Looking at different ham radio blogs, I came upon a cool concept by KE9V, Jeff about using the cloud for ham radio logging.
Looking at his proposal initially, I scoffed, as an IT person, “cloud computing” is the current “buzzword” in IT.
But keeping an open mind, I began to consider his thoughts carefully, especially in light of some of the comments that were made in reference to his post…..
As Jeff points out, at one time logging was a legal requirement for hams, and many of us have our paper logbooks (ARRL and Radioshack comes to mind) to fall back on. I know I have quite a few paper logbooks.
Then I transitioned them to computer. Oh man, I remember what a pain that was……it tooks me weeks and weeks of data entry to get everything into myelectronic logbook. The good thing is, that it forced me to review my logs and send out some old QSLs that had been forgotten by the wayside.
Unfortunately in one case, 9N1MM, the QSL manager for him had died and his XYL had just destroyed the logs…so it was too late for that QSL…..
but I have faithfully kept up my logs in electronic format, making multiple backups to ensure I never have to go through that horrendous exercise again.
Electonic logs did a lot for me, helped me track awards, helps me send logs to contest sponsers easier and helps me keep stuff for uploading to LOTW easier.
But then Jeff comes up with this radical idea, to put a logbook app into the “cloud” where you can reach it anytime. Good idea as long as you have internet access. As Jeff states, think of Gmail, Yahoo, etc and you get the concept of “cloud computing.”
The intriguing part of his concept to me, was his thought, that the ARRL should adopt that as a project.
I have always supported the LOTW, but for differing reasons, the adoption rate of LOTW has been very small as compared to EQSL.cc
The main reasoning for that has been the security required by the ARRL, it is difficult for foriegn hams to get registered. I think this cloud computing concept could potentially hold the key to getting a wider adoption of LOTW.
As Jeff so aptly points out “Their servers could issue a token that matches a certificate when you log in so that your contacts auto magically matches up via their LoTW database. No more uploading a signed file that was generated by another program to get award credit, it would all be seamless to the end user.”
I agree. The technology is present now to make it easier. For instance if you have a wordpress blog, for certain plug ins you have to have a key generated by WP so that you can “turn on” certain features. Why couldn’t ARRL generate the same key for the LOTW and incorporate that into a “cloud logbook.”
Of course there will be some hams, that no matter how easy it is made, just the fact that the ARRL is part of it, will cause them to not use it.
That should not deter devlopment of this.
If the ARRL or some other party were to take this project up, I would like to see it be an open-source project, so APIs and other plugins can be devloped.
Read Ke9V’s post and some of the comments, I would love to hear some of your comments here as well.
What are your thoughts on this?
73, Jack K4SAC
