Life Portal - A start page and personal server concept

Personal start pages are great... the growing number of widgets and integration with favourite web sites and services is really impressive... but. Still a large part of what we want to track and keep updated is on our own machines. And the nature of the browsers "sandbox" means that for our own good, the browser cannot access local files. An obvious exclusion is Google Desktop Search, which is basically an archive engine connected as a local web service. Then Google breaks the rules of the sandbox again in order for you to share your contents across machines (albeit in a crippled fashion).

What if:

• Your google desktop searches could be accessed across your computers AND from another computer securely.
• What if security tested widgets could work on local files for you. For example you may have an excel spreadsheet that is tracking your weight and you don't want that data out there on someones web site!
  
• What if you could run local macros that could go to websites and scrape data for you to be presented locally for you.. without having the data on someone elses server?

These are the capabilities being worked on for Life Portal.

• Google Desktop enablement
• Local macro engine
• Local document display and manipulation
• Local database of raw data.
• Ability to retrieve text based results via sms from your local machine (ie an sms to email engine)
• Remote private key protected backup and retrieval of any data you feel comfortable having stored online.
  

Former OC Register Publisher joins zkimmer

Today Newspaper veteran Chris Anderson joined the zkimmer team as ambassador for the company to the newspaper and magazine publishing industry. Chris recently left Freedom (the publishers of the Orange County Register) where he served as the publisher of the Newspaper and worked in the industry for 25 years. He is a brilliant, affable and discerning man who I am honored to work along side.