I'm sick and tired of hearing about "The Cloud".

This latest buzzword is creeping in everywhere, from the technology and computer press; to consumer TV adverts; to workplaces. The Cloud is everywhere and I'm concerned the less technologically inclined will lap it up.

The term means nothing less than services hosted on the internet and without thinking about it, one might believe it to be the latest and greatest technology yet enabled by our ever increasing broadband speeds. In truth, only half of that statement is correct. Broadband speeds are bringing ever more complex services to our computers but none-the-less, services have existed for over a decade. For example, an often touted illustration of a Cloud service is email in the browser. Of course, little mention is made that such services have existed and been in extremely common use for over a decade. Online document processing has existed for over 5 years - this is nothing new.

The thing is; The Cloud implies something simple, pleasant and friendly. Nobody would argue against little fluffy clouds in the sky, and this is the image that comes to mind, for many ... possibly. Actually, not my mind. Me, I see The Cloud as a grey, heavy storm cloud ready to rain down on the unprepared. You see, I actually see The Cloud as something rather dangerous.

Technology companies (Google, Amazon et al) would have it that many of our day-to-day activities are carried out online. Want to write a document, edit a picture or video, listen to music, read a book; well don't use big expensive software installed to a powerful computer with terabytes of storage space. No. Just turn to The Cloud. Open up your sleek web browser on your cheap laptop and let the Company servers take the strain. Let them do the processing and then store your files ready to be accessed anywhere with a connection. How wonderful. How simple.

Here's the problem. The company has your data. You don't. The positive theory is that the data is safe. Backups are not your concern. Should anything happen to your computer, it's okay. The data is safe.

Is it really though? Yes, the popular companies are behemoths, but they can fold. If they disappear, what happens to your data. Does it disappear too? Will you get any warning?

With all that data on the company's servers, it's a target for hackers - perhaps more so than your little individual machine. If the server is hacked, is your data going out the door?

Other problems can occur too, does the company have an offline solution in case your internet connection goes down? What happens when something goes wrong at the company? Recently, Google temporarily lost the emails stored in it's GMail user accounts. What sort of impact could that have had on it's users - what if it happens to files stored in Google Docs?

I think there are a lot of unanswered questions, and I think that there are a lot of people NOT asking them. The internet is wonderful in it's way, but I cannot see it replacing my powerful computer system. I like to control my data. I want to make the decision over how it's stored and backed up. When I delete a file, I want to know it's gone. Storage is cheap, as is processing power. For what many people use their machines for (basic internet, simple word processing), I don't see the need for remote processing.

Don't get me wrong, there are services I like and use. I upload pictures daily to Flickr; videos occasionally to YouTube and use DropBox for offsite backup and syncronisation. But these are select files for select purposes. I would never put every photo on Flickr and use it as my primary photo storage medium. If Flickr (or any other service I use) disappeared tonight, I would lose nothing.

Unfortunately it's far to easy for the non-technical to get sucked into these marketing buzzwords and think they're great. I think everyone needs to take another look.

Here's a social networking/micro-blogging site that I came across about 6 months back but have only recently started looking at more now that Twitter has become more popular.

Identi.ca is a very similar concept to its famed rival, but with an important difference. This one is open source and licenced under a Creative Commons licence. This means that the data I put into the site can be retrieved and ported to other sites easily. I could (if I was so inclined) run a similar server myself. Basically the system is transparent and open unlike other social networking sites.

The idea behind Identi.ca is very simple - users send short posts (or "dents") of no more than 140 characters. The dent will be displayed in a public timeline for all to read and reply to if necessary. There are groups which can be followed and dents can be marked as for a particular group. Unlike a forum though, these dents are still displayed on the public timeline. Words within a dent can be tagged, enabling searching and filtering by keywords.

This site does not have the popularity of Twitter at the moment, and for those who have friends and followers on the rival site can have their dents on Identi.ca automatically duplicated over at Twitter (as "tweets"). Those users who are curious to try this site do not have to cut themselves off from established contacts.

Personally, I love the idea of an open source social networking site and hope that others will see the benefits. Not because I want to see the end of sites which are not open, but because it would be great if those sites would also see the benefits of using open standards and protocols so that we might all be able to easily communicate with each other regardless of which network we are on.

Incidentally, I can be found on either Identi.ca or Twitter under m0gky.

The UK Government, in all it's (cough) wisdom, has published a draft outlining browser standards that public service sites must adhere to should it be ratified. All seems well and good, until reading the proposal which states that browsers with a market share of less than 2% need not be officially supported.

Users of the most common internet browsers can sleep soundly. Internet Explorer and Firefox both command a market share significantly higher than the 2% cutoff. One might suspect that only the most obscure browsers on the planet would fall below that mark. Unfortunately one well known browser does so too - Opera. But let's not forget those lesser used browsers - Konqueror, Epiphany, IceWeasel, Dillo, Lynx and the newest browser to venture on to the scene; Google's Chrome browser.

The proposal states that this new policy is required due to the amount of time spent testing a site on each individual browser to ensure compatibility. However, rather than resorting to alienating minority browsers would it not be easier and better to simply code websites to existing standards? Is that not what they are there for?

It's well known that many browsers do have their own little idiosyncrasies and coding for these can make a site not function correctly in other browsers. Coding to standards though can ensure, with a reasonable degree of certainty, that content will be as it was intended across the range of different browsers and operating systems.

Of course, testing a site on every single browser out there is impractical, but by ensuring standards compliance minority browser users should not be left out in the cold. This is public service we're talking about after all. All of the public must be able to interact with it.

On doing checks on English County Council websites using the W3C HTML validator, the sites acheived the following results:

1. Bedfordshire<br>www.bedfordshire.gov.uk (passed, 10 warnings)
2. Berkshire<br>www.westberks.gov.uk (11 errors)
3. Buckinghamshire<br>www.buckscc.gov.uk (9 errors, 10 warnings)
4. Cambridgeshire<br>www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk (22 errors, 68 warnings)
5. Cheshire<br>www.cheshire.gov.uk (passed, 0 warnings)
6. Cornwall<br>www.cornwall.gov.uk (6 errors, 4 warnings)
7. Cumbria<br>www.cumbria.gov.uk (1 error, 1 warning)
8. Derbyshire<br>www.derbyshire.gov.uk (8 errors, 8 warnings)
9. Devon<br>www.devon.gov.uk (6 errors, 4 warnings)
10. Dorset<br>www.dorsetforyou.gov.uk (passed, 0 warnings)
11. Durham<br>www.durham.gov.uk (passed, 18 warnings)
12. Essex<br>www.essex.gov.uk (14 errors, 7 warnings)
13. Gloucestershire<br>www.gloucestershire.gov.uk (2 errors, 23 warnings)
14. Hampshire<br>www.hampshire.gov.uk (passed, 1 warning)
15. Herefordshire<br>www.herefordshire.gov.uk (22 errors, 68 warnings)
16. Hertfordshire<br>www.hertsdirect.org (passed, 0 errors)
17. Kent<br>www.kent.gov.uk (unavailable at the time)
18. Lancashire<br>www.lancashire.gov.uk (passed, 0 errors)
19. Leicestershire<br>www.leicestershire.gov.uk (1 error, 1 warning)
20. Lincolnshire<br>www.lincolnshire.gov.uk (15 errors, 0 warnings)
21. Norfolk<br>www.norfolk.gov.uk (15 errors)
22. Northamptonshire<br>www.northamptonshire.gov.uk (49 errors, 11 warnings)
23. Northumberland<br>www.northumberland.gov.uk (5 errors)
24. Nottinghamshire<br>www.nottinghamshire.gov.uk (1 error, 7 warnings)
25. Oxfordshire<br>www.oxfordshire.gov.uk (6 errors, 39 warnings)
26. Rutland<br>www.rutland.gov.uk (15 errors)
27. Shropshire<br>www.shropshire.gov.uk (1 error, 14 warnings)
28. Somerset<br>www.somerset.gov.uk (1 error, 1 warning)
29. Staffordshire<br>www.staffordshire.gov.uk (passed, 9 warnings)
30. Suffolk<br>www.suffolk.gov.uk (1 error, 1 warning)
31. Surrey<br>www.surrey.gov.uk (passed, 2 warnings)
32. Sussex (East)<br>www.eastsussex.gov.uk (2 errors)
33. Sussex (West)<br>www.westsussex.gov.uk (passed, 0 errors)
34. Warwickshire<br>www.warwickshire.gov.uk (134 errors, 89 warnings)
35. Wiltshire<br>www.wiltshire.gov.uk (10 errors)
36. Worcestershire<br>www.worcestershire.gov.uk (passed)
37. North Yorkshire<br>www.northyorks.gov.uk (14 errors)

In summary:

• Valid: 5
• Valid with warnings: 7
• Invalid: 25

Although a few council's have got it right and have compliant sites (well home pages at least), most have problems. Warwickshire stands out with 134 errors, but so do council's such as Cumbria, Leicestershire, Somerset and Suffolk with only 1 error each which on the surface one would think would be easy to fix.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has agreed to allow a vast increase in the number of Top Level Domain (TLD) names that could be used alongside the current common names such as .com, .org, .net etc.

The idea is that anyone who has a sound business plan (and the financial backing to do so) will be able to setup a TLD, meaning there is the potential for hundreds of new TLDs.

This is a bad idea, and will leave internet addressing in a right mess. I can't imagine that corporations are very happy with the idea, considering that they will have to buy up a vast number of domain names in order to protect their intellectual property and trade marks. It also appears that the idea of a logical structure will break down.

This screams of a money making scheme, which is fine in it's own way but some structure could have been setup. Consider my idea:

1. Have a small number of international addresses, strictly restricted to, and only registerable by the following:




• .com - International companies


• .net - International networks


• .org - International organisations/charities


• .ind - Personal websites for those who want an international web presence


2. Define two or three letter TLDs for all connected countries (as we have now).




• .uk - United Kingdom


• .us - United States


• .es - Spain


• etc


3. Each country is responsible for it's own TLD. The international TLDs are replicated as second level domains. Individual nations decide whether they want a strictly organised naming system, or whether they will allow anyone within that nation to apply to run any other second level domain.




• .com.uk - UK Companies


• .net.uk - UK Networks


• .org.uk - UK Organisations/charities


• .ind.uk - UK Individuals



• .smith.uk - UK Alternative second level domain


• .jones.uk - UK Alternative second level domain


• .whatever.uk - UK Alternative second level domain


4. A multi-national not-for-profit organisation maintains the international TLDs and country TLDs.
5. Within each country, a not-for-profit organisation accountable to government maintains the second level domains. This organisation makes final decisions on whether an alternative second level domain is applicable, and enforces restrictions on who can apply for a website under it. Applications should be transparant so a company can easily monitor what second level domains are being registered and object if necessary.

Although naming will get a lot more complicated than it is now, at least it will be clear which nation a site applies to, and individual nations can decide on how limited their second level domains are.

Strict enforcement of who can apply for a domain should be mandatory. For example, I have the websites www.bengamblin.com and www.bengamblin.co.uk but I'm not a company. Under my proposal, I would loose the right to these addresses but would have the right to www.bengamblin.ind and www.bengamblin.ind.uk.

There's been some talk about net speeds in the UK, and how we're falling behind compared to other countries in Europe and further afield like Japan and Korea. The focus of these musings, is to decide on whether Britain should get a new fibre-optic communications infrastructure.

When I hear of hi-tech countries like Japan having easy access to internet speeds of up to 100Mbps, I have to wonder why we can't do the same. At the moment, our fastest connections over cable reach up to 50Mbps and that's only being trialled. Over the old-fashioned copper telephone network, 8Mbps ADSL is the highest most people will see and a few will currently be able to access 24Mbps. According the BBC News, the average speed in the UK is only 4.6Mbps.

BT are looking into the possibility of two fibre-optic based solutions - fibre to the home, which will offer speeds up to 100Mbps and will cost around £15bn, and fibre to the cabinet, which will see a maximum speed of up to 50Mbps, but will cost less at £10bn. Understandably, the price tag does not help convince BT to roll out such a network in a hurry.

Ofcom is also looking into this, but they are saying that due to "market and infrastructure conditions in Britain" being very different to other nations where there has been strong investment, we may have to wait.

You know, just once it would be nice to hear about how the UK is going to create a world-class communications infrastructure that will last well into this century, and although it will cost a lot initially, it will provide huge economic benefits allowing more trade and services to be conducted online for example. more reliable home working (as a side note, I work from home occasionally and whilst accessing the local council's internal network via VPN is usable, it can be very slow), commercial and Public Service Broadcasting could truely be revolutionised by the prospect of multiple television channels broadcasting over the net, new video-on-demand services could be launched allowing broadcast quality programming straight into the home over the net connection. The possibilities, I'm sure, are endless.

I may well be surprised though. There is the possibility of state intervention to get the network built. I wouldn't be adverse to taxes being used to fund it as long as it's built on-time and on-budget. That of course is the problem. When was the last time anything built by Government was on-budget. Just look at the spiraling cost of the olympics. Factor in that this would effectively be a massive IT project, and it's a recipe for disaster (NHS computer system anyone?) Not that I'm in any way cynical mind you!

It does need to be done in one way or the other though. The longer it's put off, the more noticable the divide will be between us and other nations. The term "digital divide" is often thrown about referring to the divide between those in Britain on the internet, and those who are not. The term can quite easily be applied to us Britains left with a slow aging infrastructure, compared to nations in Europe. This could be the digital equivalent of the railways!

Putting it simply, the money will need to be spent eventually. Let's do it now before we're at the bottom of the broadband league.