Q: You mentioned a few weeks ago that people could back up their information to “the Cloud.” I hear that term thrown around a lot, but what does it actually mean? What is “the Cloud”?

What Is The Cloud?

A: That’s actually a great question, Alex. The funny thing is, most of us have actually been using “the Cloud” for years now. Anyone who has ever used an email service like Yahoo, Hotmail, or Gmail has already used the Cloud. For a normal, non-technical user, “the Cloud” is just storing your data on the Internet instead of just on your home computer.

However, the actual technical definition of a cloud is a little more complicated than that. You see, the danger with storing documents, media or files on any single computer is that no matter how powerful they are, computers can (and do) break. But imagine if you could store your file on three different computers. Then if one or even two broke, you’ve still got your document. The only problem is, every time you updated your document, you would have to update it on all three computers. That’s a pain.

But now imagine that you could treat those three physical computers as one virtual computer that your file is stored on. The actual, physical computers would essentially become invisible. Take this setup and multiply it by hundreds of computers, and that’s basically what a cloud is.

Now, you may have noticed that we said “a cloud.” The reason is that there are actually multiple clouds. In fact, tons of different companies offer their own clouds. They may work differently from each other, but they are all similar in that they allow you to store your files on the Internet instead of your computer, and they allow you to access those files from anywhere.

So how does this affect you? For most of us, cloud services are a really great way to back up documents, pictures, music or whatever to the Internet. And once it’s out on the Internet, you can access it from other computers or devices you own. For example, we use Google Music to back up the MP3s on our computers. All we had to do is download the Google Music program, and it automatically started uploading everything we had in iTunes to the Google Music cloud. When we add a new song or playlist to iTunes on our computers, those get uploaded too, and we can then listen to them on our phones straight from the Internet.

Clouds aren’t just good for music, though. Google and Microsoft both offer ways to do word processing in the Cloud, from anywhere, without even having to install a program. Google has a web application called Google Drive (we use it for Deemable Tech and love it), and Microsoft has introduced Office 365 which you can access through your web browser as well.

For Apple users, there is iCloud, which automatically synchronizes your files across all of your Apple devices.

If you’re looking to backup and share your files, Alex, you should consider using Dropbox. We’ve mentioned it before, but Dropbox is a service that allows you to select a folder on your computer, and anything you put in that folder will be automatically uploaded to the Dropbox cloud. If you install Dropbox on another computer, it will automatically mirror the folders between the two computers. There are a lot of other excellent cloud services as well (like EverNote, SpringPad and SugarShare), and there are more out there every day.

In a nutshell, why should you care about “the Cloud”? Because the Cloud allows robust backups of any data that’s important to you, and it makes that data accessible not just on one computer, but on any computer or device that you authorize. You know, pretty much just like email.

I love the smell of new app updates. Well, I wish they had a smell. If they did, Google’s latest updates would probably smell like a nice, new fabric upholstered car. Not luxurious leather, but nice fabric. The update to Google’s two major offerings in the iOS app catalog have been long awaited, and are quite nice; however, they’re not enough to get super excited about.

Google Chrome, the alternate web browser for the iPhone and iPad, brings the less exciting of the two app updates, so I’ll cover it first. According to the update description, version 23.0.1.271.91 (They are very exacting with their version numbers, aren’t they?) of Google Chrome allows you to open PDFs with other apps, save tickets and boarding passes in Passbook, and enable text encoding detection so that the app will automatically show non standard characters correctly. Other than that, and the usual stability, security and bug fixes, that’s all that Google Chrome’s update bring with it this go round. The ability to open PDFs in other apps is long overdue, and something that most other browsers, including the built-in Safari web browser, could already do. This is a nice feature though if you have a preferred PDF viewer, and you have been using Chrome.

The ability to save tickets and boarding passes in Passbook is surprisingly unique to Chrome since Safari does not currently have that feature. Passbook has not been as simple and easy as most Apple products are known for being and as it seemed it would be when it was announced at WWDC earlier this year. When iOS 6 debuted, there were very few apps that worked with Passbook, and currently, only iOS apps that are Passbook compatible can generate a Passbook card. It will be interesting to see how this is implemented. Once I find a website that I can use to save a Passbook card, I will leave a comment on this article.

The big update tonight came in the Google Drive app. When the Google Drive app was originally released it was depressingly limited in its capabilities. Other than renaming and deleting files it was basically useless. Recently the Google Drive app added document editing, and now, the Google Drive app finally adds spreadsheet editing and file uploading to its range of features. Now, Google Drive users can create, edit and collaborate on spreadsheets that they save to their Google Drive account. That, combined with Gmail’s update yesterday to allow users to attach files of up to 10 GB to their emails, makes Google Drive a powerful tool for business users.

Spreadsheets on Google Drive are much more limited than on other spreadsheet apps such as Apple’s Numbers. However, the Drive app loads spreadsheets significantly faster than Numbers. The Drive app leans towards the more practical and less pretty, but in a usable, well designed manner. Just like document editing in Drive, formatting options are in the graphic menu along the top of the screen. Notably missing is number formatting. Even though you can bold, underline, strike-through and left, right and center align your cells, you cannot choose whether they are formatted as numbers, dates, times, or currency. The formatting is assumed based on what you enter into the cell, and cannot be changed. So, if you enter “1/4” Google Drive assumes you are entering a date and changes it to 1/4/2012. That is problematic if you were intending it to read “one quarter” or “one divided by four”.  Formats can, of course, be changed on a desktop in the web in Google Chrome, but that is an annoying extra step. Hopefully, that will be changed in a future update.

As usual, Google has brought good updates to an app that is slowly growing in usefulness and power. When it was launched, Google Docs was clunky and terribly under-powered. With each new update, Google Drive becomes more and more of a powerhouse that makes Google serious competition for Microsoft’s legendary stronghold, the enterprise.

The Google Drive app is available in the Apple App Store for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch for free.

I have a bad habit (or good habit depending on your perspective) of updating apps without even looking at the description. As soon as I see the badge next to the App Store, I will automatically update all apps as soon as I get on Wi-Fi. So far this hasn’t been to my detriment. I know that a rogue update or bad app could slip through, but my mild OCD just can’t handle leaving badge numbers that can be cleared. So far, the worst that has happened has been that I have overlooked awesome new updates. That is apparently what happened yesterday. This morning, I opened my iPhone to take a look at next week’s show. I opened this week’s script for Deemable Tech, and I noticed a new green button that said “Edit.” I jumped for joy! Does this mean that Google Drive finally has native editing on iOS? Yes, it does! I went back to the App Store to see what the Google Drive description of the latest update said. It reads:

What’s New in Version 1.1.0

– Edit Google documents with formatting and collaboration
– Edits to your Google documents appear to collaborators in seconds
– Richer Google presentations with animations and speaker notes
– Create a new folder or Google document
– Upload photos and videos from your device or a photo directly from your camera
– Move an item to a folder in your Drive
– Delete and remove files from your Drive
– Drive is now available in over 30 languages

Thank goodness! This has been one of my pet peeves about Google Drive ever since the app for iPhone and iPad came out. Several apps (including GoDocs and AirSharing) could already upload and download documents to Google Docs before and after Google Drive was launched. It was ridiculous that Google’s own app couldn’t do that. Nothing drove me crazier than watching the Android guys edit the show notes on their phones while I was stuck using a desktop or laptop.

Unfortunately, the update only gives iOS users the ability to create and edit documents; spreadsheets and presentations are still out in the cold. Get to work on those spreadsheets and presentations, Google! I have TPS reports due by noon! At least I can create and edit the cover sheets in Google Drive, though.

The interface is quite attractive though, and in traditional Google style is very simple and clean. Once you tap the edit button, all the formatting options are at the top. A swipe to the left shows the rest of the options that aren’t on screen. If there are more options, an extra menu temporarily appears at the top or the bottom to select your option.

All in all, the update isn’t a huge step, but it’s enough to keep me happy for a while. How much can we really complain though? Pages from Apple costs $9.99 and it doesn’t even have an easy to use web interface or collaborative tools. Although to be fair, Google Drive doesn’t have nearly as many features as Pages for iOS either. Keep up the good work, Google.

This week Ray Hollister, Tom Braun and Aaron Edelson tackle the tough questions, like “What is the cloud?,” “How do I cancel an AOL account?,” “I’ve lost my copy of 50 Shades of Grey! What do I do?,” “How do I get my money back from a crappy app?,” and “Is breaking out of jail bad?” (Seriously, someone still has an AOL account??)

All that and more on this episode of Deemable Tech.

Deemable Tech – Episode 5

Links we mentioned in this episode:

• http://myaccount.aol.com/
• How do I cancel my paid AOL account?
• How do I cancel my free AOL account?
• http://amazon.com/kindlesupport
• iClickr PowerPoint Remote for Android
• StageFlow Keynote Remote
• Presenter