3 ms·

I like that idea a lot. I would throw money at it.

by JonSkeptic 13y ago

Pxtl 13y ago
Part of it is just imagining a device where you put in one name and a wifi/family password and suddenly this name gets you 1) SSID (say PxtlFamily) 2) Local domain-name for accessing your intranet (http://PxtlFamily http://PxtlFamily) with your imitations of gmail, drive, picasaweb, and the admin panel, with a built-in loginless "family" account for shared stuff. Access to the same files via an FTP server and DropBox-like application. 3) Dynamic Dns public domain name provided by the vendor (http://PxtlFamily.Dyn.Org http://PxtlFamily.Dyn.Org) for anything you want to show to the wider internet (which is nothing by default). 4) Email domain (user@PxtlFamily.Dyn.Org) 5) samba file-server name (\\PxtlFamily) to access to the same shared folder above. Boom, you give it a name and a wifi password and you get all that. Use the wifi password as an access password for wired ethernet connections. You're relying on your wifi to provide security, but that's the most you can realistically expect from home users anyways. Then you can let users create their own accounts for all the private stuff. Just let them make their own accounts since they're already semi-trusted since they've got the Family password. Obviously you would want to offer the users more granularity in configurations as they want - support for encryption, rights controls, etc. But this is the bare-minimum "I buy it and I give it a name and a wifi password". You give users a massive motherlode of functionality and it's more secure than just about everything on the internet because it's not on the internet. Just stick a cheap cellphone touchscreen on the darned thing for admin actions until the user gets around to setting up an admin account. The amount of software you'd have to write to create such a thing would be a beast though.

3 ms·

I like that idea a lot. I would throw money at it.

by JonSkeptic 13y ago

I like that idea a lot. I would throw money at it.

Pxtl 13y ago
Part of it is just imagining a device where you put in one name and a wifi/family password and suddenly this name gets you 1) SSID (say PxtlFamily) 2) Local domain-name for accessing your intranet (http://PxtlFamily http://PxtlFamily) with your imitations of gmail, drive, picasaweb, and the admin panel, with a built-in loginless "family" account for shared stuff. Access to the same files via an FTP server and DropBox-like application. 3) Dynamic Dns public domain name provided by the vendor (http://PxtlFamily.Dyn.Org http://PxtlFamily.Dyn.Org) for anything you want to show to the wider internet (which is nothing by default). 4) Email domain (user@PxtlFamily.Dyn.Org) 5) samba file-server name (\\PxtlFamily) to access to the same shared folder above. Boom, you give it a name and a wifi password and you get all that. Use the wifi password as an access password for wired ethernet connections. You're relying on your wifi to provide security, but that's the most you can realistically expect from home users anyways. Then you can let users create their own accounts for all the private stuff. Just let them make their own accounts since they're already semi-trusted since they've got the Family password. Obviously you would want to offer the users more granularity in configurations as they want - support for encryption, rights controls, etc. But this is the bare-minimum "I buy it and I give it a name and a wifi password". You give users a massive motherlode of functionality and it's more secure than just about everything on the internet because it's not on the internet. Just stick a cheap cellphone touchscreen on the darned thing for admin actions until the user gets around to setting up an admin account. The amount of software you'd have to write to create such a thing would be a beast though.