Since this class promotes to be all about the “cloud” thought this app might be an interesting on to post here, as you may have gathered from the opposite from normal title, this app is called UnCloud.
“unCloud is an application that enables anyone with a laptop to create an open wireless network and distribute their own information. Users can access information wirelessly while at the same time remain disconnected from the internet.”
And while “our” clouds rely on remote datacenters such as the ones here on campus, or public ones provided by google or amazon, all this app needs is a laptop and then it can run a LAN exhibit.
This video helps explain further.
This app may not be very appealing to anyone looking to utilize the extra computing power the cloud can offer, as it doesn’t provide any additional storage space or power. It is more for the user who wants to share wirelessly in privacy.
This seems like a really good idea. From a layperson’s standpoint, I’ve always had concerns with doing large downloads and uploads on Wireless Networks which aren’t my own. This is a great solution to my superstitions, I don’t know what else this could do though. Perhaps it is easier to upload stuff without having to get a password for a wireless network.
This is a really interesting app! I feel like this would be really useful for transferring and sharing files between friends. Sometimes I want to share a larger file (a movie, a photo album, etc), and I can’t do so without paying a premium to upload/host it on a file-sharing site. If I’m understanding this correctly, it seems to me that it operates in a similar way to torrents, how things are hosted locally and downloaded from individual computers instead of being stored on the internet/in the cloud. It’s obviously in the opposite direction of cloud computing (thus the name, uncloud), but I could definitely see where it would be useful. Perhaps if more cloud services were offered for free, more people would be interested in using them.