Welcome to a Future in the Cloud

Last week Las Vegas hosted the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show (also known as CES 2012), where technology players big and small presented their latest and upcoming toys. We saw a ton of gadgets, from new cameras- including the much-discussed Lytro, which allows you to change focus after the picture has been taken -to smart TVs, which will recognize you, respond to hand gestures, and probably replace your home computer. Thanks, Google TV!

Our blog usually focuses on the now: tips and tricks you can use today. But behind the scenes, we’re always looking to the future to determine our optimal path. One thing that particularly struck us, especially as it relates to our own core business, is the increasing feeling that the world will be less reliant on hardware in the future.

Sounds pretty crazy, right? Don’t be in a big hurry to ditch your computers yet, but the more we watch, the less it seems like you’ll need a huge hard drive. You can now store your files on “the cloud,” basically a collection of servers on the Internet. Dropbox handles your large files, you can use Google Docs as your entire productivity suite- no need to pay for Microsoft Office or even mess with Open Office at all. And then, of course, these days a lot of marketing is centered around Internet campaigns that integrate social media and audience participation.

Web-based (or “cloud”-based) software is on the rise, and we think it’s where pretty much all computing is heading. So get ready!