I heard just about a week ago the first comments (here by Matt Spall) that new consoles in the future “will be purely browser-based systems.” Be it true or not, the fact is that currently, the three major systems for home video-game entertainment, Playstation 3, XBox 360 and Wii are all connected to the Internet, not just to browse it, but to consume online applications from the cloud. Every time an XBox 360 user connects to live.com, he is using a service from the cloud, and when he talks over the VoIP systems with the other players, he is using a service in the cloud. Whenever you download applications from the PSStore, it is a service consumption from the cloud… and any channel from Wii is in fact a service consumed online.

So clearly, service-based computing is a fact nowadays. The change is that in the future all will be service-based. Your cell phone will not connect to your carrier. No. You will be using Google Voice to sum up all your phone services into one, or a Skype Web application (such as imo.im) run in the cloud. You don’t even need to install anything. Just follow a link to the application you want to use. And if anything needs to be installed in your computer, smartphone or netbook (or any other device we will find in the future) it will only be a front-end user interface of a service found in the cloud.

Gaming and communicating will not be the only services to be run. You won’t have to install any GPS program in your car, just a GPS locator to send your coordinates to Google Maps that has long ago gone mobile. If you are subscribed to a touring service it may tell you what interesting places you have around, so that you can take a tour. The pictures you make with your device’s camera will be automatically sent to services such as Flickr or Picasa, and automatically set the location where you took them. They may even recognice the people around and send them a message for them to comment the pictures.

You’ll no longer need devices with several GB of capacity to store your videos, pictures and music. You will just connect to them online using Grooveshark-like services or Megavideo. Using them will update your profiles and allow others to comment on the music or videos you are listening. Many will see your comments on the video and decide if they want to purchase it or go to the cinema.

Services will be included even in your credit card or ID card (if your country has an ID card). With them you’ll access the Web in order to perform administrative tasks and sum up all your secure information. When you enter the tax office your smartphone will automatically give you a queue number, when you enter the cinema, the screen of your cell phone will show how much that movie will cost and allow you to purchase it, then unlocking the entrance for you to see the movie…

And all this with minimal consumption of your computer, only using your preferred explorer -or even less, automatically done for you. The only thing you’ll really need will be the Internet, and a way to connect to it. Anything else will be run, stored and processed within the servers and services that make up the cloud, the biggest operative system ever found.

New technologies soon to appear

Pointer 1: HTML5. Yes, it is just a new revolution over a very widely used standard, but HTML5 -and its derivatives- is the new technology with which the new Web is going to be constructed. Still in development it has already been embraced by some companies, including the almighty Google, that have already said to give the new specs of HTML5 their full support. Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome among others are already implementing in part some of the specifications already published by the W3C. The new ways in which HTML5 allows Web designers to present Web applications evidently focuses on a future where most applications will be -at least partially- Web-based.

Pointer 2: Windows Azure. Microsoft has entered the fight for a place in the new order with its Windows Azure. The idea is hard to explain for people not used to the idea of cloud computing yet, simply stated, is a Windows operative system that runs in the cloud. It could be said that is a Windows Server, but it would not be entirely true. Yes, it is a server, but you don’t have to install it anywhere, because it is in the cloud. You build your applications to work within the cloud, to consume services from the cloud and serve them to the cloud. And all is hosted without leaving the cloud. See it as your favourite Web-based application -maybe Facebook?- where all is somewhere in the Internet, but you don’t really care where. Now expand it to the greatest limit, where even your own operative system is in the cloud. That is Azure. This idea is completely revolutionary, and may need a bit of time to find its place in the market, but it shows where things are leading.

Pointer 3: Collaboration to the extreme. If you have used Google Docs and have tried its collaborative features you know where collaboration can lead us. Google has the idea of turning social and collaborative applications over th Internet even more using Google Wave, a protocol to host -using “host” for serve and consume- collaorative “waves” including services. Other applications within the Internet -let’s say Facebook, Twitter, Windows Live, etc.- show that social networking is a big market where the new Internet is going to find many customers.

Pointer 4: Netbooks and Ultra Portable Devices. You have seen them in the tube, you can find them in the train, you will see them in the plane… You may even own one! Netbooks -or Ultra Portable Computers, as they used to be called- are finding its place in today’s society. Ask yourself why. Is it not because now -as never before- the Internet can be found everywhere? Is it not because now -as never before- you can do virtually any kind of work from within your Web browser? And if you can’t, is it not true that being able to hace the Internet, you can connect to any connected device at work? Netbooks are simple, reduced computers thought to work as Internet terminals. They don’t have much memory, do not have a big processor and their hard drive capacity is often reduced, but they always have a Webcam, they always have the latest Wi-Fi link and they are full of USB connectors. Why? Because many people has found that nowadays, the only thing you really need to work with your computer is the Internet.

Conclusion

These four pointers may seem few, and yet show the trend where all is leading to -having everything in the cloud. Yet, more than these pointers, what conviced me that the big shift is about to happen is what I experienced just over a month ago.

I work for a consulting company that examines the needs of other companies and provides technology to solve their needs. My role is to be the brain, the one having ideas, and the one making them happen. A few years ago you would never hear the owner of a company say that they want to rent software. True, reading the software contracts we can find in almost any commercial application the fact is that we never own the program, we own the data -sometimes- but not the software. But for companies, allowing their data to cross the walls of their offices was a big -and I mean *BIG*- deal. It was impossible to find a manager of a company say “we’ll rent the software,” and that, in fact, has been the greatest ban to cloud computing in the last years -because, remember, the technology to achieve it was already there for over ten years.

Just over a month from now, however, we found the first customer that said that renting the software was not a bad idea. That having the data stored somewhere in the cloud was not a problem, as long as it was secure. Stunned? Then wait to see the picture we are going to find a few years from now, where cloud computing is going to be the standard.

Want to use your imagination? Then read my last post on these series tomorrow.

Long ago, the idea of selling a simple computer that would be nothing but a screen and a keyboard did not land well on the mind of many users. True, the Internet world was not as developed as today and the idea of having applications developed and deployed over the Internet was not a widely acceptable one. Yes, large -and sometimes medium and small- companies used to have their own private networks with their own network programs. This is the usual scenario today in most companies -but the world keeps on changing.

The boom of the Internet certainly brought a huge swift to the computer world, but obviously, the world was not yet prepared -I’m talking as of 1985 and later- to host applications via Internet. Yet, the idea of not needing but a web browser to have everyting done was already there.

Today, the Internet is virtually everywhere. We all can see -and have- cell phones with a continuous wireless connection to HDSPA, EDGE or GPRS services that allows us to stay connected to services such as social networking, e-mail, instant messaging, etc. The Web 2.0 revolution, started a few years ago and headed specially by Google -using well known technologies to start an all-new way of understanding the web- helped Internet users to realize that the Web was more than the widest range of information ever found on Earth, it is a place where we can interact with all that information and with the people that moves that information. Now, the ground is set for the seeds to sprout.

Just open Google Insights for Search and search the term “cloud computing” and you’ll see the boom that these terms have experienced in search on -likely- the greatest service ever found in the Internet -Google Search. Certainly, so much increment of interest by the whole world means this is going to be with all probability the next great development on the Internet. But how is all this going to affect us as users, as customers, as businsess and as developers? Is this just a new turn of technology or will it become a new paradigm? What factors must we consider in the imminent change from closed to clouded services? And what is the future of all these ideas of clouding it all?

New posts on the matter starting tomorrow.

We are not writing code here -at least not today- but still, the start-up of this project deserves a geek look and so, we start it with this “Hello world” post.

This post, however, should not be contemplated as a way to just post something on the web. It has a purpose. I am going to define here what’s the purpose of this blog -my personal blog- and what it will contain in the future. I consider myself a geek. I like computers, I always had a computer at home, I studied computer science and I am a computer programmer, so you may understand why I make that assertion. So, in an effort to expand and show off my geek knowledge, this blog opens its pages today. Feel free to comment on my posts and to correct my expressions if you are not in agreement or you consider that they are wrong. A step back is not a drawback if it is found in the road to knowledge.

I will also share some of my personal convictions, thoughts and reviews of the common world from my geek point of view. So if you want to see a geek talking about religion, politics, or sex, this is also the correct geek corner.

I may even invite some of my friends to write along. Who knows. But for now, I’d better get back to work or my boss will kill me -or just fire me- so I think that’s all for now.

Be geek.