Chris - 24/03/06 - Information sharing - Just when I was getting involved with Chameleon 6 or 7 years ago, I had already set-up my own company called MI Technology and had registered a whole bunch of domain names, like mimusic.net, miphotos.net etc (mymusic, myphotos domains were already gone!). It seemed to me that storing one's digital music and photographs and other information centrally on a web server so that one could access it from anywhere was the way to go.

I envisaged car stereos having access to the Net and being able to play any track from any album in the car. Basically, the Internet being like the Martini advert - any place, any time, anywhere.

I thought storing content/data centrally and accessing via the Net from anywhere would solve the perennial problem of not having access to the files, photographs, documents, e-mail when visiting friends, when on a business trip, trying to work from a different location etc. It would also solve the backup problem - only recently a friend lost all her pictures when her laptop went in for "repair".

Storing content/data centrally and acessing via the Net from anywhere solves perennial problems. Only recently a friend lost all her pictures when her laptop went in for "repair".

With broadband, Wifi, 3G, WiMax etc. my vision of the future is coming closer to fruition but I never took the idea any further as I got more and more involved with Chameleon.

However, there have been developments in this area that I didn't forsee. I thought you would store all your files and documents centrally so you could access them yourself and share photographs and the like with friends and family. But what we are seeing at the moment is that more and more people want to share information with complete strangers - take this blog for example!

And the net has not only seen an explosion in blogs but also in online communities that centre around sharing content - like Flickr, for example, which is where photographers come together to share their pictures.

From open source software to Wikipedia, blogs and Flickr, I never realised there was such a pent up demand to share with unknown others for no financial incentive. I guess that's what makes the progress of the Internet so interesting. Even though I am immersed in it every day, I find it can still take interesting and unexpected turns. Long may that continue!