Of late, I sense push-back by a lot of people on so-called "technological advances." Once in a while, I’m happy to find technology that really does make life more enjoyable and my work easier to accomplish. I’m going to look at a couple of disparate items — both of which live in the cloud.
First off is the Mondo, a (Wi-Fi) Internet radio manufactured by Grace Digital Audio. I’ve been a fan of Internet radio from the get-go. As an educator and music fan, I find these devices incredibly practical and fun.
The Mondo is the latest — and I think the best — deal out there, if you want user-friendly Internet radio that doubles as a bedside alarm clock. In addition to thousands of stations around the world, it connects to Pandora, iHeartRadio, Rhapsody, SiriusXM, NOAA (weather), Live365, NPR and a ton of podcasts. It has a sleep timer and snooze bar (which its biggest competitor, the Logitech Squeezebox, doesn’t have). It’s easy and intuitive to set up. One of the nicest features is a "local" radio setting.
Mondo doesn’t have AM/FM tuners, but makes up for it by automatically putting all the local Internet stations in one file. (Mondo found about 20 local stations to choose from in Hawaii.) You can save up to 10 radio presets, but the buttons are smooth and difficult to distinguish at night if you’re fumbling around in the dark. (Some Braillelike bumps would be a good idea.) Audio quality is decent enough and can be improved by connecting a speaker using the RCA jacks at the back. It has a battery-powered option, too, but add another $40. The upshot: Even with a few warts, Mondo’s the hands-down winner, especially if you’re looking for a bedside radio. Price is $150 on Amazon.com (versus $180 for a Squeezebox).
Who’d have thought a word-processing program would live in the cloud, but Microsoft’s Office 365 has taken that leap. Office 365 includes 5 gigabytes of SkyDrive as well as the Web version of Office 2013. A fully installed copy of Office 365 includes traditional local PC-installed Office 2013, which can automatically save all files to your SkyDrive. This makes all of your documents available to all of your devices, from PCs to tablets to smartphones. The convenience of full cloud integration of Office from your computer with Office 365 online is an answer to backup, collaboration and cross-platform availability.
Talk about turning things on their head! I have moved all of my working files to the cloud. This proved invaluable recently when I visited a neighbor island and all my documents were ready for me when I booted up.
Office 365 is a subscription service ($99 per year) that provides continuously updated Office service on an annual basis so that you are never stuck operating old versions of Office. That is the way of the future for software as a service, but the immediate benefit is fully managed cloud storage. While 5 gigabytes is not large, it is enough to store a lot of documents, plus photos and music. While you can purchase more storage inexpensively, I predict that the amount of base storage will steadily increase, bringing that price down. Google just announced it is consolidating its email storage with their Google Docs storage, giving a 25 gigabyte total. You can expect Microsoft to be very competitive on this.
If you haven’t tried it, you should.
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Mike Meyer, formerly Internet general manager at Oceanic Time Warner Cable, is now chief information officer at Honolulu Community College. Reach him at mmeyer@hawaii.edu.
