These days, everybody is talking about cloud computing, and many people use it in one form or the other. But popular cloud computing services are provided by a third party, which means that you store you data on a server somewhere, so that you can access it any time, from anywhere. But there are cloud applications that any person can use to host their own private cloud, from their home.

Everyone likes personal cloud services. But, many of aren’t crazy about the fact that our files, music, and whatever are sitting on someone else’s servers without our control. That’s where ownCloud comes in. OwnCloud is an open-source cloud program. You use it to set up your own cloud server for file-sharing, music-streaming, and calendar, contact, and bookmark sharing project.

If you want to upload a lot of documents to Google Docs, it's difficult to upload them one by one. You can send the documents by email, but this option is not very reliable and not all the formats are supported.

Where cloud storage fails is when you just need to get access to one or two files, and your local application does not have any functionality for accessing files stored online. I find myself in this situation all the time with a few OpenOffice documents that are synced with a Dropbox account, but the Dropbox account itself is not synced with all the devices I use.

If you don't want to lose control of your data, yet enjoy all the benefits of an always-available and synchronized online repository, you can turn to ownCloud, an application that lets users share and sync files within the confines of your enterprise firewall on servers you control.

This tutorial shows how you can install and run ownCloud3 on a Debian Squeeze or Ubuntu 11.10 system that has nginx installed instead of Apache (LEMP = Linux + nginx (pronounced "engine x") + MySQL + PHP).

Dropbox is a storage application and service operated by Evenflow, Inc. The service enables users to store and sync files online and between computers.Dropbox has a cross-platform client (Linux for x86 and x86_64, Mac, Windows and the iPhone) that enables users to drop any file into a Dropbox folder that is then synced to the web and the users' other computers with the Dropbox client.

Version 3 of ownCloud, the open source, cloud application that enables you to run your own cloud server from your computer, has been released. This comes roughly 47 days before the launch of a commercial entity that would provide products and services for ownCloud.

ownCloud Version 3 introduces online editing, photo gallery, PDF viewer, application store and improvements to existing functionality. Available for download now, ownCloud Version 3 enables users to share files and folders with others from their privately controlled infrastructure.