To share a group of items, all you have to do is put them all into a folder and share the folder. As you’d expect, if you add an item to a shared folder, it will automatically be shared and if you add someone to an existing shared folder, they will instantly get access to all of the folder’s content.

Google Docs is already an awesome online document sharing tool. But the addition of Shared Folders makes a great tool indispensable. Now instead of sharing doc by doc by doc, you just share a whole folder of whatever you like.

Perfect for projects with related documents and groups that span 2 or more organizations.

Microsoft keeps improving their Office Live service, too, but Google’s got them beat on ease-of-use (though Google could still stand some sizable improvements).

Say what you will about cloud computing, but this kind of incremental development is what makes the cloud so compelling.

NO.

You would think no one has ever lost data on a home computer in a crashed hard drive or in a virus outbreak.

You would think no corporation has ever lost data internally due to faulty backups that were assumed to be good.

You would think that as soon as the Internet is involved, it’s all bad and could never be good.

Let’s get real. The Microsoft/Danger/T-Mobile disaster is indeed a disaster, especially for those folks that did not maintain local syncs of their data regularly.

But it’s not because “cloud computing sucks.” It’s because multiple people fouled up what should have been a routine restore from backup. Their procedures were bad, they were arrogant — whatever it is, “mistakes were made” and the users (paying customers, no less) are taking it in the shorts.

Does Gmail go down? Yes. Does Twitter go down? Yes. Do people lose data in hacking and virus attacks? Yes. The list goes on. So I guess we should just shutdown the Internet and go back to clay tablets and papyrus reed styli, huh?

The articles about this disaster will go on for weeks. This story will be remembered as one of the biggest of 2009 (and it is). But to say this will stop cloud computing developments or scare people off is nuts.

This story illustrates the need for a regular and fully tested backup plan for both provider and user. It means you should not put all your eggs in one basket.

But. We. Already. Knew. That.

But on the third anniversary of its $1.65 billion deal to sell itself to Google, YouTube is saying, in a sense, you may be underestimating us. The company released more precise viewing figures than it had in the past, saying it serves more than 1 billion videos a day, or roughly 30 billion in a month.

Broadcast TV: meet your maker. Or unmaker, I suppose.

The iPhone is the hot pink line on this graph. Yellow is the Nokia N95. Then a couple BlackBerry models and another Nokia.

Heating + gadget charging? Sign me up!