There’s been lots of talk recently about clouds, and not just from the meteo set. Well, not just recently as people have been promising all kinds of wondeworks would wend their wet way from the wafting woolpack working worldward. These things have only recently come to seriously pass and with them comes easy access to internet based tools, from anywhere in the world! As long as there’s a network connection. Oh, and some form of internet browsing thing. Ahhh, and power of some kind. Hm, maybe not so easily at that. No matter. That it’s happening is the thing. Imagine you have someone setting up servers, network, storage, and such for you. What makes it a Cloud, is when they do it in such a way that you don’t need to know all the intimate details about the bits and pieces (how many cpu’s in the server, how fast the network, what kind of storage) in order to make effective use of it. What you end up with is a way to take advantage of the benefits of storing your data in a remote location, but without needing to be steeped in lots of technical gobbledygook.

One such cloudlike instrument is the whole MobileMe service. What’s a MobileMe you ask? It’s Apple’s cloudtastic service. If you purchased an iPhone, you received a free subscription for a bit. This is so you can get a feel for (and hopefully pay Apple for) using the cloud to store your data and having it pushed to all your connected devices. Change a contact using the online MobileMe mail, it shows up on your phone. Change an appointment in iCal, have it show up on your other computer. It has other features, too, like website hosting (you’re soaking surfing on it).

Another cloud-type thing is iWork.com. That’s a service that allows you to upload your iWork documents to the cloud and have access to them from anywhere in the world, again, with the aforementioned limitations. It goes further than just file sharing, though. When you go there to see what someone has shared, you get to see, depending on the document, a page by page, slide by slide, or sheet by sheet representation of the Pages, Keynote, or Numbers file.

Well, since I’ve shown you MobileMe by way of this page, howzabout I give you a shot of iWork.com betaness as well? I’ve posted a file of shapes from the game Meteos. They’re vector images so they can be scaled, you can change colors, etc. Follow this link (or use the arrow above), and use the icon at the top of that iWork beta screen to download a Keynote ’08, Keynote ’09 or PowerPoint document. Create your own meteoons like these folks did! Oh, and if you need some backgrounds, click here!