Horizon Report

Electronic Books - I have to admit I have been resistant to this idea. I have always liked to read, and I like my paper books. Holding an iPad/eReader/Kindle (or whatever) just isn't the same. The text isn't the same (though digital "ink" is making it much better), not to mention I like the look of my nice leather hardbacks on my shelf. However, I gotta say the ease of access and storage is making me rethink this. I have a lot of books. More than I can currently keep on shelves, which means they are in boxes (which also means they are undoubtedly getting damaged). Over the years as we have moved from place to place I've also lost (or my wife threw away) a number of books.

Or I could store every book I've ever owned on an iPad, back them up to the iCloud and have access to any of them at a moments notice. Intriguing and tempting …

Which leads me to the trend of technologies increasingly using and moving to the cloud. I started using cloud based backup storage about three years ago. It was cheap, relatively easy, and I didn't have to mess with constantly updating my external hard drives anymore (i.e. always needing more space). Not to mention that local backups don't solve the problem of catastrophic failure (i.e. your house burns down). While most IT businesses have (or should have) plans for recovering from such events, most people didn't.

Now all my data is stored away from my house, my storage space is adjusted when I need more and I can access my data whenever and wherever I need to. I was on vacation a few months ago and wanted some old pictures to show friends, so I just logged in to my account and BAM, there they were.