My move, Chrome, and my goal for privacy/portability (Part Two)

We crossed the International Date Line about an hour ago and I ran out of movies to watch.  Considering that I have a couple hours to kill, I figured it might be a great time to write up my next post.

I typed this on Tuesday during our flight.  But, I only just now got around to posting this entry.  This is a long story and I will explain in my next post.

Let's see, last time, I was talking about my move, a little about Chrome (no I haven't installed it yet), and my need to better protected personal information (in other words eat my own dog food).   I also believe that in my last post, I needed to explain the solution I was devising to achieve my data protection goal.

That being said, let's summarize my requirements.

• 1) Some data (mostly pictures, music, task lists, travel plans, etc.) needs to be remotely available to both me and my wife.
• 2) Our financial data needs to also be remotely available, but protected.
• 3) Other data like the usernames and passwords (keys to the kingdom) needs to be both protected and available to both my wife and I to use.
• 4) Lastly, data related to our own personal or work related endeavors needs only be available to me or my wife, but protected.

With these requirements in mind, let's review each of the solutions that I devised to meet my needs.

Meeting Requirement One

I don't consider this data sensitive, thus any controls I put into place to protect this data doesn't need to be very drastic.  However, given the fact that both my wife and I are very mobile, travel a lot, and would like to access this data at any given point in time, I needed a solution that could be accessed anywhere in the world and for the most part just runs. 

Normally, I would just build a VM at the house, and host everything there.  But, my monster VM box is now being hosted at my friend Andrew's house which is located in California.  That's a bit of a problem considering that I be living in Japan and would like to have physical access to the data.  Additionally, I don't think it would be right to steal his bandwidth for data transfers, nor ask him to handle IT tasks for me.  Lastly, I really wanted to give my wife a very easy "Web" based interface for accessing and managing the data (media) that she has.

With the term "Web" in mind, the first idea that popped into my head was to just make use of Google and its services.  After all, we can upload, share, and collaborate on documents using Google Apps.  We can also post our pictures to the Web using Picasa Web.

However, while it was a good idea, Google's solutions don't do everything that I need.  For one, Google Apps, Picasa Web, etc. do not allow users to just upload any type of document, shred of data, or piece of media.  Secondly, there is a "limit" to how much data you can upload (and we have a lot of junk).  Lastly, it just didn't feel right uploading all of our content to an entity that is ad driven and has a habit of collecting information (yes you do!).

***Feature Idea***

Hey Google give me a secure data vault that I can use to upload anything that I want.  I'm willing to pay.  :>)

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So... to meet my needs I decided on a more humble and very consumer minded approach.  I would still use Google for the sharing and collaboration aspects of their solutions.  After all, for certain things like "approved" pictures and shared documents Google just makes sense.  Additionally, given the fact that Maiko works for Google, it would make her happy.

On the other hand, for all of our other "content" I decided to purchase and use a little 1TB Western Digital device called My Book World Edition.   This interesting little NAS device allows people to access content on the device either locally on the LAN or you can use WD's partner MioNet client software and Web site to remotely access the device.  Overall, this has turned out to be a really great solution with only two major draw backs.

1. The client software and the MioNet site currently don't support Vista 64-bit.
2. Read and write rates are really slow.

In my next post, we will review the solutions that I have devised for the rest of my requirements.