Idea Day26: RecycleTube
So here is scribd, youtube for documents. That’s brilliant, which makes me think: Is there anything that can’t be uploaded to the Internet and share with others and become the next youtube-of-*.*? It seems that files in a garbage can can also be users generated content on the net. I call this cyberspace recycling, RecycleTube.
From time to time, we delete files or let the system automatically delete files no longer being needed. These files go to recycle bin and say goodbye to you when you clean up the bin. (Or shift+delete, they say goodbye to you immediately without buffer.) And later you may regret that some important files were deleted accidentally. So how about a scheduled background program uploading those deleted files to the Internet? So that in case you suddenly miss files deleted, they can still be retrieved later on. (say, 2 years later, or when you change your old laptop or desktop computer for a new one)
2 features: 1. Save your files. 2. Files useless to you might be treasure to others, so let them search on your landfill!
- a.) When you click delete, the offline side widget asks you: Would you like to throw this file into local RecycleTube? (or the normal one)
- b.) Decide what type / size of files you want to transfer to online recycling. (i. e. You can choose “documents only” or “music only”.)
- c.) Schedule the time you want to “dump” garbages to the online RecycleTube. (background processing)
- d.) The server automatically categorizes garbages (as if we have categories of paper, plastic, metal for recycling in real life)
- e.) Once garbages uploaded, renew and return the updated index of your online RecycleTube. (Index composed of file names or file types) This index helps you track what you (or others) have deleted and future search.
- f.) You can choose whether your bin is available for search by other users or only for your personal request. Regarding privacy concern, you can determine whether associate owner’s name / account with deleted files. Or you can filter out files with sensitive info inside beforehand.
- g.) Search and download, have all web 2.0 functionalities of those *tube-like sites!
Monetization: Storage limitation. The more you pay, the bigger bin you get.
Some problems:
1. Big-size files are hard to deal with. Automatically compressed them as you squeeze garbages before dumping?
2. copyright issues.
3. Privacy issues.
4. It’s silly.
