I’ve been trying to decide if the new Barnes & Noble Nook is part of the cloud computing ecosystem or not. It is surely not an enterprise application but it seems to fit on all other levels. I just came across something that helped me make up my mind… in the affirmative.

A quick trip through the “cloud or not?” flowchart that Sam Johnston posted on his blog confirms that yes, the Nook is a cloud device.

Why? Going through his check point items:

• You pay only when you use it (that is, when you buy a book you want to read)
• You don’t host it (Barnes and Noble does)
• If there’s a problem at the server, I don’t have to fit it

.

The same arguments apply to the Sony eReader and Amazon Kindle, too, of course.

All of which goes to demonstrate the tectonic shift that cloud computing represents.