Why I need more than dropbox…

Dropbox is great for sharing… and for having the same thing on the 3-4 machines I use as well as sharing with all the teams I work with from Rentacoders thru to internal project managers and my family.

But there is a lot of stuff I don’t want duplicated on all these machines. Even for my team, there is stuff that is actively in use but there is Terabytes of stuff that does not need to be  online on all the machine all the time.

My brother Sky would answer the problem quickly by setting up a server and some FTP software but even server beach with 160GB is getting very costly at $75 per month.

So what is the answer?

A local server sounds logical. Two TB drives connected to my home server computer sounds great, but how do I share with everyone I work with? Ok, so I set up FTP software, give the server a static IP and forward all incoming requests for FTP to that server… this is getting warmer and might even do.

But wouldn’t it be great if….

• I ran some software on my home server that talked to an open internet service that allowed my home server to be accessed as if it was a public server with a domain name (something like ricricho.homeftp.com).
  
• Where the person accessing my server accesses a virtual domain name and is routed in a peer to peer connection to my server with no need for a copy of the files on my server to be duplicated out on the net.
  
• Where I can setup different groups that have different access to things on my server, so for example a mate of mine wants to submit a drum recording for a song I’m working on, I tell him to go to richo.homeftp.com, hgoes and sets up an account looks for a file to access and I get an email requesting clearance for him and what group/ permission to grant him (can be as easy as a selection of links that when followed give him the appropriate account clearance (and voila)) my mate is connected.
  
• Where my content is indexed and search results shown only to people with the relevant clearance.
  
• Where my music and videos are automatically provided as streaming content so that friends and family can view private home material without having to use a service like Youtube. It’s my content, I want to keep it.

In the meantime for family and friends who are interested here is my internal Home Server setup incorporation a local share, FTP site and private Torrent server. A password will be needed so just email me for access if you want.