My Encounter with the Cloud

For over a year now, I have been trying hard to push every reader of this blog (and whoever I talk to) to embrace the cloud. It goes without saying that I use a lot of web apps to carry out my personal and professional day to day activities. But in reality, it’s a mix of web and native apps combined (about 75% and 25% of each respectively). Not that web apps aren’t capable of pulling out all the tasks that I do, but native apps offer a bit of flexibility in some cases.

But guess what, last week I got caught up in a unforeseen situation, I had to get away from my beloved desktop for a couple of days. I had access to Internet cafes, but that’s all I got to complete my assignments before deadlines. I did make it in time. Care to know how I pulled it off with the help of web apps alone?

The Lowdown

One turbulent morning last week, I left home with just my iPhone and wallet in my pocket. It so happened I had to stay away from my home and desk for the next two days. I have taken up so much writing work, even one unproductive day would end up spoiling the entire month’s schedule. I couldn’t take my MacBook Pro, which had all the awesome tools installed to carry out my trade on the go – a couple of screen grabbing apps, image editors, web browsers with the nicest plugins, and the works. It was laying down on my warm bedside, while I was fretting as to what to do next.

What I had access to?

I had a lot of free time in my hand, but without computers and Internet, which is the personal version of hell for me. Fortunately, I had the option to hop into a cybercafe and enjoy as much broadband goodness as I could at bargain prices. Since I prefer to have all my data private and to avoid the risk of becoming victim to keyloggers and malware, I had stopped using cybercafes years ago. They were meant to take printouts using a USB drive. But, I got no choice that day!

Unfortunately, the computers in the cybercafe were locked down and I couldn’t install any apps (Windows XP with no admin privileges). I was half-expecting this scenario and since my first deadline was to write a review for Web.AppStorm, I was confident I could figure a way out of this mess. I installed a couple of plugins to capture screen shots in the Google Chrome browser (Screen Capture by Google and Awesome Screenshot by Diggo). Google’s extensions lived up to my expectations.

I chose not use my Google account in a public computer. So, I had to forgo Google Docs in favor of EtherPad. I don’t write in markdown, and their plaintext editor was more than sufficient for me. The fact that there was no need to create a new account was an added bonus to using the app.

Even before stepping into the cybercafe, I was sure I would somehow manage to take screengrabs and write the article, but wasn’t really sure about editing the screenshots before uploading it in WordPress. I’d known of Aviary’s tools for a long time, but was wondering what to do if it failed to work? To my delight, Avary’s image editor, Feather, worked like a charm. It was good enough for the resizing, cropping and annotation needs.

Now that I had the screenshots and the write up, I logged into WordPress and submitted the content to the review queue. I don’t have direct publishing rights and hence I wasn’t hesitant to use the login credentials in a cybercafe. Voilà, the cloud saved the day!

This is just one scenario that worked out perfectly and might not work for everyone. But it’s another concrete evidence that you don’t have your potential and productivity tethered to a desktop!

Share Your Thoughts!

Have you had a similar encounter with the cloud? If so, do share it with us in the comments section!