that the Ipad3 will be able to scan. That’s really good I thought, a great extra feature. Then I thought why don’t I just take a picture of the thing I want to scan? There’s a camera on board already. Bells and whistles.
Bloomberg’s story is here – http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-18/google-ice-cream-sandwich-debuts-as-iphone-sets-record-tech.html
and rather interestingly both share prices are doing well today.
Google+ Hits 25 Million Visitors, Gets More Sticky
From Mashable : http://mashable.com/2011/08/02/google-plus-25-million-visitors/#view_as_one_page-gallery_box2035
Google+ has hit 25 million visitors and — despite a recent contrary report — users are spending more time there as well, according to comScore.
The social network, introduced on June 28, hit the 25 million visitors mark on July 24, says Andrew Lipsman, vice president of industry analysis at comScore. That means there have been 25 million unique visitors to the Google+ website, not counting mobile users. In July there were roughly 20 million Google+ users.
This rate of growth is much faster than that of Facebook, Twitter and MySpace over the same time period, though Lipsman was careful to note that the other three networks still have much bigger audiences than Google+. [See charts below.]
A recent report from Experian Hitwise showed visits to Google+ fell 3% for the week ending July 23, compared to the previous week, and that average time spent on the site fell 10%. Meanwhile, comScore’s research shows people spent about 50% more time on the network in the week ending July 24 than in the week that ended on July 10.
Gmail penetration appears to be a key factor in Google+’s growth. In general, Google+ is popular where Gmail is popular, Lipsman says. “If you think about it, Gmail is where your social network through Google is likely to exist,” he says. Lipsman estimates that roughly 20% market penetration is the tipping point for social networks — once they reach that level, they tend to become firmly established.
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