September 15, 2011, 10:42 AM — For years we've been subjected to endless amounts of PR describing the wonders cloud computing will bring. At this year's DEMO Fall, we finally got to see some of them.
And if the offerings on display at DEMO are any indication, cloud-based services are likely to make the Web more collaborative and even more responsive to what we want. Let's start with WeVideo, the new cloud-based service that not only lets users upload videos they've filmed directly onto the Web but also allows for robust video editing capabilities by multiple collaborators at once. So if you and a friend are filming scenes from a tech convention at the same time, you can upload both of your videos onto the same WeVideo account and have a third friend edit the production with proper transitions, music, titles and so forth. The goal is to use the cloud to vastly lessen the time it takes to film, edit and produce a high-quality video production.
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"On a desktop computer you have limited processing capability and limited storage," says WeVideo CEO Jostein Svendsen. "What we have done now is by being in the cloud we have an unlimited amount of storage and processing power. Most people when they start rendering on desktops, they find that video takes longer to render. This is a true paradigm shift in terms of use and speed."
The cloud isn't just for high-bandwidth applications such as video sharing, either. Take Unrabble, a job-posting cloud-based technology that tries to help companies verify the information job applicants put on résumés by ensuring that their claims are backed up by colleagues on social networks. It works like this: Job applicants are allowed to post a "brag" on their Unrabble profile that highlights an achievement that they are particularly proud of. Unrabble then finds past or present colleagues on the user's social networking contacts to verify whether the "brag" is accurate.
Unrabble also lets companies create specific categories of the types of expertise they're looking for in a candidate beyond the standard job description. So if you're looking for someone who has a background in marketing who also has worked extensively pushing products in the SaaS industry, you'll be able to enter in keywords that will prioritize those traits and save you the time of reading through countless résumés that don't have what you're looking for.
