This was supposed to be a post about the relationship between The Conversation and the Real-Time Web (RTW), but I got sidetracked a bit. I’ve always been worried about the descriptions I’ve been giving of the various relationships between me and the Cloud and cldwrld. To cut a long story short I’ve come up with a diagram that explains how I think about it all (so far) for this blog. It’s a kind of simplistic mash-up of logical and physical views. I don’t hold it out to be anything more than that. I’m going to put it onto the cldwrld page as well, because I think it will clean things up a bit. Here it is – click on the diagram to make it larger:

the cloud and me

Note that I define a “destination” computer to be one which is connected to a network but has no pass-through capability and then:

• Box 1:  A destination computer on which I can run applications (and access multi-user applications) which don’t have a User Profile (see Digital Inhabitant) requirement. In the Cloud. (e.g. Web-based email, Google Docs).
• Box 2: A destination computer on which I cannot run an application. On the Web. (this website)
• Box 3: A destination computer on which I access a multi-user application which does have a User Profile requirement and allows for interaction between users. (Like Facebook). The sum of the Box 3s plus people using them equals cldwrld. In the Cloud.

The diagram also shows me connecting to the Internet as a Digital Inhabitant. I have access to the Web, Cloud-based computers and that subset, the Box 3s, which, when populated, forms cldwrld.

Well, that’s settled then (ha! until I am forced to change it).

In fact I might put off the The Conversation/RTW post until I’ve had a chance to read the ReadWriteWeb report on the RTW which is coming out shortly. Until then, here’s a link to the famous “define the Real-Time Web in 100 words or less” post at RWW.