[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lel3swo4RMc]
If you’ve watched any television at all in the last few weeks, you’ve probably seen one of Microsoft‘s “To the Cloud” commercials. These consumer-focused ads feature ordinary folks happily going “to the cloud” when confronted with a conundrum that Windows can solve. (For some reason this always involves a spinning wall panel that replaces their computer with a nicer, brand name model. We think they’re trying to invoke the old Adam West Batman TV series from the 60′s.)
While we’re all for cloud computing and the scalability, convenience and efficiency it offers, we’re against confusing people about it, which is what it appears Microsoft is up to in at least two of the three “To the Cloud” ads we’ve seen. Despite proclaiming that Microsoft’s “cloud” is helping them realize their computing dreams, the ad’s characters are really just using their computers off line or using the Internet independent of any cloud services. We’ll explain, starting with the “Airport” ad at the top of this post.
The sympathetic couple in the ad, stuck at the airport and in need of stimulation, turns to their Internet-connected laptop to stream TV shows recorded on their home PC. Bordom averted! “Yay, cloud…” sighs the woman semi-enthusiastically. Her lack of enthusiasm may stem from the fact that despite what Microsoft implies in the ad, the cloud has nothing to do with their ability to connect to their home PC at the airport. Though a close look at the laptop screen at 15 seconds into the commercial reveals that the couple is using Windows Live Mesh, which includes cloud-based file synching and storage, the feature of Windows Live Mesh that the ad is championing is remote desktop access. We don’t need to tell you that this feature has been available on many, many platforms (including Windows) for years and has nothing to do with “the cloud.”
Indeed, it’s just about the opposite of cloud computing, which is supposed to centralize things and free users from having to configure and maintain their own hardware. In this case, the ad makes a point of saying that none of this is happening! The couple have clearly left their their PC at home running during their trip, and have connected via their laptop to watch TV stored on their home PC. There’s not a cloud in sight–the data comprising the TV show isn’t stored somewhere for easy or speedy retrieval–it’s still on the PC at home! Moving data from one point to another on demand isn’t “cloud computing”‘ it’s just the Internet! Microsoft wants consumers to think that an Internet connection and “the cloud” are the same.
In another “To the Cloud” ad called “Family Photo,” a mother uses the power of the “cloud” and Microsoft’s Windows Live Photo Gallery to stitch together several versions of a family portrait so that it appears that the whole family is smiling at once:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjtqoQE_ezA]
Just like at the airport, the feature that Microsoft touts in this ad, “Photo Fuse” in Windows Live Photo Gallery (say that three times fast), has nothing to do with the cloud. In fact, the Photo Fuse feature has nothing to do with the Internet, much less the cloud! All the computing necessary to stitch the photos together takes place on your PC, where all the photos are also stored. Sure, Windows Live Photo Gallery has integrated online photo storage and sharing, and yes, at the very end of the ad Mom shares her edited photo on Facebook, but the impression the ad tries to create–that somehow the magic of “the cloud” lets a harried mother create the perfect family photo–is a complete lie.
The third and final to “To the Cloud” ad we’ve seen, entitled “Start-Up,” is the only one that accurately represents what the could is and how Microsoft products can help you use it:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HRrbLA7rss]
In this case, a group of seemingly disparate people are actually the four employees of a startup, who each access a shared, synced folder to simultaneously work on company documents. Sure, Google Docs has been letting people do this for free for a while, but in this case it’s totally fair for Microsoft’s characters to claim to be using the cloud to accomplish their computing goals-their documents and the software they use to create and edit them are all remotely hosted via Microsoft’s SkyDrive storage and Office Web Apps. This really is harnessing the power of the cloud and easy document collaboration is definitely a useful tool. Remote desktop access and easy photo compositing are also very useful things for a lot of people. It’s a shame Microsoft has chosen to confuse consumers into thinking that these are somehow “cloud” services.
to the batcave!
Very true. Microsoft is trying to leap forward by branding everything as cloud computing to make for the ground lost yet again by not realizing what future cloud computing hold 10 years back. As expected now Microsoft face stiff competition from companies like Salesforce.
Okay, I was dubed by the “Mom takes family picture” ad. I’ve searched for two days to find the program that can work the magic shown in the commercial. I want to do what was done in that commercial. If the cloud can’t do it, who or what can? Any answers?
Here you go, Donna:
http://fearfuloptimist.wordpress.com/2011/01/14/worth-a-thousand-words/
Donna, she’s using Windows Live Photo Gallery. You need the latest beta version which only runs on Vista and 7 (not XP) to do what she’s doing. I believe Photoshop Elements (version 7+) has the same capability, but Live Photo Gallery is free while Elements will cost you $99.
Man I’m glad I’m not the only one that feels this way. I thought I was the only one!
I admire all you have written about this subject right here however will you please develop additional on your thoughts within the second and third paragraph.
@KEH, just because wikipedia says it doesn’t mean it’s what “the cloud” is. Also “the cloud” definition has changed more times than I can count since I first heard it, and isn’t really well defined. The whole point is, “cloud computing” is nothing but a marketing term for Microsoft and all of these other companies trying to cash in on the next new marketing buzz word, and you saying that the authentication is “in the cloud” and that means the commercial is accurate is retarded. Trying to say that “oh it’s cloud because they link the computers together for free”? This has been around forever, by this definition you’re saying ssh is cloud computing because all you have to do is open the terminal and log into the URL (and since this is using a DNS server, that’s cloud… well it is but it’s not cloud COMPUTING of the actual application), this is cloud computing? No, this is remote access. You’re obviously a microsoft tech plant or you worked in marketing or some BS position rather than tech. If you were tech, maybe that’s why Microsoft puts out such damn buggy software.
This is turning into the same mindset that caused a GB to be defined as 1000 bytes instead of 1024 like it should be (so storage companies can rip us off). To quote wikipedia:
Cloud computing describes a new supplement, consumption, and delivery model for IT services based on the Internet, and it typically involves over-the-Internet provision of dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources.[2][3] It is a byproduct and consequence of the ease-of-access to remote computing sites provided by the Internet.[4] This frequently takes the form of web-based tools or applications that users can access and use through a web browser as if it were a program installed locally on their own computer.[5]
Key words here are “over-the-Internet provision of dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources.”. Your home computer is hardly dynamically scalable or visualized, and if it was by some large stretch and you have a server colo plopped in your living room, you wouldn’t be saying something as moronic as “to the cloud”.
After this definition, it says that the NIST defines it differently, but honestly I don’t care how they define it because they aren’t tech oriented, they’re re-defining it so some marketing tool can make money off the buzz word and not be sued (and who probably paid them off to make it like this), and are probably the same type of people who thought a GB should be 1000 bytes to conform to the metric system instead of realizing the reason for 1024 is because there are by definition 8 bits in a byte.
If they were connecting to a server cluster that was completely abstracted from a software interface that nothing was actually computed and stored from the terminal system, and nothing was done on their machine they were working on, everything being stored on a persistent remote system that they weren’t required to be aware of where exactly it was but could always connect to it, that would be cloud computing.
You can nit pick technicalities all day, the fact is the commercials are mis-leading and buying into the same mindset that’s dumbing down america and causing the general populations tech knowledge to become abysmal and promoting the “I just want it to work” instead of “I want to know why it works”. You’re saying “the internet essentially is the cloud”. No, the internet is the internet. You don’t have “smaller clouds”, those are called NETWORKS. Quit re-defining words to match your marketing campaigns and actually call them what they are.
*1000MB not 1000 bytes, typo, and if you want to nit pick technically it would be an octet not a byte but it’s commonly accepted 8bits=1byte in modern computing even though I don’t think there is an offical definition of a byte and it varies depending on architecture.
Oh.. that Gigabyte thing explains a lot.
You are just a big walking victim.
The people who don’t count in base 2 and base 16 have have no problem with Gigabytete and Gigahertztz being counted the same way. Those that insist that base 2 system using Base 10 naming must count to the next base 2 transition point, know that the HD count is not doing that. So no one is getting ripped off.. The HD will have the same amount of storage no matter how you count a giga..
OMG.. get a life.. your own posts makes it clear.. Cloud is undefined and changing.. hmmm guess cloud was a darn good metaphorore.
Normal people just want to know they can watch TV from home or patch a picture and they really don’t care if its a big giant single server, mostly local or a matrix layout.
Since Microsoft is marketing to users who want to DO things vs people who want to count and name things precisly. they are fine.
No, they’re marketing to morons who are sheep that follow whatever the TV tells them. And no, the hard drive won’t have the same amount of storage, the first PC’s I had actually showed a gigabyte CORRECTLY until apple and ipods got a hold of it and changed it to improve their bottom line.
Loosely defined is not the same thing as “Undefined”, and that doesn’t mean you can call it whatever you want and it’s correct. “Normal people” are the reason this country is falling behind in just about every field at the moment and why our country is in the sad state it is.
It has nothing to do with being a “victim”, it has to do with idiots who have no real concept of technology marketing it incorrectly. I “DO” more things in an hour with computers than most people will their entire life, and so do most of us in the technology field. We create things for the people who don’t know how to do what we do, but that doesn’t mean we should bow to their ignorance. Without input from techs most of these idiots couldn’t even get ON the internet much less “DO” things on it.
Checking pictures of cats on YouTube and meaningless crap and useless prefabricated “facts” about their friends on facebook instead of doing constructive things on computers isn’t “DO”ing things, it’s wasting bandwidth and dumbing down the population.
You’re obviously a Microsoft plant and I notice you said nothing about all the other points I made, so that would point to you having no real comeback than to try and spin it that I’m whining about it, when I’m really just agreeing with the author and calling you out by making valid points (something you don’t do it seems).
Bottom line: The author of the original post is correct.
And seriously, “The HD will have the same amount of storage no matter how you count a giga..” How exactly is that even remotely correct? So if I count a gigabyte as 2 trillion MB, it will have the same amount of storage as if i count a gigabyte as 2 bytes?
Go back to college and take a math class, if you even went to begin with.
My data is actually stored in 1024 byte kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes and terabytes!
When I buy a drive marked as 500GB but windows says it capacity is 465GB, then I don’t think it still has the same amount of storage! Where does my other 35gb of data go! Try telling my data to start using units of 1000 instead of 1024.
I think its a rip-off. After all, drive manufacturers could just divide by 1024, and then print the actual capacity. I’m sure their calculators have ’2′ and ’4′ buttons just like everybody else’s.
So is it actually possible to watch TV shows recorded at home when you are out using the cloud?
Using Live Mesh you can connect remotely to a home computer but if you try to watch a recorded tv show it will play on the home computer, not over the internet to your laptop.
Using Skydrive to syncronize folders from the home pc recorded tv folder to the laptop wouldn’t really work either, as there is a 25gb limit on skydrive and a workable storage space for recorded tv shows is around 500gb. And given that recorded digital tv shows are ususally between about 2gb and 6gb, and that the syncronisation functions only with the laptop turned on (duh), the wait for the tv shows to be available to watch at the airport using a normal wireless broadband connection would be longer that the flight delays.
Am I missing something?
Is there actually a way to do it?
Can the tv shows somehow be streamed directly via ‘the cloud’? I’m looking through the Windows Live and Skydrive websites, and playing with Windows Live Mesh options and I cant find a way to do it?
I’ve been a user since the 1980s, back in the days of dumb terminals hooking up to central servers.
“The cloud” looks like a return to that dark age to these old eyes.
Your data gets processed remotely, and sent back to you.
Just like in the old days.
Sorry, I prefer closed nets with machines that can stand alone when (no such thing as “if” in the real world) I lose my Internet due to unforeseen circumstances.
But, if you’re a sheeple who wants to be fleeced, by all means buy into “the Cloud”.
It wasn’t free then, and it won’t be now.