Microsoft SkyDrive will provide more almost seamless Cloud storage and streaming on Windows 8

Everything is The Cloud these days and Microsoft will up the ante in being your Cloud provider with free Windows 8 SkyDrive integration.

Download the Consumer Preview of Windows 8

The desktop, MS Office and Windows 8 Metro apps will allow you to automatically store your important files, photos and videos on your computer and in The Cloud. Any file you want will be available on our Windows Phone, laptop, desktop and wherever you go.

Traveling to see Aunt Minnie? Don’t worry about those baby snaps or graduation pictures. Just check your SkyDrive when you get there.

Apple will still have the upper hand with music on iCloud. They are providing legitimate copies of the music we perhaps acquired through downloading for one annual fee. However, streaming music and videos in the Apple model costs money both in the annual fees and monthly service charges from mobile phone providers. Customers who use iCloud or Siri have doubled their data use since November, not a good thing when providers are ending unlimited data plans.

I wouldn’t count Microsoft out of the music game. Zune is quietly developing into a music hub that could rival iTunes. What gives Microsoft the advantage is more than 1 billion users of its operating system who can freely use SkyDrive.

You will need a Windows Live or Hotmail account to use SkyDrive feature, but you’ll need that anyway for Windows 8 registration and access to the Microsoft Store. The registration is similar to the need for an iTunes account to use any of Apple’s iTouch, iPhone, iPad or Mac devices.

I’ve been using the free SkyDrive service and find it convenient. Files are stored in folders and commonly named.

Here’s a video of Joe Murphy singing Rambling Woman at the Fredericton Blues Festival I uploaded last fall. I marked the file as public so anyone can see it. Most files would be private or shared within a group like Family.

With the release of Windows 8 Consumer Preview, SkyDrive will be much smoother than its implementation as a sideline of Windows Live.

Preston Galla of ComputerWorld thinks Windows SkyDrive will beat Apple’s iCloud. First Microsoft will be very liberal in use, while Apple charges annual fees. Apple’s iCloud is not simple to set up. SkyDrive is automatic.

“ Windows 8 Will Deliver a Cloud Service to Rival or Beat iCloud. In Windows 8 Microsoft will merge its free online storage service SkyDrive and syncing software Mesh to provide the backbone for what looks to be a service that will rival or beat iCloud.”

“In Windows 8,” he writes, “those tools together will automatically sync all your important files to the cloud, and then sync them to your devices. So if you write a Word document, for example, it will get sent to the cloud, and that document will then be available on a Windows Phone, a Windows 8 tablet, or other Windows 8 device. It will also be available from any Internet-connected device. ComputerWorld

Google Docs or SkyDrive

Google Docs is a great idea. Using a MS Office add-in, Google stores a synchronized copy of files automatically. Google Docs has two major drawbacks. First it changes the file name to something unrecognizable and second it has problems keeping files in sync.

I used Google Docs last fall when I was out-of-town. Frequently used files in both locations developed 2nd and 3rd generation copies in both places. This is a known problem that drives you crazy trying to find the latest revision.

If Microsoft SkyDrive can sort out the sync problem it will send Google Docs to the large pile of unfinished bright ideas from Google.

For more details on Microsoft SkyDrive, read Connecting your apps, files, PCs and devices to the cloud with SkyDrive and Windows 8 from the Building Windows 8 blog.

Why The Cloud

Like it or not, we are moving to a hybrid model of data storage – some files on a physical device and some stored amorphously on huge storage farms dubbed The Cloud. The data is not really in the sky but resides on physical servers. However, which server and where it is located is irrelevant.

The Cloud has been in existence for decades. Windows Hotmail is a Cloud email service. Amazon.com operates in The Cloud and has become so proficient it sells Cloud services to other organizations.

The Cloud allows users to access data from anywhere. With the proliferation of mobile devices and less use of laptops and desktops, The Cloud provides convenient data and application storage.

The Cloud is a natural progression from Client Server installations of the 1990s where companies created applications and data stores on large servers and allowed access through desktop and laptop computers.

Centralization on a server was easy to maintain but the amount of data flowing along the network made remote access difficult. Large organizations like banks and government struggled to provide remote access.

Thin and nimble web-based applications were the next step in the evolution. They were much easier to design, code and implement. Web applications also allowed remote users to have the same experience as local users.

The Cloud move the concept to the next level where the applications and data are stored on large server farms. The Cloud provides automatic loading and storage functions which blur exactly where things are located and usually provides redundant storage.

For an overview of The Cloud, see Wikipedia.