Ubuntu One cloud service stretches out with cross-platform clients, says review

I saw a TV commercial for Microsoft cloud, and it looked mighty appealing. It made it look like their Office apps are hosted, and all these dispersed happy people collaborated seamlessly on a project and beat their deadline. I visited MS' cloud services site, http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/cloud/default.aspx, and I'll be hornswoggled if I could figure out if the apps are hosted, or if it's just file-sharing and storage. Way too much content-free marketing fluff.

That looks way more interesting and useful than what Ubuntu is doing, or any other Linux vendor. Linux already has all the security, user management, and networking tools built-in, it's a much more natural fit for hosted services. Makes me wish there was less energy going into Ubuntu respins and more into Linux hosted services and apps. Make me wish I had the smarts and finances to make something like that happen.

Of course, you could start by building your own very private cloud and blogging / HOWTO'ing about it.

When Nomachines webplayer is out, that's exactly what I plan to do.

Too bad I can't watch the darn interview with the Forrester VP (who surely just got himself a nice Christmas present) because you need Silverlight to play it.

This pretty much reminds me of what GS said (though they said it differently): "If Windows Phone 7 & Microsoft cloud fail, and if Microsoft doesn't squeeze its customers harder in favour of a redirect of wealth to Microsofts shareholders, they're pretty much doomed"