Image courtesy of *Micky
I currently pay $120 per year to host a couple of blogs (theoretically terabytes of storage/bandwidth which is never used). I also have storage over in my Gmail account (7.5 GB), my Dropbox account (10 GB), my newly acquired Droplr (2 GB) and Flickr (100MB/mo) accounts, Evernote (40 MB/mo), a largely unused Picasa account (1 GB), etc. etc. etc.
Today I’m dreaming of a single online service where I can store/share/access/use/do the following:
Photos
Videos
Music
Blogs/websites
Email
File sharing/storage/FTP
My social networks (Diaspora, I’m looking at you)
VOIP
Chat
I want it all in one place. I want Google to build the back end and features (the power). I want Apple to design the UI (the pretty).
Think MobileMe with built on top of Google services (Gmail, Google Calendar, etc.) with the ability to host numerous sites (WordPress), store/sync files (DropBox/iDisk), stream my own music, display my photos (Flickr) and videos (Vimeo). Files should be easily sharable via something like CloudApp or Droplr. But it’s all on a server I pay for/have total control over instead of random servers across the web.
I would pay for this.
Current offerings – MobileMe
Aside from hodge-podging everything together like I’m currently doing, MobileMe is probably the service that comes closest to what is described above. It has a lot of the same basic functionality and does it in a very nice interface. However, it’s grossly under-powered. For example, I was just checking out MobileMe’s (new) Mail rules which is pathetic:
That’s it? I can’t even sort incoming mail by domain or keyword? That’s typical of the lack of brains behind MobileMe’s glossy exterior. It has some basic functionality that’s presented in a nice package, but don’t dig any deeper because you won’t find what you’re looking for.
Current offerings – Google Apps
If this is MobileMe…
…then this is Google Apps:
Image courtesy of SSCusp
If you step back a couple feet, squint and don’t look too closely then everything is fine. Its appearance can be a bit frightening, but you keep it around because it’s insanely useful for day-to-day stuff like moving couches and opening stubborn jars of pickles.
In the end, utility outweighs ornamental shine.
Google offers a lot of power and many of the products listed above (photos, videos, blog, email, etc.) but they all have separate storage buckets, the UI is terrible on some of them and it isn’t a complete package – the mythical GDrive comes to mind, although apparently they’re working on their own social network.
Still dreaming
Ideally, whatever I have stored online would be backed up locally to both my desktop and an external hard drive. I’d prefer to have everything synced how Dropbox works: everything is available locally, online and on my mobile devices.
Having desktop apps (like Picasa, but not as horrendous to use or plug-ins for apps like iPhoto) that allow you to manage/edit your files with changes easily synced would be stellar as well.
Brass tacks
Assuming all those products could be rolled into one online pot of accessible goodness, how much would it cost? Here’s what Google is currently charging for space online:
Five bucks a year?? As I mentioned earlier, I’m paying $120 a year to Dreamhost just to host my blogs (and I can’t use the space I pay for for anything other than blog-related files). MobileMe costs $99 per year for the same amount of space.
Google’s almost there. And they tend to move a lot faster than Apple when it comes to doing anything on the web. So, yeah. C’mon Google!
K. Don’t ranting/dreaming. Go back to your lives people. Unless you want to leave a comment about what kind of techie daydreams you have.
