I've been moving into the 'cloud' recently. Device-independent, go-anywhere access to all your important 'stuff' (aka Software as a service or SaaS) is arguably the future of modern computing.

So I've got my daily To Do list, future article ideas and miscellaneous spreadsheets in Google Docs. I read my email on the move (via desktop, laptop or iPhone) using Gmail. It's easy, almost effortless; it's a life less tangible.

Personal cloud computing

I've moved by RSS subscriptions to Google Reader; my O2 bill is electronic, as is my Sky subscription. I've dabbled in the stock market with e*trade, networked via Linked-in and I back-up my digital photos on flickr.

I can catch-up with TV shows I've missed on the BBC's iPlayer and send invoices online via Blinksale. My musical tastes are now coded into last.fm and I'm thinking of backing up the data on my laptop with the online service Carbonite.

I'm increasingly adopting a Web 2.0 lifestyle – entrusting my data to the so-called 'cloud'. But this brave new virtual world can get a little dangerous when the services that you rely on go belly-up. For example, Google's Gmail service popped up a 502 server error last night. If a company as big as Google can suffer an outage, it makes you wonder if we're truly ready to store our important data online.

But what if it breaks?

To Google's credit, it looks like they fixed the problem pretty quickly. And the outage only affected Gmail, rather than knocking the lights out across the entire Google Apps range.

But even a small break in the service can have a big impact. The Telegraph newspaper, for example, recently switched 1,400 of its journalists to the Premier edition of Google Apps; Taylor Woodrow also migrated 1,800 people. The reason? The same go-anywhere online convenience that I've already mentioned.

"We heard loud and clear today how much people care about their Gmail accounts," Google said on it's the Official Gmail Blog.

"We followed all the emails to our support team and user group, we fielded phone calls from Google Apps customers and friends, and we saw the many Twitter posts. (We also heard from plenty of Googlers, who use Gmail for company email.) We never take for granted the commitment we've made to running an email service that you can count on."

What else can Google say, but 'sorry'? This is only a small tremor in the cloud computing idea. Heaven help us if there's a full-blown earthquake.