Yesterday was a total freak-out when GMail went down. It reminded me of the time in the late-90’s when AOL went down for a day and the world came to a standstill. Hell, back then it even made headline news!

After GMail came back online the debate began over the viability of “cloud computing”.

What Is Cloud Computing?

It essentially works like this:

There are way smarter people who can explain it better. Look around. A good place to start would be Wikipedia.

Those Clouds Look Ominous!

Below are people’s biggest worries when they finally understand the cloud computing concept for the first time:

1. Google is too powerful and could steal my data.
2. Someone could hack into Google and steal my data.
3. Someone could hack into Google and infect my email or documents with a virus or malware.
4. When Google goes down (i.e. GMail) I can’t do ANYTHING!

So let’s take these points one at a time shall we?

“Google is too powerful and could steal my data”

It is entirely in Google’s best interests to keep your data private. They are basically betting the farm they can do this.

Let’s answer a few questions I have heard:

Can they read your data at Google?

Yes they can.

Do they scan the content contained in your emails and documents?

Yes they do.

But bear in mind this is aggregate data.  This means that while they do scan your data, they don’t really know who you are.

Why do they do that?

Google offers a powerful web-based suite of software (Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, etc) and pays for it by selling relevant ad space inside those web applications.

When they search/scan/analyze your data they don’t see

“Don Makoviney has an email conversation about penis enlargement pills”.

Instead, they see

“Anonymous Gmail user has an email conversation in his inbox about penis enlargement pills. So when this email is opened serve him a penis enlargement pill advertisement.”

The exception to this is illegal activities. If Google is served a court order they can drill down and ultimately find out who you are. But this is no different in any organization (public or private) that runs email servers. The same thing happened to Enron, WorldCom, AIG, and even the White House (thanks Scooter Libby!).

If you put it in email, whether it’s a cloud-based service like GMail, Hotmail, or Yahoo Mail or whether it’s your local business Exchange Server or local ISP, there are already multiple copies of your email out there floating around entirely out of your control. You need to understand and accept that.

“Someone could hack into Google and steal my data.”

The same point applies here that applied in the previous statement. Google has bet the farm on security, infrastructure, and redundancy.

If you have trust issues I can understand this might not be enough to convince you.

But think about it:

No doubt you have heard about financial institutions like CitiBank, American Express, and others having their data stolen. What happened? Nothing! Even when hundreds of thousands of ACTUAL CREDIT CARD NUMBERS have been stolen the damage was minimal. Often less than minimal! Large batch jobs cancel the cards. More batch jobs are run that generate new credit or debit card numbers, which feed to another batch job that actually creates new cards, which feeds to another huge batch job that mails all those new cards out.

Done. Problem solved.

(Yes, I know I oversimplified with the batch job thingy, but you get the point, no?)

The point is, once you are doling out personal information there are always risks. Whether it’s handing the waiter your credit card and he walks to the back of the restaurant out of sight, or buying a book at Amazon.com, there are always risks.

So choose your cloud computing “partners” wisely. Don’t hand over your personal information to the latest hip Web2.0 start-up just because they ask for it. Do a little research first.

“Someone could hack into Google and infect my email or documents with a virus or malware”

I’m not sure if you are a GMail user reading this or are someone contemplating switching over to GMail. Either way, let me tell you from experience GMail has one of the most up-to-date and aggressive anti-virus and malware detection tools I have ever seen. It’s a mix of good old fashioned algorithmic programming and consensus from the users. Everything that is downloaded via GMail is run through virus scanning detection and even emails with suspicious links are quarantined.

(On a personal note: They still haven’t figured out how to get rid of the fake virus alerts friends forward to me incessantly. Stop it. Please? My hard drive will NOT catch on fire if I open an email)

Additionally I don’t even run virus scanning software on my computer at all. I haven’t for almost 5 years. The biggest risk seems to be from porn sites, torrent sites and warez (illegal software) sites. And if you get a virus from one of those, well, you got what you deserved I guess

The fear mongering by many about “the cloud” has created a mindset that is not just limited to cloud computing.

Several years ago people were freaking out that websites using cookies were stealing their data. CNN/MSNBC/FOX News and network news shows were doing these ominous news segments about privacy concerns with cookies. People were turning off cookies in their browsers. As a result they couldn’t buy books on Amazon.com, save searches on retail sites, or check their bank account balance online anymore. The web was broke for them. It took a lot of education on the part of web retailers and web developers to convince clients and customers the CNN tech reporter was full of crap. Cookies were simply a necessity in maintaining state across web pages.

So you see, this mindset is usually the result of (1) fear of a technology they don’t fully understand, and (2) overblown media hype about online security that preys on the uninformed.

I feel we’re in a similar boat with cloud computing. While there are (and should be) legitimate concerns, we are experiencing a lot of ominous news pieces that aren’t telling the whole story. Mostly this is because the concept is relatively new and people just don’t know all the facts yet.

That’s fine. It’s why people like me are around

Lastly:

“When Google goes down (i.e. GMail) I can’t do ANYTHING!”

“Bullshit!” (Thanks Penn & Teller)

When I hear this I wonder if the person saying it is lazy, or simply uninformed.

Google anticipate this problem long ago with the implementation of Google Gears. Basically, Google Gears synchronizes your data in “the cloud” with your local computer. This way, if Google is down you can still access your data, compose emails or documents, and have these queued and ready-to-go when GMail, Docs, or Calendar comes back online.

This data is kept in a specific folder on your computer, and this location depends on what browser you use. Google has a simple handy guide to help you figure it out in 30 seconds or less.

If you have any sort of programming tendencies, you can even access the data through a handy SQL Query tool Google provides for free. Otherwise, you can just use your local browser and localhost server to access the data.

Sound confusing? Don’t let it worry you.

Basically this means if GMail is down and you go to GMail in your browser it will just show your local synchronized documents and not your data live online. Google Gears syncs up GMail, Docs, and Calendar frequently so chances are your documents aren’t that out of date. If at all.

(Side Note: Project management from your inbox is highly discouraged anyways. If you would like to get away from such an abomination, check out Inbox Zero.)

Yesterday when people were freaking out about not being able to use GMail, I didn’t miss a step. Sure I couldn’t receive new emails and I couldn’t send emails. In fact, I kinda missed an important one.

Noooobody knows, the trouble I’ve seeeeen …

When I think about GMail’s 99.9% uptime and compare it with the many times I have lost EVERYTHING in Outlook/Exchange Server/Thunderbird I look at the big picture and am very thankful that cloud computing is taking off in such an astounding way.

It’s like having backups without really thinking about it. This is the way it should be.

For two years in the late 90’s I worked at a dotcom. On more than one occasion the Sys Admin had to completely rebuild our company mail server from the ground up. When it’s up he says he only last ran a backup two months ago so any email I received over the last two months are lost.

For almost 5 years, I worked at a Global Fortune 1000 software company that was an MSDN Subscriber and early adopter of new products. We were always upgrading our local mail server, spam filters, and add-on services and it wreaked havoc on project communications.

So a free, cloud-based, email system that constantly syncs with my local computer and is up 99.9% of the time is a sweet deal for me.

Better Free Backup Strategies

The point of this article was to help debunk some (what I feel are) unfounded but understandable fears about cloud computing in light of yesterday’s massive GMail outage.

But admittedly, I like solid physical backups too.

Really, you’re only as good as your last backup.

So …

If the risk is still too high in your mind, stay tuned. At the end of the week I’ll show you some pretty nifty backup strategies I use in concert with cloud applications that are (a) free (b) local, and (c) not super technical.

Sweet, right?

(Note: This article/rant assumes you are already using Facebook to market your small business. )

I have been noticing an unfortunate trend in Facebook “marketing”.

I’m not talking about Facebook ads, which can be used in a remarkably effective manner.

What I’m talking about is small businesses using Facebook to announce things related to their business.

At any given time I log in to Facebook and receive literally dozens of event invites. Oftentimes it is two or three from the same business. Wine tastings, music festivals, concerts, film viewings, and so forth. It gets to the point where my eyes just glaze over. I hit DELETE or “No I won’t Be Attending” without even looking at the date or show information because now, it’s just annoying.

These announcements are just being shouted. It’s no different than getting spammed with e-mail newsletters. I have been “un-friending” the worst offenders at an increasing rate. And more and more are becoming offensive every day.

The sad part is these are local businesses I want to use and support.

This is one problem with social media that many not familiar with the intricacies are failing to understand. It’s very easy to move back to the traditional one-way conversation marketers have used in the past.

If you run a Facebook page for your company, restaurant, or music venue, use the following simple guidelines:

• When you post an event and someone says “No they will not be attending”, follow up with them and tell them you will miss them and you hope to catch them at the next one.
• When someone comes to an event and you meet them, thank them for showing up. Follow that up afterward with a post to their wall thanking them for attending.
• Monitor your friend stream for mentions of your business. Participate in the conversation.

Doing this ensures that (1) you aren’t giving the impression you are spamming. (2) You develop a relationship with the person which ensures genuine interest.

Where To Find The Time?

You own a business and you are a busy person. You are probably wondering how you can fit even more time into dealing with Facebook. That’s a fair question. If you are already logging in to post events, do it then. It will take all of 10 additional minutes to fire off some quick responses to people not attending or people you met at the last event. It might take even less time.

You can even put together some semi-canned responses that you can tweak for each person you communicate with to shave off a few extra precious minutes of your social marketing time.

Honestly, this is the reason I use Twitter more than Facebook. Twitter almost makes it a prerequisite that you have a two-way conversation. It’s remarkable in it’s simplicity (for now anyways).

It’s not as sexy as Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, and others.

I admit it.

It’s not fun having to remember yet ANOTHER username and password to log in.

I admit it.

But …

Here is what small business owners looking for online conversations with potential customers should remember: Some of the most passionate and active people in thousands of niches are talking about your products in forums. If they aren’t talking about your products in your niche, you need to get in those forums and tell people about your business.

Forums are the Original Gangsters (O.G.) of the Social Media world.

Interestingly, the same rules apply in the forums that apply in the most popular social media platforms of the moment.

1. Participate in conversations.
2. Don’t spam your products and pitch people all the time.
3. Fill out your bio and link to your site/products in your profile page.
4. Participate in conversations. (Did I mention that already?)

For instance, I site that I frequent a lot is the Harmony-Central.com forums for songwriting. I like to discuss songwriting in general and as an added plus, if an article I have written applies to a conversation, I will provide a link to my songwriting blog.

There are often forums for every business niche imaginable. Many trade associations, from construction to computing have forums rolled into their yearly memberships. Many local Chamber of Commerce websites often have forums.

Get Local With Forums

Small business owners should also take a look at local options. A simple search in my town revealed the following local forums:

• Jewish Business Community Forum
• CraigsList (of course)
• Two local forums from newspapers with multiple topics (real estate, entertainment, local politics)
• Local college forums (great place to find entry level workers or interns)
• Local holistic and metaphysical forum (health products and naturepath)
• Hiking forum (health and fitness products)
• Cycling forum (health and fitness products)
• Photography forum (electronics, cameras, photography services)
• Freecycle – Over 5000 local members giving away anything and everything imaginable.

All of these forums are active and wonderful places to initiate and participate in conversations.

Do a search in your town, region, state. You’ll be surprised at what you will find.

I’m certainly a believer in the power of social media to do good and help businesses.

With pride, I can name countless examples where social media has helped me personally, as well as friends, business associates, and clients. It’s a hot topic everywhere and social media communities are springing up in astounding numbers.

But there are people who over hype it.

Example: If you ask someone like Zappos (the premiere shoe experts online), their success is not based on simply opening a Twitter account.

But there’s many “social media experts” who will take your money and tell you Twitter alone is the key to small business success.

So …

Whether you are a pure internet business promoting oil change coupons, or have a retail shop (i.e. coffee shop, Jamaican restaurant, or carpet cleaning company, etc) these principles apply to you:

Read more here…