Let's build a free version of .Mac
I was having a conversation the other day with a friend about how a lot of free services are cropping up online that replicate many of the functions seen in .Mac. She and I were trolling around the Net, finding various replacements for .Mac's services. Then the next day, I see this article discussing the number of services Google is providing that are similar to .Mac.
So I was wondering: Can every aspect of .Mac be replicated using a service that's free or costs less? I thought of a few things myself, but I'm stumped on a few. Here are a few ground rules, though:
Online storage space (iDisk): Box.net offers 1 GB of storage for free, 5 GB for $4.99/mo. At first glance it appears to mount on the desktop just like an iDisk. It also offers cross-platform support for those of us with Macs at home who use PCs at work.
E-Mail: Free e-mail accounts are abundant. My personal favorite is Gmail, because the ads are by far the least intrusive. And the UI can't be beat.
Address Book syncing: Plaxo (Cost: free) seems to have this one covered really, really well. I installed it on my Mac and home and my PC at work a couple weeks back, and I'm amazed at how perfectly it works. It also avoids the clumsy, error-prone syncing I was trying to do with my Blackberry via Pocketmac.
Browser syncing: Those magnificent bastards at Google have a Firefox extension that syncs multiple copies of Firefox, on the Mac and PC alike, using one's Google Account. I just started using it, and it works great.
Web site development: This one's easy, since you can easily create a site in iWeb but then publish to a folder and upload the contents to your own Webspace/domain (or at least that's what my friend does). Not free, but can be had for less than $99/year, and you can have your own domain name instead of a clunky .Mac URL.
Calendar syncing: Gmail's calendar is close, but not quite there yet. I like that it appears to be able to use any ol' .ics file you have uploaded to a publicly available Webspace. However, it doesn't accomplish the one thing I'd love: syncing between multiple client programs like iCal or Outlook. Does something like this already exist?
What's left? Probably some stuff with photos... and some other things I can't remember. But that's why I'm posting. Any other ideas?
So I was wondering: Can every aspect of .Mac be replicated using a service that's free or costs less? I thought of a few things myself, but I'm stumped on a few. Here are a few ground rules, though:
- Must be free or significantly less than $99/year.
- Must work independent of a PDA/Blackberry type device.
- Must have a performance equal to or better than its .Mac counterpart (duh).
- Cross-platform support. Not a requirement, per se, but it'd be nice. Not all of us have the luxury of using a Mac at work, and my guess is that syncing between work and home is the one thing many of us would like.
Online storage space (iDisk): Box.net offers 1 GB of storage for free, 5 GB for $4.99/mo. At first glance it appears to mount on the desktop just like an iDisk. It also offers cross-platform support for those of us with Macs at home who use PCs at work.
E-Mail: Free e-mail accounts are abundant. My personal favorite is Gmail, because the ads are by far the least intrusive. And the UI can't be beat.
Address Book syncing: Plaxo (Cost: free) seems to have this one covered really, really well. I installed it on my Mac and home and my PC at work a couple weeks back, and I'm amazed at how perfectly it works. It also avoids the clumsy, error-prone syncing I was trying to do with my Blackberry via Pocketmac.
Browser syncing: Those magnificent bastards at Google have a Firefox extension that syncs multiple copies of Firefox, on the Mac and PC alike, using one's Google Account. I just started using it, and it works great.
Web site development: This one's easy, since you can easily create a site in iWeb but then publish to a folder and upload the contents to your own Webspace/domain (or at least that's what my friend does). Not free, but can be had for less than $99/year, and you can have your own domain name instead of a clunky .Mac URL.
Calendar syncing: Gmail's calendar is close, but not quite there yet. I like that it appears to be able to use any ol' .ics file you have uploaded to a publicly available Webspace. However, it doesn't accomplish the one thing I'd love: syncing between multiple client programs like iCal or Outlook. Does something like this already exist?
What's left? Probably some stuff with photos... and some other things I can't remember. But that's why I'm posting. Any other ideas?
Comments
Online storage space (iDisk): Box.net offers 1 GB of storage for free, 5 GB for $4.99/mo. At first glance it appears to mount on the desktop just like an iDisk. It also offers cross-platform support for those of us with Macs at home who use PCs at work.
Any host that offers FTP/SFTP support works. I'm sure there are plenty of tools out there for allowing you to mount an FTP/SFTP server as a drive. I'm pretty sure there are shell extensions for Explorer on Windows to allow this. There are even shell extensions for Subversion (TortoiseSVN) and CVS (TortoiseCVS) for Windows.
E-Mail: Free e-mail accounts are abundant. My personal favorite is Gmail, because the ads are by far the least intrusive. And the UI can't be beat.
As you state, this is the easy one.
Address Book syncing: Plaxo (Cost: free) seems to have this one covered really, really well. I installed it on my Mac and home and my PC at work a couple weeks back, and I'm amazed at how perfectly it works. It also avoids the clumsy, error-prone syncing I was trying to do with my Blackberry via Pocketmac.
You say you installed it on your Mac, but I only see Outlook/Outlook Express and Windows as requirements on their site. In any case, it would be easy to code up something to drain Apple's AddressBook and store it in an SQLite DB. Then you just have to to code up something to sync it to a web host (using FTP or SFTP) and then have something to re-import all of the information back into Address Book (or into Outlook/Outlook Express). The only thing I see as a problem here is that Apple's Address Book supports a lot of fields and information that Outlook / Outlook Express don't (e.g. IM accounts, 'Friends/Spouse/etc' fields, etc). Would people seriously be willing to pay for software that would sync Address Book to any web host (any web host that doesn't support FTP or SFTP is too cheap to consider, in my humble opinion)?
Browser syncing: Those magnificent bastards at Google have a Firefox extension that syncs multiple copies of Firefox, on the Mac and PC alike, using one's Google Account. I just started using it, and it works great.
This is easy to do. Really. Just sign up for del.icio.us. You can access bookmarks from anywhere. Then you just need to make a program to download from del.icio.us and sync to your browser bookmarks. But there are plenty of tools for FireFox or Safari to do that. This would be cross-platform too because the bookmarks would be accessible for any browser that has something to sync with del.icio.us bookmarks.
Web site development: This one's easy, since you can easily create a site in iWeb but then publish to a folder and upload the contents to your own Webspace/domain (or at least that's what my friend does). Not free, but can be had for less than $99/year, and you can have your own domain name instead of a clunky .Mac URL.
It's easy to find web hosts. But one thing that you're not mentioning is that I don't think that .Mac has any bandwidth limitations. It's hard to find cheap hosting that doesn't have bandwidth limits. It your search around you can find hosting that has things like $12.95/month for 60-200GB of bandwidth per month, but if you put something on your page that gains popularity (digg.com, slashdot.org, twit.tv, cnn.com, etc) you could end up with a large bw bill.
Calendar syncing: Gmail's calendar is close, but not quite there yet. I like that it appears to be able to use any ol' .ics file you have uploaded to a publicly available Webspace. However, it doesn't accomplish the one thing I'd love: syncing between multiple client programs like iCal or Outlook. Does something like this already exist?
Apple uses WebDAV for iCal last I heard. You can emulate the functionality (make iCal subscribe to calendars) by setting up your own WebDAV server (it's just a module for Apache). People figured out how to setup your own WebDAV to do this pretty soon after Apple released this functionality. But I don't know if any cheap/free hosting providers will give that to you.
What's left? Probably some stuff with photos... and some other things I can't remember. But that's why I'm posting. Any other ideas? [/B][/QUOTE]
Originally posted by Chris Cuilla
Seems like a lot of hassle (and far less seemless integration) just to save $8.25 a month.
The boon would be cross-platform compatibility. Possibly the ability to sync browsers other than just Safari (even transfer configs between browsers).
Originally posted by pyr3
The boon would be cross-platform compatibility. Possibly the ability to sync browsers other than just Safari (even transfer configs between browsers).
I thought that one the stated goals was "Must be free or significantly less than $99/year." and "Cross-platform support. Not a requirement, per se, but it'd be nice."
Even so...
.Mac does much more than just itegrate with Safari.
Originally posted by Chris Cuilla
I thought that one the stated goals was "Must be free or significantly less than $99/year." and "Cross-platform support. Not a requirement, per se, but it'd be nice."
Even so...
.Mac does much more than just itegrate with Safari.
Things like Backup and iDisk aren't really webhosting-specific things. It's just a program that communicates with a web host. You could make software such as these that would communicate with *any* web host and work on multiple platforms. And you could pay a one time fee to get them, instead of having to subscribe to them.
.Mac gives you a lot, but I think there are a lot of people that are really only looking for one or two features of .Mac, not the whole thing.
Originally posted by pyr3
Things like Backup and iDisk aren't really webhosting-specific things. It's just a program that communicates with a web host. You could make software such as these that would communicate with *any* web host and work on multiple platforms. And you could pay a one time fee to get them, instead of having to subscribe to them.
.Mac gives you a lot, but I think there are a lot of people that are really only looking for one or two features of .Mac, not the whole thing.
I understand all of that (and there are some good examples of the various a la carte features already listed here). Many of which are free. That's cool. My sense was the desire to create a complete .Mac feature set...for free. If you just need 1-2 features...you can easily find most of them (for free). But if you are trying to create the whole bag...it seems like a lot of trouble to save $8.25 a month.
Originally posted by Chris Cuilla
I understand all of that (and there are some good examples of the various a la carte features already listed here). Many of which are free. That's cool. My sense was the desire to create a complete .Mac feature set...for free. If you just need 1-2 features...you can easily find most of them (for free). But if you are trying to create the whole bag...it seems like a lot of trouble to save $8.25 a month.
Even creating the 'whole bag,' it's not like .Mac is heavy in the multiple operating system department. It's mainly tasked with integrating well with Apple's products. It seemed to me that he was looking at something that was possibly free but was more cross-platform. I know that he said that was optional, but look at a lot of the examples he gives further down. He seems to be coming from using Windows and OS X. So maybe a little less os-specific integration, but a lot more cross-platform compatibility might be what's right for him. We'll have to wait for his response to know anything definite.
Originally posted by pyr3
Even creating the 'whole bag,' it's not like .Mac is heavy in the multiple operating system department. It's mainly tasked with integrating well with Apple's products. It seemed to me that he was looking at something that was possibly free but was more cross-platform. I know that he said that was optional, but look at a lot of the examples he gives further down. He seems to be coming from using Windows and OS X. So maybe a little less os-specific integration, but a lot more cross-platform compatibility might be what's right for him. We'll have to wait for his response to know anything definite.
Yes, for my particular scenario, cross-platform would be ideal. However, I didn't intend this as a group effort to help me out (I hope no one has that idea), but more just to test the theory that everything .Mac offers, and possibly more, can be had without paying $99.
Great ideas so far, though some of them more suited to very tech-savvy users. I doubt the type of customer Apple targets with .Mac wants to mess around with SQLite or building their own WebDAV server (not to pick on pyr3, those were just the best examples. btw, nice to see another Michigander on here, though I left 5 years ago).
Oh, and good point about the bandwidth limits, pyr3. I hadn't thought of that.
What about photocasting? I'll be honest, I don't really know much about Flickr, though some people act like it's the best thing since sliced bread. Does Flickr do photo RSS feeds like that?
Oh, and Plaxo for OS X is available here.
Every time I consider changing (at re-enrollment time) I quickly come back to the ease of use thing.
Like so many other things Apple does, they see the current solutions out there, recognize how disjointed it is, and create a simple, straightforward approach that even your grandma can figure out.
Sure it costs something. And I think like so many things Apple does, they figure out just how much they can charge. I'm with Chris.
Originally posted by tetzel1517
[B]Great ideas so far, though some of them more suited to very tech-savvy users. I doubt the type of customer Apple targets with .Mac wants to mess around with SQLite or building their own WebDAV server (not to pick on pyr3, those were just the best examples. btw, nice to see another Michigander on here, though I left 5 years ago).
I wasn't saying that the *customers* would dabble with SQLite. I was implying that someone could create such software. It would then have a platform-indepedent file format to store on the web server. Then software for anything could access it and extract the data to sync with whichever address book program (Outlook/Eudora/Outlook Express/Thunderbird/Address Book/Evolution/etc). This would be a solution that could then work on any platform (since the SQLite library is cross-platform). And I wasn't suggesting that someone dabble with WebDAV either. My whole point was that these things *could* be pulled together to create a package that worked on multiple platforms, though with varying degrees of integration (e.g. iCal subscriptions probably wouldn't work well with Outlook. I don't think that Outlook would have the ability to subscribe to an iCal calendar)
Oh, and good point about the bandwidth limits, pyr3. I hadn't thought of that.
This is really the only thing I see that might not be able to be recreated.
If I had a couple other developers and some interested venture capital, I would seriously consider creating such a service. If it could be made cross-platform, I think there would be a wide customer base. You would have the people that use multiple OSes and want to sync their stuff, and the people that are just on Windows (nothing like this really exists to my knowledge). And the 'boon' would be that if anyone ever tried to switch operating systems their information would be available to them and not locked into a format that was inflexible.
What about photocasting? I'll be honest, I don't really know much about Flickr, though some people act like it's the best thing since sliced bread. Does Flickr do photo RSS feeds like that?
I don't know. I've only created a Flickr account and have yet to use it. But Yahoo! is actually losing money on Flickr bandwidth costs, so I'm not sure how certain the future of it is, and how they can make it profitable.
The real claim to fame of Flickr is similar to del.icio.us, the tagging. Tagging things instead of throwing them in folders is really the way to go. They best way to think of it is like iPhoto's keywords, only without a listing of the keywords right there. Because you can easily have way too many tags to fit into that little keywords window in iPhoto.
Originally posted by tetzel1517
[Box.net] also offers cross-platform support for those of us with Macs at home who use PCs at work.
So does iDisk, since it's based on WebDAV, which Windows (for instance) has supported for years. In fact, Apple even has an iDisk Utility for Windows.
What's left? Probably some stuff with photos... and some other things I can't remember. But that's why I'm posting. Any other ideas?
Syncing of pretty much everything else. What you really want to do is create a WebDAV host that acts much like iDisk, so you can leverage Sync Services for non-.mac servers. Otherwise, great apps like Transmit break.
Originally posted by pyr3
But Yahoo! is actually losing money on Flickr bandwidth costs, so I'm not sure how certain the future of it is, and how they can make it profitable.
I keep reading this, but not a single bit of proof. Please don't spread FUD.
Originally posted by Chucker
I keep reading this, but not a single bit of proof. Please don't spread FUD.
Accusing someone of spreading FUD is a little rude, IMHO. I can't remember where I heard it, and a quick google search turns up nothing, so maybe I'm wrong. But I wasn't trying to tell people not to use Flickr or anything.
Originally posted by pyr3
Accusing someone of spreading FUD is a little rude, IMHO. I can't remember where I heard it, and a quick google search turns up nothing, so maybe I'm wrong. But I wasn't trying to tell people not to use Flickr or anything.
Yep, I was rude, sorry. It's just that I've heard this claim before, and I never see it backed up. Even if true, of course, Yahoo! still has ever reason to keep the service (rather than selling it), if only for brand recognition. It's one of their most popular sites, for good reason.
I don't necessarily agree with this:
The real claim to fame of Flickr is similar to del.icio.us, the tagging.
Tagging (and other aspects to rich Metadata) does play a role, but another is Flickr's API. Desktop apps integrate with it nicely. For example, iPhoto + FlickrExport + Flickr makes for a convenient combination. Flickr has a very smart and comprehensive implementation for this.
It also has a very nice community to it, as well as an interface that does a great job at letting you browse through photos.
Couple all that, and you get a ton of excellent photos at your fingertips.
Originally posted by Chucker
Yep, I was rude, sorry. It's just that I've heard this claim before, and I never see it backed up. Even if true, of course, Yahoo! still has ever reason to keep the service (rather than selling it), if only for brand recognition. It's one of their most popular sites, for good reason.
Of course. I never said Yahoo was dropping Flickr. Even if they are losing money on it, it's not like they couldn't be writing that off as a cost of drawing in more people to the Yahoo! brand.
Tagging (and other aspects to rich Metadata) does play a role, but another is Flickr's API. Desktop apps integrate with it nicely. For example, iPhoto + FlickrExport + Flickr makes for a convenient combination. Flickr has a very smart and comprehensive implementation for this.
It also has a very nice community to it, as well as an interface that does a great job at letting you browse through photos.
Couple all that, and you get a ton of excellent photos at your fingertips.
That's true, but community wasn't what drew people to Flickr in the first place. And I doubt that the API was there in the beginning. The thing that allowed Flickr to take off was probably the tagging and interface. As popularity grew, then things like the nice API and a large community came into play.
People figured out how to setup your own WebDAV to do this pretty soon after Apple released this functionality. But I don't know if any cheap/free hosting providers will give that to you.
In case you missed it, Box.net has 1GB free online storage, including WEBDAV support. That makes it a very attractive alternative for replacing the storagerelated .Mac services.
Originally posted by Token
In case you missed it, Box.net has 1GB free online storage, including WEBDAV support. That makes it a very attractive alternative for replacing the storagerelated .Mac services.
Fair enough, but I think a much more unique selling point of .mac is the sync functionality. Services like Plaxo can't quite replicate it.
Originally posted by Chucker
Fair enough, but I think a much more unique selling point of .mac is the sync functionality. Services like Plaxo can't quite replicate it.
Could you be more specific as to what 'sync' functionality? Address Book? iCal? Backup.app?