Cloud computing is very popular these days. You are almost worthless if you can't wing it about cloud computing. It goes well with hand gestures... "Don't worry, it all happens over there in the cloud". A cure-all for 2009.

If you always wanted your very own cloud, but didn't know how, here's your chance. A DIY cloud project called EUCALYPTUS from the good folks at UC, Santa Barbara (my tax dollars at work!). From their website:

"EUCALYPTUS - Elastic Utility Computing Architecture for Linking Your Programs To Useful Systems - is an open-source software infrastructure for implementing "cloud computing" on clusters. The current interface to EUCALYPTUS is compatible with Amazon's EC2 interface, but the infrastructure is designed to support multiple client-side interfaces. EUCALYPTUS is implemented using commonly available Linux tools and basic Web-service technologies making it easy to install and maintain."

I also found out from the Canonical folks at OSBC that Jaunty Jackalope, Ubuntu's next release will have Eucalyptus all wrapped up into it. I'm looking forward to it. I'm sure the college has a bunch of old PIIIs that could run a cloud and heat the building on the weekend!