Recap: I’ve been looking for an all-in, no messing, Webmail app, file sharer, and Webserver that would run from my home machine – saving me from forking out on .NET, .mac, and .johncobblyandall services. Lots of people wrote in with partial suggestions. Nothing leapt out for me, although a couple of people wrote in to say that if I found what I was looking for, they’d buy a copy.
Barnaby James wrote to suggest Apache Tomcat with a fistful of java servlets. A nice, and integrated idea, but I’m not sure it’s the point-and-click solution I was looking for.
Dave, as you’d suspect, suggested 4Dmail Mail app.
Azeem suggested a cheapo NetApp style standalong box, perhaps integrated with your router. Bit pricey currently, and I think it’s the idea of linking directly to your desktop that makes this appealing. Still, it’d be nice if home routers let you set up at least a port 80 passthru to one machine on the home network.
Henry Minsky had a very profound suggestion, which he describes in detail on his Personal Virtual Server page. If I can horrifying cripple his thoughts by summary : your personal computer is boiled down to a portable state image, on which you can install different applications. You can move this image wherever you like. Keep it at home, or on a hosting service, or on your laptop or PDA. So you effectively run your PC and all its services wherever you go.
One thing I did thrash out over a few conversations was that you’d need at least one external Net service to get this working – DNS, probably with dyndns-like dynamic updating. Azeem also suggested an outgoing mail relay, but I’m not sure that’s necessary. Direct SMTP connections are hard, true – but sendmail and its simpler cousins, once configured, is a commodity. And this is a very trivial sendmail setup.
Does the need for dynamic DNS spoil the principle push of this idea? I’m not sure. I did originally conceive of this home-based server as a way of shaking off the shackle of unnecessary Web service subscriptions. With dynanamic DNS, we’re left with a single one-off sub. It’s less ideologically pure, but I still think it’s appealing. One of the things I dislike about all these other Web services is that while each of them is pretty cheap, it’d cost a huge amount to subscribe to all of them. And I hate the paying less for bundles when not everything in the bundle is the best in class. It’s an unnecessary compromise.
Oh, and Lloyd pointed out another advantage to working your Web services from home. When you don’t pay yours subs at a Webmail service, they suspend your access to your own e-mail.
I think there may be a market for a product here. That is, if Thomas C. Greene of the Register doesn’t convince us to turn off our broadband connections in terror.