The Cloud, the Screen and the Hand

Here's some principles that govern how digital stuff should flow in our lives. The first is that when something goes wrong all the stuff we care about has already been automatically backed up to the Internet cloud so that we don't lose it forever. The second is that the only kind of data entry anyone really wants to do is while sitting at a full-size keyboard in front of a nice big screen, whether PC or TV. The third is that there is some information we want to have in our hand when we're on the go: phone numbers, diary, some email, the odd map or address, and some photos, videos and music. That's it: the Cloud, the Screen and the Hand. When they work together seamlessly, the digital part of our lives will explode.

We've now got everything we need to really make these three elements work together. The great thing about the Cloud is that it's ubiquitous, global and secure. I love the way it holds on to stuff I don't want to lose. Our PCs are now cheap, easy to use, and smart enough to talk to the Cloud for us: we're getting cheap broadband connections at home so the Screen is usually connected to the Cloud. Devices of the Hand have also come of age: they keep getting smaller, with better storage, nicer screens and smarter software, and people love their mobile phones. What does it look like when they talk to each other in smart ways?

Here's one example of how to hack up a system that means the Cloud, the Screen and the Hand can work together. For good or ill my contacts, calendar and email are in my work PC in Outlook, so in this example my Screen is Outlook on my PC. I'm not a huge fan of Outlook, but it has so much market share that there's a big incentive for third-party developers to build applications that work with it. My company uses it so I have to, too, and I end up using it for personal information as well as work stuff. But what happens when it all goes wrong and I lose all my data? Or I change jobs?

A few years ago I started using Plaxo, an online contact managements system that now claims over 10 million users. Plaxo's big selling point is that it makes it easy for you to automatically update your address book via email, but I've never really exploited that functionality. To get the best of it you have to batch email lots of people in your address book to request that they update their contact info and I've always been too shy to do it (it's an English thing). I use the basic version, which is free.

What I love is that I've set up Plaxo to automatically synchronise with my Outlook contacts. I log on to my Plaxo account on the Web perhaps three times a year, say when I'm travelling and want to check my calendar, which has sometimes been useful -- but that's not what I like about it. It's a get-out-of-jail-free card. When Outlook dies or I change jobs, I have an up to date back-up online of all my Outlook information. It's a personal data insurance policy. It syncs automatically with the Cloud and I never think about it until I change jobs.

The next piece is a properly integrated mobile device for Outlook. I've been waiting years for something that actually worked and now I've finally got one. I use Palm's Treo 650 and this is synchronised with my work email via Good Link's software. The Palm has a pretty good keyboard for entering information, and I do that occasionally, but that's not really what I need it for. I just use it to view the information I've already got in Outlook, and of course as a phone and email device.

The Treo is by no means perfect: it's not the best sounding phone I've ever used, it's big compared to some of the lovely small phones we review here at CNET.co.uk, and the battery life is pretty useless if you're doing a lot of email. The Good Link software has been somewhat buggy and often crashes the phone. However, it magically synchronises my Hand with the Screen and the Cloud, and the benefit of that is so great that the bugs don't matter.

The interesting thing about this set up it is that it's very like the ecosystem Apple has build up around the iPod. My iPod works in a very similar way: the material that I care about in terms of podcast and new music I get from the Cloud, otherwise known as the Apple store. The music data that I enter I do via iTunes on my PC, in terms of things like playlists. Then the stuff I need with me in my Hand synchronises automatically with the PC. Apple figured out the ecosystem of the Cloud, the Screen and the Hand and people have gone nuts for it, and I don't think it's just about cool ads. People know that in a sense the iPod exploits the Net brilliantly to put all the world's music in your pocket: it puts the Cloud in your Hand. Apple put the user experience of Cloud, Screen and Hand first and brought millions of people into the digital content world.

We're going to continue to see the most amazing and complex proliferation of online and consumer electronics products and services that all end up being used via these three different modes: the Cloud, the Screen and the Hand. However, for any of them to really cause major changes to the way digital content flows in our lives, as the the iPod has done, someone is going to have build an ecosystem that understands how these pieces work together.

The funny thing is that the Apple Store, iTunes and the iPod is the only properly worked-out integration of these three modes. So far none of the TV or film companies have figured out how to make content flow seamlessly between the Cloud, the Screen and the Hand, because that would force them to re-frame their entire business model around the user experience, rather than their own production and distribution models. They've all got an interest in a piece of the experience, not the complete ecosystem that the user inhabits.

It's going to fascinating to watch these ecologies emerge around different data types. It's getting there with photos: there's nice synchronisation with photosharing apps like Flickr that link the Screen and the Cloud, and you can also send photos from your mobile phone direct to the Cloud via various moblogging applications.

But think of how it could work... You get information about the TV programmes you care about in front of your Screen and make some choices at work on your PC (in your lunch break, of course). These choices would then be synced so that the video content you wanted was sitting on your TV's hard drive when you got home. When you left for work next day you could watch some guilty pleasure that you don't want your family to know you like (such as The O.C.) on the train from your synched video player. In this way the Cloud, the Screen and the Hand would all work together to ensure you never had to programme your TV on your knees or use a PC in your living room.

Consumers want the security of the Net, the efficiency of the PC, and the convenience of handheld devices, and they want them to work together seamlessly. The future belongs to the people who will allow digital content to flow between the Cloud, the Screen and the Hand.