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Cloud Computing

Notes task. But today with the introduction of Web-based application such as Google Docs you can
conveniently create your piece and show it to everyone online for their approvals and
appreciation. In this process, however, you must remember to authorize all the members of
your organization who you think should view your document and hold the power to make
necessary changes to the document.
Web-based local search sites such as Zvents can be used to post announcements of your
community events online. Zvents is a popular producer of local entertainment guides online.
It has a comprehensive, high-quality storehouse of local event and business information on the
web. It helps people to find some interesting things to do in their local area. This in turn helps
thousands of event advertisers as it increases attendance at their events.
You may even want to use cloud-based social media sites, such as Youtube, Facebook, MySpace
etc., to promote your events online by creating and sharing videos, photographs and other
audio and visuals. These you can share and circulate to people online. And, after the event, you
can post pictures of the event on community photo-sharing Photo sharing sites such as Flickr
and Shutter fly. Thanks to cloud computing all this is conveniently possible.

Task Prepare a chart stating examples of how cloud computing has helped you in
collaborating in your daily life.
5.5 Green Cloud

Talking of energy reduction and carbon footprint savings, cloud computing is also inevitable
because it is more green. Today, most internal company data centres run their servers at around
thirty per cent capacity. In contrast, the servers in a large cloud data centre typically run at eighty
per cent capacity or more. This means that less energy is wasted, with the carbon footprint of
each unit of computing power being reduced.
Cloud computing is also more environmentally friendly than traditional computing because it
removes the need for most users to have high-power PCs and laptops. As discussed on the green
computing page, lower-power computers based around processors such as Intel’s Atom are
perfectly sufficient to run cloud applications. Their use can also cut end-user energy bills and
carbon footprints by as much as eighty per cent.

5.6 Virtual Communities in the Cloud

A virtual community is a community of people sharing common interests, ideas, and feelings
over the Internet or other collaborative networks. A possible inventor of this term and one of its
first proponents was Howard Rheingold, who created one of the first major Internet communities,
called “The Well.” In his book, The Virtual Community, Rheingold defines virtual communities as
social aggregations that emerge from the Internet when enough people carry on public discussions
long enough and with sufficient human feeling to form webs of personal relationships
in cyberspace.
Virtual communities might be thought of as subgroups within Marshall McLuhan’s notion of
cyberspace as a “global village.” Before the Web, virtual communities existed on Bulletin Board
Services (BBS) and many still do. Some virtual communities or facilitators of them use the
metaphor of a coffee house or something similar to help users visualize the community.
In general, there are two kinds of communication among virtual community members: message
postings and real-time chat. Usenet newsgroups are an example of the former. Many Websites,

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