And a flight through the world of cloud computing.  Armed with a copy of The Cloudspotter’s Guide (great Christmas present, somewhat tamer than its distant relative Trainspotting), I’ll be checking out some real clouds and finding a parallel universe (maybe)…

First off,  it’s the turn of cumulus.

As a cloud, cumulus looks something like a collection of cotton wool balls dabbed onto a blue sky.  A fine weather, ‘good times’ kind of cloud that’s firmly established in our minds as something which is pleasant to admire, with innocent intent.  Insofar as altitude, it’s neither the lowest nor the highest cloud type, yet it can certainly grow pretty fast when the right conditions are set – not unlike cloud computing…

In return, I pick a couple of SaaS examples of cloud technology, Hotmail or latterly, Gmail – both browser-based email apps with a fairly solid reputation.  For those with a fondness for the private cloud, Outlook Web Access could be another contender.   They’re each just ‘there’ – innocent names that we fondly recall from our childhood (perhaps).  The days when the cloud was simply the shape we drew on the whiteboard to represent the Internet.

Things of course aren’t standing still for these apps.  Together with their bigger, new-found families Windows Live and Google Apps, the basic email offerings are evolving and innovating inside ‘the cloud’ – now with a comprehensive layer of app management for the user to play with…not unlike third party cloudkick is doing now for IaaS, amongst offerings that include EC2 and Rackspace.