Kevin, I don’t know if you still have XM, but you can stream that as well as Sirius over the net and it works on WM and the iPhone. IF you have another PC,NAS,Home Server etc on the net you can stream your content from that as well via Orb, Web Guide, etc. They are pretty easy to setup.

There are also free radio station streaming via the streamcenter,http://www.thestreamcenter.com/ from around the world.

Thinking about streaming audio and video gets me wondering about the entire cloud test. I like to stream audio a lot using Pandora and sometimes I even do that over EVDO a bit. When I do that I keep an eye on the time because I could easily fly past my 5 GB cap on Verizon’s EVDO usage. This makes me think that one of the true values of cloud computing is when you are mobile, maybe on 3G like I am a lot. This could easily start causing you to bump up on your carrier’s cap for 3G bandwidth so it makes me question the utility of always working in the cloud, especially when you have access to a normal broadband connection. Hmm.

I’m with Mark Roddis. When you’ve finished this little experiment (it’s a good one) how about doing the same thing but using different types of devices – non-PCs etc. I think you’ll find it a lot harder.

Thanks Scott_H.

I’ll try it tonight.

And don’t worry I won’t tell anyone.

Very valid point Kevin.

Maybe where we need to look is “standards”. With what you are doing, you can do it with a browser. Any browser in it’s default configuration.

So just about any PC (small or otherwise) comes with a browser pre installed these days. So does my smart phone. Hey even my Wii has a browser on it.

So maybe the goal here needs to be the any device anywhere. If we can get this then surely we don’t need powerful machines at all. Just something that can run the browser.

Of course the fear has to be what IE8 will bring. Suddenly standards will actually matter (I am sure the irony that this is MS doing it isn’t lost) and that might actually break things.

Don’t tell anyone, but Hotspot Shield (a “free” ad-supported VPN) will let you appear to be in the US.

That reminds me, I need to catch up on BSG on Hulu.

Jose, I do plan to list extensions and their sizes when I complete the journey. I don’t want to make ANY judgments on browser performance right now for one particular reason: I’m using a release candidate of a browser that I’ve tweaked in order to use extensions that may not be compatible. As one of the Mozilla developers who stopped by said: it’s unfair to criticize the browser in what’s an essentially unsupported and unintended configuration.

That will change when the production version comes out and extensions are updated, of course.

I think cloud computing can include some client software as long as the data is on the cloud.

I recommend Joost for video. It has no ridiculous DRM issues preventing me from watching content just because I live outside the US and the quality is good. I am watching the 3rd season of Earth Final Conflict free of charge right now. Joost gives me hope that IPTV might actually be good one day.

The one thing that I do not like about it is that there is no linux version of the client. It could also use more content.

Awesome Kevin. Will you post at the end which and how many extensions you have installed on FF? Have you noticed a worse performance on the browser?

True enough, but let’s back up a second. By your definition, Firefox itself isn’t even IN the “cloud computing” picture unless it’s pre-installed on your device, right? After all, I had to download it and install it on my UMPC. And where does Firefox Portable come in? I can take a USB key to the internet cafe and use Firefox on a PC there.

Ten of us could debate the definition of “cloud computing” and probably come up with eleven different opinions. (See James’ thought provoking post on this very topic a few days ago) In my experiment, I’m comfortable using Firefox and small extensions with web services. The point of this is to see how well a UMPC, MID or netbook with limited processing power and storage capacity can rise to the challenge.

FoxyTunes must be discuonted as not a real cloud app.

After all, you have to download and install something to use the service (in this case a FF extension) which means it does not follow the mantra ANY browser, anywhere. Indeed if you are using IE instead of FF in an internet cafe, it just doesn’t work.