Portable devices give "cloud" new clout

By Jim Finkle

BOSTON (Reuters) - Chances are the mobile phone tucked in your pocket, the lightweight laptop in your backpack, or the navigation system in your car are under a cloud.

That means much of your vital data is not just at your home, at the office or in your wallet, but can easily be accessed by hooking up to the huge memory of the Internet "cloud" with portable devices.

"There's a lot of buzz about this. Everybody wants to be connected to everything everywhere," said Laura DiDio, an analyst with Information Technology Intelligence Corp.

Cloud computing for mobile devices is taking off with the expansion of high-speed wireless networks around the world.

"You're in a car driving someplace. Not only do you want directions, you want weather reports. You want know what are the best hotels around, where are the restaurants," DiDio said.

That kind of information is available in cars -- and most other places -- via mobile phones, "netbook" laptops hooked up to wireless air cards and even high-end navigation systems.

The cloud has been around since the mid-1990s when Web pioneers such as Hotmail, Yahoo Inc and Amazon.com Inc started letting consumers manage communications, appointments and shopping via the Internet.

Expansion came after companies such as Google Inc offered free programs similar to Microsoft's Word and PowerPoint, using an ordinary PC hooked up to the Internet, or a wireless handheld computer, or phone such as Apple Inc's iPhone. Nowadays you can shoot a photo with your mobile phone and email it to a free photo-editing site such as Picnik.com. Rearden Commerce offers a "personal assistant" that manages airline bookings and restaurant reservations via Research in Motion Ltd's BlackBerry device.