Article:		All Software Should Be Network Aware
Subject:		Sharing my data ... with ME...
Date:		2003-11-01 20:41:15
From:		anonymous2
One thing I'd like to see with network aware applications is sharing my data with myself. By that, I mean that when I am away from my own system, I'd like to be able to get to my contact lists, phone numbers, calendar, email history, and documents written in the last year. I know that on the Mac I can use get much of that in .Mac, but it's limited because it's on their server. I'd like instead to login to ICQ (or iChat or whatever), and have it use that to connect to my main system. Allow me to browse the disk, serve me my email, calendar, and contacts (via a basic web server maybe?). I know this then becomes a security issue - maybe to start with it should be read only, and anything written has to be authorised by me on return. When it's secure, the function to start a program remotely would be great. To the user who said the ADSL system blocks you from using network applications - if all connections and communication went via a chat program (ICQ?) would that solve the block issue? PS. I found this article via MacRumors and your recent talk. http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=45222

Showing messages 1 through 2 of 2.

• Sharing my data ... with ME...
  2003-12-31 00:20:05  anonymous2 [Reply | View]
  
  
  It's easier just to use VNC and connect with your home computer to do what you would want done.

• Sharing my data ... with ME...
  2003-11-12 20:05:23  anonymous2 [Reply | View]
  
  
  There are prototypes for this today, Lotus' Sametime product can store a users "buddy list" on the servers and thereby access it from anywhere you run the client, but it requires an explicit step to do it (both store and fetch). Just recently I discovered that AIM (AOL Instant Messanger) does this transparently under the covers somehow! (I've no idea how.) Here at home I loaded my 5 AIM contacts into Kopete after signing up for a brand new account, the KDE AIM client... a week later I fired up iChat for the first time on a brand new os/x install and logged into AIM with it from work... hey presto! there was my contact list. This is exactly the type thing you're talking about, just limited to one application.
  
  And yes, this would work around the specific problem I was refering to with ADSL or other broadband home connections being isolated into one way streets; however, this is at the cost of centralizing all that data... do you trust that machine in the sky that holds your data? I had a serious Big Brother moment when my contacts just appeared in iChat like that. Do I really trust a machine owned by AOL/Time/Warner knowing this data? Do I want them building a user affiliation map to connect me to my brother in law, then connect him to his pot-head friends? Do I want to be two links away from a group of folks who all have the word "pot" in their screen name and use a canabis leaf for their user icon? Um... not really, no. But I do want to be able to chat with my wifes brother when he's sitting in some internet cafe in some other part of the world working for the peace corps.