Digital Home Thoughts: Building Your Own Cloud

"But what if you can’t wait? Or what if you haven’t subscribed to the Jobsian reality distortion field? Certainly, there must be ways to replicate the iCloud experience with existing services. It turns out there are—in spades. The challenge is in paring them down. Once you do that, you can get everything you get from iCloud—and more—for free if you’re willing to mix together a cocktail of services. Here’s your shopping list."

Now that Apple has announced its iCloud service, the whole cloud industry is going to get a huge shot in the arm from the added attention. If you are someone who is either impatient, or not privy to the Apple world, there are a wide range of cloud services that you can take advantage of, some which can even mostly replicate the exact same services that iCloud will bring. The biggest thing you should pay attention to, though, is how efficient each service is. I imagine that the draw of a lot of these services is that you will have access to your digital life from anywhere, and that means data. And at least for Canada, and large growing part of the world, that means that your data caps may come into play.