upgrade of the upload control

The INPUT TYPE=FILE control is heavily used to push files of information into various applications. As the cloud computing emerges, the upload techniques will change.

The virtual disks available already in the cloud create an oportunity to abandon uploading and favorizes referencing. The place of the upload control will be taken by the select control, select from all my cloud-shared data sources. The applications will no more have files pushed to them, rather they will read the files when needed.

All of this, combined with GET which is cacheable, actually reduces traffic and elliminates the versioning problems: which file have I uploaded? Of course that this technique  needs to be based on a open identity standard in order to allow cloud-permissions, authentication, etc. But for sure there will be no more waiting for uploading your attachments to yahoo-mail, just select them from the cloud and send the mail. The system will automatically load them for you.

This is the future of specialisations in the cloud. Virtual disks such as SkyDrive and others will play the role of storage. Cloud applications do not need to reinvent the storage mechanisms, just to be able to connect to an external drive. Will REST do the rest ?

Maybe.