Purchased an iPad the other day... got an android phone a while back too. I had quite the time with Android just getting it so I could keep my contacts and appointments out of the cloud. Only found one solution (markspace - missing sync). Now with the iPad its the same thing, but worse because of the closed ecosystem. It seems the cloud is inevitable, driven by the devices and the market themselves. The notion of staying out of the cloud precludes device usage now it seems.

This is unfortunate because data exploitation is something relatively few people understand or know about. Moreover the problem is data value is transient. Just because "I'm not worried about Google knowing my schedule" doesn't mean my schedule has no value, that the aggregation of my schedule over time is worthless, or that the one occasion when I didn't want my information available (think about the initial launch of Google buzz that left your contacts open) is harmless. That our entire society seems to be moving towards the centralization (control) of our information by a relatively few number of people without significant debate seems like quite the folly. There aren't a lot of choices to remain out of the cloud and it is only getting worse.

More on this later.