Many great ideas have never been implemented in a way that lives up to dreams and expectations.  But the idea is so good that people keep on trying to make it work.  Examples include pen computing, a file system based off metadata rather than a folder tree, and the topic of this “WTF is…”, cloud computing.

Cloud computing is using the internet for computing services as opposed to applications and files stored locally on your computer.  Your files and even the programs themselves float in “the Cloud” of the internet.  This is a very broad definition of cloud computing; it encompasses many everyday websites people visit.  All of the Web 2.0 sites, like Gmail, Google Docs, Facebook, fall under the umbrella of cloud computing since data is stored on some server out there and is accessed over the internet.

But there is so much more to cloud computing than just that.  Read on to find out about the dream of “the Cloud”.

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