Blake Ross and Parakey
Over at IEEE Spectrum, they’re running a story about Blake Ross, the 20-year-old guy behind Firefox. He’s working on a new project he’s calling “Parakey.” The articles goes fairly in-depth, but it sounds as though it will attempt be a bridge between your OS and the web.I know, I know, it’s been tried before. However, I believe Ross’ idea may be on a right track. What he (and his companions) have conceived of is essentially using an actual program that resides on your home computer (not web-based) that does the web stuff for you. You’ll open the program, plug in your digital camera and Parakey will find them, copy them, make thumbnails and give you access to find them, tag them, and do anything you’d like. Then (presumably when you’re done) Parakey publishes those those photos online for you – thus removing the step of having to upload your digital photos after you’ve all ready taken them from your digital camera.Other examples were give, but I believe that a “one-stop” digital photo publisher is one of the high points of the idea. Granted, the user will have control over (for good or ill) the files they wish to show online and those they do not.Another interesting note is that this will not be entirely open source. Parts of it will be, but the way the product is being created is with profit in mind. Now, I am not going to say things like “he’s turned on the open source community!” or “he’s just being greedy.” No, he’s building a career – as far as I can tell. The idea that Firefox is not allowing a mint to be made by someone is absurd. I can only guess he’s working out a business model that can sustain (and grow) the service.My initial thoughts on this are that I may not be too terribly interested in it, but my gut tells me that those who do not relish in the difficulties inherent in coding for multiple browsers, installing and using Linux and assembling their computer’s tower from parts (such as myself) will gladly take a look at a product that may help merge the offline and online worlds.I’m not in love with the name, though: Parakey. Perhaps, like Phoenix (then Firebird, then Firefox) before it, it’s name will be risen from the ashes and changed into something else, like Parafox!