I suppose I’m terribly late in having this revelation but it dawned on me last week that the future of a lot of a significant part of what we do in our our day to lives is going to depend on “the cloud”. What do I mean by that you ask? Let me ’splain something to you Lucy…
Last week while browsing through the iTunes App Store, I decided to purchase a copy of ToDo. ToDo is a nifty GTD-based application for keeping the items in your to do list moving and making sure that you don’t lose track of anything. What impressed me most (other than the fact it is a very nicely built application) was its ability to synch with 2 totally unrelated online task management services (ToodleDo and Remember the Milk) which means that you no longer have to keep a duplicate to do list on multiple devices AND you can now take that one, central, authoritative to do list with you wherever you go.
That’s when it hit me. When I’m looking for providers of services that I am in need of, I no longer look at any services that are just online, or just installed on my laptop. If the service I’m looking at doesn’t have touch points for my computer, my iPhone and web-based access, I’m just not interested. It appears to me as though this is the direction that things are moving. People don’t single access points to their data any more and the trend is growing.
As a developer that lives in this space, this revelation was pretty significant for me. It made me realize that any application that I build from now on is going to require those multiple touch points if it is to be a complete success.
Bring on the clouds I say…I like this trend even if it took me longer than the average bear to figure it out.