Beyond Mac-to-Mac, Beyond Groups; and A Word About Licenses
There are three more features that I’ve been thinking over, ones that have come up in the forums or elsewhere. I’ll try to give them the attention they deserve here. All three ideas try to exploit the ’sync profiles’ that Portal will be maintaining for all those files and folders you want to keep up to date. “Sync to Server” syncs files to a remote server (or iDisk or gDisk, maybe), “Sync to Disc” makes an optical disc backup of recently edited files, and “Sync to Public” passes files to any computer close by that wants them.
Sync to Server: This idea would come from happy marriage between Portal and Transmit; Portal and Fetch; or Portal and any other FTP client. Portal would use the server logs to see what files might have been edited, and sync them with a local folder version. This would be yet another option for website maintenance, for those who don’t want to edit the server file and neglect a local copy or who want to always have the server reflect their local version. I’m the sort of person who would like to always have a local copy of my site, just in case. It just makes editing a site when offline so much easier.
The most basic incarnation of Sync to Server would be to drop files or folders onto the user’s iDisk (or gDisk with the appropriate plugin). Even though Portal competes with Apple’s .Mac Sync, users may still be attracted to the @mac.com email address, the web server space, and the iDisk features. For the rest of us, gDisk might be an easy alternative. I’m not sure how the sync features would work here, since I don’t know if Portal could tell if the online files had been edited or not since the last upload. Since these are basically bonus features anyway, they might have to wait to be added in a later version of Sync to Server.
Sync to Disc: I’ve not seen Time Machine in person, so I’m hesitant to include any sort of backup features into Portal. Sync to Disc would probably be the safest bet here, but even then I’m not 100% sure, how could I be. The basic idea would be to let Portal keep a running list of a few select files that you really want to keep backed up on optical discs. Whenever a change is made, a flag goes up to burn a copy of the file to disc in the next backup. When enough files to fill up a CD or DVD (user’s choice) are flagged, the user gets a notice. Once backed up in this way, the files are removed from the “burn queue”. Some shuffling goes on to fill up a disc as well as possible, but in general they are in order of most recently edited. A CD cover (in PDF) would be generated with a list of included file names, types, edit and creation dates, and sizes. This would serve as a bonus for those with Time Machine providing optical disc backup in addition to Time Machine’s external drive backup. For the ultra-paranoid only!
Sync to Public: This came up in a conversation I had earlier today. Suppose you are at a conference giving a talk and you want to give all the attendees a PDF handout. You could post it to your website and have them all go there, you could burn several copies to CDs, you could pass around your USB flash drive, or you could print the handout and ‘hand out’ copies. Portal provides one more option: Now, I have no idea how this would work technically, but it would be nice if Portal could broadcast that file publicly (over WiFi) so that any system within range could download it quickly and easily. If the audience all had Macs with Portal installed, this would be easy (a very large Ad Hoc group). The trick would be to make it so that Macs without Portal and even PCs can pick up the file! There has to be a way to deliver a single file this way, even cross platform. I have one idea on how this might work, but I’m still working on it. Perhaps some people can discuss this in the forums…
I’ve added a bit to Finder’s right-click menu: Macs found with Bonjour now show up in the list (Macs without Portal, or with it turned off show up but are not selectable). If multiple Macs are available, there will also be a “Sync to All Bonjour” option. This would be the basic for the “Ad Hoc” group model I mentioned before. If you’re at home and the Bonjour Mac is one of your own Macs, most likely it won’t have Portal already installed. In this case, you should be able to send a copy of Portal to that system and give it a license, all over WiFi, without any major hassle.
This brings me to the licensing issue. I’m not sure this is even up to me, but I think the user should get at least five installs with one purchase. This would work similarly to how the iTunes Authorization system works. You set up your five systems, authorized under one license. If you want to swap out one system for another, that’s fine: de-authorize one and then authorize the other. Users who have a lab or a small business and need more than five can buy more in some sort of bulk-purchasing deal. I’ll leave the details of that to the marketing people.
So that about wraps up all the features I could hope for. In my next post I’ll try to summarize everything and re-emphasize the core features: Mac-to-Mac syncing. If there is anything I’m leaving out, be sure to let me know!
