Cloud

Technology investors have their heads in the cloud these days. Cloud computing, which supplies on-demand hosted services over the Internet, requires only that its clients have a computer and Internet access. It handles the functions traditionally performed by a firm's in-house hardware and software. The global cloud-computing market is expected to reach $241 billion in 2020, up from $41 billion in 2010, according to Forrester Research. That long-term potential is reflected in the highflying stocks of companies actively involved in the concept.

With the advent of Google Drive, we talk about cloud computing as if the bits and bytes of our lives are stored somewhere up in the air, but, really, the "clouds" are very terrestrial. What's more up in the air are the laws that govern who can access your stuff and how. Originally a way for geeks to explain to the rest of us the notion of remote servers storing and serving up content, cloud computing can be defined several ways, depending on whom you ask. In some ways, even email is a form of cloud computing.

Qantas and Virgin Australia canceled flights that were scheduled Thursday (Australia time) to New Zealand and the western Australian city of Perth as an ash cloud from a Chilean volcano continued to spread into the area and strand thousands more travelers. The cloud has also wreaked havoc in South America . Disruptions of air travel in various parts of the world could last for months, experts say. The Sydney Morning Herald dubbed the cloud over Perth the "plume of gloom" and explained that levels of ash as low as 15,000 feet posed a safety risk for airlines.

As more people look to the cloud for digital storage, such as the recently unveiled Google Drive, the era of being able to mindlessly click "OK" or "Agree" may be over. When your stuff is stored on your computer at home, you alone are responsible for keeping it safe, secure and backed up. Your roof, your rules. But when you shift from local storage to remote, you live by terms set by someone else - and it's best to read them. This is true for any cloud service, not just Google's.

Virgin Australia , JetStar and Qantas airlines Tuesday canceled hundreds of flights in and out of Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Canberra due to the volcanic ash cloud from Chile, which has circled the globe and swirled into airspace in southeastern Australia. Thousands of passengers were stranded. But airlines planned to resume service Wednesday as the plume appears to be heading toward the Tasman Sea and away from Australian air space. Carriers were shooting for 2 p.m. Wednesday for resuming domestic and international flights in and out of Sydney.

When the White House sent a last-minute invitation for Asif Ali Zardari to attend the two-day NATO summit, they were taking a highly public gamble. Would sharing the spotlight with President Obama and other global leaders induce the Pakistani president to allow vital supplies to reach alliance troops fighting in Afghanistan? But long before the summit ended Monday, the answer was clear: No deal. Zardari's refusal to reopen the supply routes left a diplomatic blot on a summit that NATO sought to cast as the beginning of the end of the conflict in Afghanistan.

IF it's been a year or two since you've shopped for a mattress, you're in for some surprises. That memory foam bed that once seemed so novel? It's now decidedly mainstream. Latex is the hot material of choice. And that's not all that's changed. Choices are multiplying -- especially on the luxury end -- and prices are too.

Their name conjures up the most celebrated moment of America's post-Sept. 11 military campaigns. Now the Navy SEALs belong to a grimmer chapter in history: the most deadly incident for U.S. forces in the 10-year Afghanistan war. Three months after they killed Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in neighboring Pakistan and cemented their place in military legend, the SEALs suffered a devastating loss when nearly two dozen of the elite troops were among...

The deepest partial solar eclipse in a generation is headed to Southern California this weekend. What's the best way to view it? Where are the best places to go? Check out this Q&A below. Q: What's the best place to view the eclipse in Southern California?  A: The partial solar eclipse will occur late in the day in Southern California on Sunday, beginning at 5:24 p.m., reaching its maximum coverage at 6:38 p.m., and exiting the sun's path at 7:42 p.m., just 10 minutes before sunset.

A rare "ring" solar eclipse is coming to California on Sunday evening - the first of its kind to be visible from the continental United States since 1994. From our vantage point in Southern California, the moon will block about 85% of the sun's diameter, leaving behind a crescent-shaped sliver. But those farther north will see the moon nudge its way into the center of the sun, leaving a ring of fire visible around the moon's edge. Scientists call this an annular eclipse. ("Annulus" means "ring" in Latin.)

With all of the chatter around Google Drive and the like, you may be wondering whether you should have a cloud drive somewhere. Some people live blissful digitally disconnected lives -- free of smartphones, free of Facebook, devoid of a digital photo album with snapshots of everything from their baby to their breakfast, no tangle of charging cables, no bytes of data to transfer or tap. But if you're sending yourself emails just to get a...

The burgeoning cloud storage space business got more crowded Tuesday as Google launched its much-rumored and highly anticipated remote storage service, Drive. Cloud-based storage gives users a place to park their documents, photos, presentations and other files so they can easily and immediately access and share them with various digital devices wherever they have an Internet connection. But Google said its Drive service also gives users the ability to collaboratively edit documents in real time.

With the advent of Google Drive, we talk about cloud computing as if the bits and bytes of our lives are stored somewhere up in the air, but, really, the "clouds" are very terrestrial. What's more up in the air are the laws that govern who can access your stuff and how. Originally a way for geeks to explain to the rest of us the notion of remote servers storing and serving up content, cloud computing can be defined several different ways, depending on whom you ask. In some ways, even email is a form of cloud computing.

SAN FRANCISCO — At 11:10 a.m. on the dot, a squad of fresh-faced environmental activists bearing ominous black balloons sashayed into Apple's flagship store on Union Square. Some were dressed like members of a hipster, black-clad cleaning crew. Others plastered outsize decals on the minimalist retail establishment's windows. And anyone taking an Apple device for a test drive Tuesday morning was automatically routed to a Greenpeace website . The store takeover — carried out in sync with actions in New York and Toronto — was part of a global Greenpeace campaign to get technology giants to switch to renewable sources of energy for powering the electricity-hungry information cloud.

Google has made its latest move, launching Drive, as it angles to be the one-stop hub for search, Web browsing, social networking, and now storage and content creation. And it has the attention of the competition. Just Monday, Forrester Research released a report about what will be the explosive relevance of cloud services. Today's announcement underscores that evolution. “Google Drive is significant because now all Google account holders have one click signup to free file storage, sync and sharing, which has the potential to quickly build a large volume of users," said Frank Gillette, the Forrester analyst who wrote the report.  "Integration with Google Docs/Apps and eventually with Gmail will make it more natural and seamless than managing from a separate account....So Google Drive will cause more individuals to begin using personal cloud services and more companies, those that use Google Apps, to use cloud-based file sync and sharing.” Some already established personal cloud providers have responded to Google's storage salvo by focusing on the growing importance of the burgeoning shift to remote storage.  "It's an insanely exciting time in the cloud storage and collaboration space, and Google's entry underscores the importance of this multi-billion dollar category," Box co-founder and Chief Executive Aaron Levie wrote in an emailed statement.

A paradigm shift may be coming to the digital lifestyle. Instead of the PC being the center of the personal computing universe, consumers will be opting for tablets as their primary computing device and relying on cloud storage to access their content across their devices, according to a new report. "This burgeoning market is set to disrupt the personal computing device and OS markets," says the  report from Forrester Research on the future of computing. Instead of serving as a supplement to a desktop or laptop computer, the report said, these burgeoning cloud services will play such an integral role in the connected future that consumers will first choose a service, then the compatible device as the focus shifts from device to personal content storage services.

As more people look to the cloud for digital storage, such as the recently unveiled Google Drive, the era of being able to mindlessly click "OK" or "Agree" may be over. When your stuff is stored on your computer at home, you alone are responsible for keeping it safe, secure and backed up. Your roof, your rules. But when you shift from local storage to remote, you live by terms set by someone else - and it's best to read them. This is true for any cloud service, not just Google's.

EVERYTHING WAS going swimmingly on the panel. The subject was politics and faith, and I was on stage with two clergymen with progressive spiritual leanings, and a moderator who is liberal and Catholic. We were having a discussion with the audience of 1,300 people in Washington about many of the social justice topics on which we agree -- the immorality of the federal budget, the wrongness of the president's war in Iraq.

Word on the Web this week is that two new clouds are on the horizon - Google Drive and Samsung's S-Cloud. The much-anticipated Google Drive is expected to launch next week, offering users 5 gigabytes of storage for free, according to reports. The Next Web said it managed to get a draft of Google's announcement. The site reports that Google Drive will work “in desktop folders” on Mac and Windows computers. Further bolstering this speculation, Talk Android also got a hold of a leaked screenshot describing the file-synchronizing service.