I guess I am a follower of Richard Stallman without knowing it.

I do not agreed 100% of what he believed (i.e. proprietary s/w is all that bad), but I have the same opinion and approach like him on many issues.

I mentioned in the past that I like to archive all my bits and bytes: "I guess I just don't trust my data w/ others on the net.". In addition, I enjoy the freedom of able to tinker my computing environment the way I like it. Linux gives me that freedom, while Windows cannot. After all, most of these are free (Maybe I am just being cheap!).

My shift to on-line service really start the past year or so, I finally give-in to the convenient of some of these web services. Web2.0 is enriching my user experience on the Internet. My T-mobile G1 gives me more reasons to move to the cloud further, it's just inevitable.... however I still try to keep as much data locally as possible.

To me, I have no issue using cloud computing. But I always try to find a way to have a fall back or backup data to my local computing environment when possible. I like to use my own way to access the services, so I can consolidate them at one location. I hate to have so many browser windows open at the same time, and don't want to clog my browser with toolbars.

A quick glimpse to all my on-line services.

Services on local computers:
- Blog (powered by NucleusCMS)
- RSS news reading (powered by Gregarius)
- FTP file storage
- Pidgin Google talk/MSN/YM/ICQ instant messaging (which I logged all conservations)
- Skype

Services on the clouds, with backup to local:
- Delicious social bookmarking (via blogroll function of my blog)
- Twitter microblogging (via microblog function of my blog)

My services on the clouds, no backup:
- Gmail/YahooMail email (with email depreciated accounts stored locally)
- Google Calendar
- Gmail/YahooMail Contacts
- Facebook/LinkedIn social networking
- Plurk
- Identi.ca
- Youtube
- Picasa web album
- Google reader (on G1)
- Friendfeed livefeed
- Chi.mp OpenID/livefeed

There are a full range of services I used on-line with no backup. I think I'd like a few things happen eventually:
- Gmail/YahooMail email sync to local
- Consolidate Gmail/YahooMail Contacts, social graphs to a local infrastructure
- A centralize IM log repository, so I can use IM from G1 and other computers. Currently I only run pidgin on my laptop
- Some sort of encrypted on-line file storage to backup my local data for disaster recovery, and a file sharing access for friends to access some of my stuff
- A calendar function that is more social and actually used by friends
- Re-deploy my web album locally, with a mechanism to sync to Facebook/Picasaweb
- A RSS news function that sync between Google reader and my local system
- A self-hosted OpenID implementation and infrastructure for my blog

Ideally, I'd like to see all my data stored at a centralize domain. This should be localize at my home network with a cloud/on-line copy for redundancy. (Well, this will mean I need FTTH like those 100BB in HK.....) I'm ok with the master data on the cloud, but has to have portability so I can move and backup them as please. It's open standards like IMAP, OpenSocial, and etc we are talking here. Any service I use from the cloud should be open so I can move to another service freely. The service I choice should provide multiple access methods so I can consolidate my access from one central location (Maybe a web based GUI like eyeOS?) or from different device/platform.

Further reading:
Stallman vs. Clouds | Linux Journal