Why We Need Family Clouds

Synchronization is at the foundation of any good personal . I have a multitude of connected devices, which I use regularly, and I want them all to stay in sync. The power of this lies in software that contains what we call a "change and detect engine," meaning when a change is made on one device, it syncs across all devices. Take a photo, buy a song, or edit a document on one device and it instantly appears on your other devices. This solution has manifested itself in the marketplace for quite some time but only recently has it been any good. Personal clouds are evolving nicely, however we need hardware and software makers to start thinking more communally, as well.

I should point out that personal clouds only matter when you use more than one connected device on a regular basis. If you only use one personal computing product, you don't need to keep it in sync with other devices. But once you add desktops, notebooks, smartphones, and tablets, then the cloud data synchronization becomes important.

This is also true with communal clouds. When only one member of the family has multiple computing products then the notion of the personal cloud works, but once several members of a family start getting connected devices, the problem grows. Combine that with the reality that not all family members share the same roof and you can see how a communal or family cloud could be of value.

There is certain data that is mutual and of value to a larger group and then there is certain data that is important to just one person. The market must offer a solution that makes shared data sync as easily as personal data.

Apple built its with mostly the personal cloud in mind. There are ways to sync libraries of photos or other digital data but they are mostly manual processes. iTunes library sync is great. Home Sharing is a good start, but what about photos, for example? Perhaps some of the most common content in any family ecosystem is photos and currently keeping photo libraries in sync across a number of devices and iCloud accounts in the family is a pain. My wife constantly complains that none of our photos are ever on her computer because I download them all to mine. My iCloud account helps me to a degree but she has her own iCloud account and both act and sync independently.

Family calendars, chores or to-do lists, and collaborative family documents or spread sheets, just to name a few, could also benefit from shared sync.

Interestingly, this is a concept Microsoft has marketed to a small degree. In one commercial, a father uses a Word document on his Windows Phone as a shopping list. As he shops, new items—soda, coconuts, candy—keep appearing on his list. At the end of the commercial, he realizes that his kids are adding to his shopping list from their Windows PC at home. The changes they made to the document were instantly synced on his phone. Its campaign proclaims, "It's a great time to be a family." This idea of how a family uses the cloud in a more holistic way is one that I think needs further development in this new era of computing.

There is another key reason that we need a family cloud. Not long after my mother passed away in 1999, our family faced the difficult task of going through her belongings and either distributing them among family members or sending them off to Goodwill. But the most personal and interesting items she left us were boxes and boxes of pictures that had been taken over her 75-year life. This included wonderful pictures of her parents and family, as well as thousands of pictures of my brother and two sisters. Sorting through them and seeing who wanted which ones was tedious, emotional, and, in the end, quite a difficult process.

In this digital age, what we really need is the equivalent of a family cloud in which the entire family can easily access synced pictures. Today, my siblings have great pictures of their kids. They may post a couple once in a while to Flicker or Facebook, but what if there was a true family cloud or photo repository that everyone in the family had access to and could post shared family pictures automatically? That would create a powerful visual family history that could be passed down for generations.

The bottom line is personal clouds are great but if they only work for me personally then they are useless at a communal level. People don't use technology in a vacuum and we need hardware and software manufacturers not only to solve problems for the personal computing ecosystem but for the family computing ecosystem as well.