The Google Cr-48… or “What People Don’t Understand”

So, we’ve been reading a lot of posts various places about the Cr-48 labeling it as a toy, as junk, as useless and worse.

Quite honestly, these are all from people who are not (a) forward thinking, (b) know anything about computers, (c) realize how much of what they do is already in “the cloud” or (d) are more into games and such than doing anything else/useful on their computers.

With very little thought applied, we can come up with dozens (if not hundreds) of very viable uses for the Cr-48 and similar devices. There’s also a big trend towards pushing many things into “the cloud” that will soon affect how we do a lot of our work. We’ve got customers who need or use cloud based solutions, and want a hardware/software combination like this to enable easier, dedicated use of those solutions. We already use various cloud services very extensively. We have a collaborative calendar shared with our clients, where (though our calendar entries are minimal) we have access to their events, activities and schedules to allow us to provide better service for them. Very little of what many people (or businesses) currently use computers for cannot be done in a cloud-centric environment. In reality, a similar approach to computing already existed “back in the day” during the time of distributed computing, mainframes and dumb terminals. Nowadays, the capabilities of such a cloud platform are staggering.

We recently applied for a Cr-48 (a few times actually; Chrome keeps bugging us to apply with every new tab). Only problem we had was choosing some of the answers. For instance, we’re online and cloud connected virtually 24/7 thanks to our Android phones, we use a variety of cloud and cloud-like services but had a hard time picking out which ones we use the most. We use, through collaboration with others, numerous cloud services – but not ones linked directly to our accounts.  We write some of our own cloud based apps for various clients (Google: HINT!!! We’ve already got software and clients who would be a perfect match for these type devices). We run or own various sites (some with decently high traffic) that provide “cloud-like” services. So… we tried answering as truthfully as possible, but the answers available (and the wording of the questions) didn’t really allow us much room for providing a properly thorough answer. I guess we could have made a video, but honestly, we’ve got programming and tech work that takes precedence at this time.

Anyway, cloud computing will be the wave of the future – for similar reasons why many people cannot do without their Android phones or iPhones or iPads. The Cr-48 represents the next step in the evolution of connected computing; regardless of how many people out there don’t understand the advantages, capabilities, appeal or possibilities of such a platform.