Dwight Watt - Newspaper Article #326 2/24/2016


Question: What is the cloud?

Answer:

The cloud is when you store your information at a location somewhere on the Internet.

Google Drive, Microsoft One Drive and your email are examples of storage on the cloud. You know it is out there but exactly where it is stored you do not know.

Advantages to the cloud are that you can access your information from anywhere, you do not need to be on your computer, and that you are not using storage space on your computer.

It is called the cloud as in drawings of networks when it comes to how items are connected thru the Internet, you do not know how travels exactly thru the internet and it is always drawn as a cloud. The same type principle applies as with a real rain cloud or fog, you know things are in there but they are hidden.

Most of us have used the cloud for our email for a number of years whether thru Gmail or yahoo mail and are able to work on our email on different computers. I keep my pictures on the cloud thru Shutterfly and I can access them from anywhere and my family and friends can access them. I do keep a copy of them on my machine as a backup.

The cloud does present a coupe of issues. One is how secure is it? Can others easily hack it? The second is what happens if the major storage location is destroyed in a fire, hurricane, etc? Are you also keeping a backup of your information on your machine so if this happens you can rebuild?