How do I use Microsoft Word to open a Google Drive cloud document?

What are the best ways to work predominately with cloud-based storage and applications?

• I'd like to try as much as practical to do my computing in the cloud, with cloud-based apps and storage. I am technically savvy and experienced but non technical user. That is, I don't program these days. I use Microsoft Office suite, I have a photo library and a music library. I don't (much) use applications that make intensive use of local storage or processor power such as image or video editing. I use Google Calendar and Gmail (synced to Outlook), and I dabble with Google Drive but haven't gotten comfortable enough with it and Docs to give up on Office. Have you seen guides illustrating how someone makes the move to be mostly cloud-based in their work?

• Answer:

  Depends on your definition of "the Cloud" (which in reality does not exist in the same way that https://allconnectionstheory.quora.com/The-Internet-does-not-exist, your needs for immediacy to your data compared the universality of access to it and how secure it needs to be.   For the definition accepted by the vast majority of the industry see http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-145/SP800-145.pdf If your definition is the one that corporate style cloud computing uses (aka the Cloud does exist because they made too many https://allconnectionstheory.quora.com/Datacenters-are-evil-polluters-and-computer-killers, you do not care if some odd outage in the middle of no where makes your data unaccessible for an indefinitly amount time (or the provider just eats your storage like RackSpace did with 120GB of disk for us [and no backups despite the claim and extra we paid for it]), and finally you do not want/need better then average security then go with what ever SaaS services seem to make the most sense. But if this is not your definition then you might want to look at a non-data center private clouds such as my http://www.petitecloud.org on which you can host your own virtual machines and set up various SaaS like services on the instances (each instance is a fully functioning x86 class computer and can have any OS on it).    This is also a good potential starting point for a DIY smart home.   PetiteCloud is DIY system in that it provides a very thin layer between the host machine and the instances which can be driven with an API and thus will allow for most SaaS services to be run (you can even run OpenStack safely on top of it [why you would want to is beyond me]). It is important to note that no IaaS/PaaS layer (such as PetiteCloud, CloudStack, OpenStack, etc.) is secure by the standards of the industries that need security like HealthCare (can't meet HIPAA), credit card processors (does not meet PCI).   PetiteCloud will have HIPAA compilance by Oct. 1, 2014.  Note also that every cloud provider you will be looking at is running on top of such a IaaS/PaaS platform. As to guides the only one I know of is the one I am starting on the technical side doing software development in this environment.     If you want to know more just ask