Unify your Computing Experience with the Google Cloud

Working on more than one computer will often leave your computing experience fragmented: The email client on your laptop might contain some mails, while the rest are stored on your desktop. If you downloaded mails on your cellphone on the move, you might not be able to see them on your laptop when you get back to the office.

The problems of fragmentation are not limited to email. If you use a smartphone, it is always a good practice to synchronize it to a computer. However in doing so, your calendar and contacts are only copied to that one computer you sync'ed with. Some people choose to mitigate this problem by syncing their smartphone with more than one computer. Unfortunately, the more computers you sync with, your data becomes more prone to develop conflict, when the same piece of information - say, a contact 'John Doe' - is modified in the same way by more than one computer.

These problems can make working with more than one computing platform a chore. As personal electronics get smarter every day, the problem of keeping data in sync will only get worse. Fortunately, it is possible to mitigate many of these issues with Cloud Computing.

Idealistically, a user should be presented with the same data he works with across all computing platforms. That means to say, the set of documents and content you are working on - Powerpoint Presentations, Spreadsheets, Documents, Pictures, Web Pages, Bookmarks etc. - should be equally accessible to you, regardless of whether you are using a smartphone or laptop or desktop, and independent of whether you are at work, at home, or on a vacation. 

While Cloud Computing does not immediately realize that vision, it does take us a step forward in the right direction. 

Google offers a number of web based services including:

• E-mail
• Calendar
• Contacts
• Documents
• Bookmarks

and many others.

This article will touch briefly on each of the services and how they can help you to achieve a unified computing experience.

Desktop email clients such as Mozilla Thunderbird and Microsoft Outlook, being installed locally, tend to have a larger feature set then web interfaces. Clients like Microsoft Outlook integrate seamlessly with the Office workflow, and feel like a natural part of the operating environment. For this reason, many people prefer to manage their email through full-featured desktop clients.

However, most desktop clients are configured to automatically download email from services such as GMail over the POP3 protocol. While arguably still a good, basic way of retrieving email, POP3 as a protocol is old, and lacks features that would help to build a unified computing experience. Over POP3, emails flagged as important, or marked as 'read' in Outlook (or any compatible desktop email client for that matter) will not be reflected back to the email server. Even after clearing all your mail in Outlook, logging in to your GMail account from anywhere else will still show those mails as unread.

Fortunately, there is an easy and almost transparent solution: IMAP. IMAP, an acronym for the more advanced "Internet Message Access Protocol", maintains a constant connection between your email client and GMail. Over IMAP, if you mark a mail as 'read' in Outlook, the same mail will also be marked as 'read' wherever else you sign in to your GMail account. Similarly, if you create a folder 'Personal' inside your desktop client, the same folder will automatically be created in GMail. Messages placed inside the folder will likewise be reflected in GMail. 

If you use your IMAP account offline, any changes you make to your inbox, such as composing messages, reading mails, sorting them into folders etc., will be synchronized to GMail as soon as your connection is restored. Mails composed while offline, for example, will be sent at the first possible moment when you log on again. 

Google Sync enables you to backup and synchronize the Calendar and Contacts in your smartphone to the web, rather than a parent computer. Google Sync operate using the Active Sync protocol, and is well supported on major mobile operating systems such as Android, Windows Mobile, Symbian, Blackberry and iPhone.

The obvious advantage of using Google Sync is the ability to store PIM information centrally, and access and modify it from anywhere. The same Contacts and Calendar information will be available on all devices using Google Sync, and any modifications are immediately pushed to Google's servers.

If you have ever had to change your smartphone, and found the migration of PIM data to the new platform a huge hassle, you stand to benefit, as you now only need to login to your Google Account from your new phone, and all your data will be seamlessly downloaded from Google.

There are many reasons why users may want to work on documents on different computers. Your laptop may be configured for simple office work, such as manipulating text documents, spreadsheets and presentations. On the other hand, your desktop, being less resource-constrained, may be better used for tasks such as image editing, video processing and other intensive processes.

Occasionally, you will probably be required to cross-reference: You might need to include an image you just edited in a presentation, or add a flowchart graphic to a promotional video.

With this in mind, keeping files and documents synchronized between different computers is no mean feat. While it is no doubt convenient to use flash drives and portable hard disks to transfer data to and fro when the need arises, doing so often results in multiple versions of the same file. Over time, these versions accumulate, and trying to pick the latest copy of the file you are interested in can get very confusing.

One way you can use Google Documents to solve this problem is by treating it as a web based flash drive. Upload any documents you create locally, and download them from Google whenever you need to view or modify them. Uploading files to Google Documents also makes them accessible to all platforms connected to the internet. It is even possible to view, download and/or edit documents on unconventional devices such as compatible smartphones. As an added benefit, the built in document editor on Google Documents allows you to make basic edits on common document formats such as Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint. 

Although Google Documents only supported the storage of conventional formats like those mentioned above initially, users are now able to upload files of any format to Google Documents. 

We often bookmark websites which are interesting, but not frequently visited. If you browse the web on more than one computer, chance are that each computer might have a slightly different set of bookmarks. 

Conventionally, one way of keeping bookmarks in sync was to export a list of bookmarks from a 'master' computer, and import this list into every other browser you would use. One of the major flaws of manual synchronization however, is that the process is extremely time consuming, and error prone. Many people have lost their collection of bookmarks to bad copys, data file corruption or careless deletions. The Internet is a vast place, and sometimes valuable bits of information you might run into while casually browsing may be lost like a needle in a haystack along with your bookmarks collection. 

Modern browsers such as Google Chrome allow you to synchronize your bookmarks with your Google Account automatically. All instances of Google Chrome logged in to your account will see the same set of bookmarks, updated in real time as you create, modify or organize them. Bookmarks which a synchronized are also backed up, meaning that they are safe from the errant system or browser crash.