When was the last time you referred to the Internet as the “Information Superhighway”? Probably not since you upgraded from GEnie to AOL back in the early 90’s and saw there was this HTML world out there. Early on you figured out calling the Internet the Information Superhighway stupid and the world thanks you for it.

In 2012, lets stop using the term “the Cloud” to refer to some arbitrary hosted service. It’s like nails on a chalkboard. Just think about this statement in a year:

The Cloud roxxorz my proprietary GIS Server!

It’s like that picture of you wearing that Members Only Jacket to your Senior prom. You so want that picture to go away, but Mom keeps showing it to your friends.

Same here, don’t be that guy who uses “the Cloud”. It’s a marketing term for newspaper writers who learned how the Internet works from Ted Stevens. In a year you’ll be on to the next Gartner Hype Cycle fetish (I hear the self driving Google car is right around the corner) anyway so call it what it is, hosted services.