Google and Microsoft are two of the more visible companies that are pushing the cloud computing frontier.  There are several advantages to computing in the cloud; your files are available from whatever computer you’re on as long as you have a network connection, you don’t have to worry about backups, etc.  There is a downside to the cloud though.

Basically cloud computing is using applications for productivity that live on the internet, not on the computer you’re working on.  Google Docs and Microsoft’s soon to be released internet based version of it’s flagship product Office are modern examples of cloud computing, but really any webmail (gmail, yahoo, hotmail, etc) could loosely be referred to as a cloud application.

My biggest concerns has always been privacy.  Your email, financial information, business contacts, etc are all saved on a third party companies servers.  There is always the possibility that there could be a security breach from the inside, or someone uses the password reset feature (these are sometimes very insecure) and gains access to your information.  What if the service is interrupted or you can’t log in or something goes missing, who can you call to fix it?

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Life hacker has a great troubleshooting tutorial dealing with how to figure out what’s wrong with your internet connection when you can’t get to a website. Print it out and file it somewhere safe, you won’t be able to get to the website when you need to follow the steps. From lifehacker: how to troubleshoot a flaky internet connection