Net makes everything mobile? Not so...

16 Dec 2005 12:15 (Edited: 16 Dec 2005 12:15)

People who know me know that I truly believe in "mobile computing", some might say that I'm the biggest advocate of the term, yet the world and IT undustry tends to let me down each year when I hope for a change to better.

With "mobile computing" I mean a situation where I can use a computer and Net everywhere I am, with all my data, documents, history, etc with me. And no, I don't want to log in to some silly website via local Net cafe to use webmail, etc. No. I want to have better experience, to have the exact same stuff available to me whether I'm at home next to my desktop, at office or stranded in some middle-of-ocean island.

Lets focus on basics. Some of you might remember a browser that made Web possible, Netscape? Sure, there were others before it and company sorta failed with its vision, yadayada. But those of you who used Netscape in sophisticated way, do remember that it had built-in roaming profiles. By roaming profiles they meant a system where you enter a server details, your login to the server and your password to the server in browser's settings. Once. And then all of your browsing history, bookmarks, browser settings, pre-filled form data, etc were stored at your local HDD and also to the remote location. Ok? Now, it also synchronized that data both ways -- say, you had the same remote profile server set at home and work. That meant that you had exact same bookmarks, history, settings, etc available at both locations. And if you popped into Net cafe in Kenya, used NS as your browser, entered your roaming profile details to settings - bang, you had all your data available right in the browser you were using. No websites to store your history, links, etc, but instead, the browser's built-in system simply synchronized everything to be available, anywhere. No VPN stuff, no contacting to your home desktop via VNC, nothing like that. Just clean WebDAV implementation.

Now, my question is -- where in the heck is that feature now when we use FireFox? There are only couple of promising 3rd party projects planning to implement that feature as an FF extension, but no plans to integrate the feature into FF, as far as I know. Huge leap backwards in my mind -- the most promising browser in the world lacks a feature that was widely available already in 1998..

Then to my biggest misery. ICQ -- and instant messengers overall. I've been using ICQ ever since 1997 or 1998. I have about 300 people on my contact list. I've virtually abandoned email years ago, although I still receive about 200-400 emails a week and write about 100-200 emails each week. But that is nothing compared to my ICQ use. AfterDawn Ltd is ran with ICQ. It has always been ran with ICQ. Most likely without ICQ or similar system, the whole site would not exist. Now. I use computers in various locations -- at office, at home, use my laptop sometimes on holidays, sometimes I use public computers and use Flash-ICQ on them, etc. Now. The problem is that ICQ and all the open-source varieties of it (I actually use Miranda, you can get it from here) lack one major feature -- centralized history. I'm so sick and tired of the situation that when I'm online at home, I remember that I had to check something someone sent to me via ICQ, only realizing 30seconds later that he/she sent it to me when I was at office, thus the history log entry is stored on my work computer. Now, why can't somone build an extension or tool or whatever that would synchronize the inbound and outbound messages sent from/to ICQ to some remote server?

Best way IMO, would be to create an extension to Miranda IM that would allow user to enter database server's IP address, port, login and password. Then the extension would create one or two tables in that database server to store the message logs. After that, everytime the Miranda would be launched, the plugin would kick in, connect the db server, check whether there are logs on the server that aren't on the local log file on my computer. If there are some, it would merge those and store the "downloaded" messages to my comp's local log as well. Also, it would also "upload" all messages that exist in my local log file, but not in database server (whether due using the Miranda before the plugin was installed or due communications problem to the db earlier or whatever). After that, all messages sent/received to/from my Miranda would get also added straight away to the database server's logs. And that's it. Then, whenever I'd install a new instance of Miranda on a new computer, I could install the plugin, enter details and years and years of my ICQ history would get downloaded immediately to my new Miranda instance and I'd have that data available on all of my computers, wherever I am and it would be synchronized always.

Luckily my email situation is quite alright -- IMAP4, webmail interface when needed and IMAP4-capabale cell phone help quite a lot :-)

</rant>...

Tags: based desktop everything firefox history icq makes miranda mobile net portable profile roaming server

User comments

by Ketola @ 19 Dec 2005 19:36

Petteri.. You forgot to open your <rant> tag... =P

But yeah, I agree. Everything is available on the net apart from the information you really need. I want my portable, instant-boot desktop. Please.

Post your comment

In order to post your comments here, you need be logged in to our system. Simply follow this link in order to login and to post your comments here.


		User name	Password

		Not registered yet? Register here. Lost your password? Click here.