April 18, 2005
Taking the "GMail as file system"-meme to extremes

The GMail filesystem - an actual, mountable Linux filesystem stored on GMail.
This is less surprising than it sounds, because good GMail libraries exist and good "File System on Anything" libraries exist, but it's still a very cool hack and it underlines some of the important points that are anti-software patent and pro open source.


  • It is not only hard, but impossible to predict the uses of technology you choose to share.
  • It is not only hard, but impossible for you to realize the full potential value of a software invention you make
  • Arthur C. Clarke famously remarked that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". Something close to the converse is true for software - "Even magic is just made of fancy combinations of technology". If you want magic, you should support and encourage rapid and widespread combinations.

Posted by Claus at April 18, 2005 09:40 PM | TrackBack (0)
Comments (post your own)

I'm not sure whether you know of it already, but the Windows XP Gmail storage shell does the same.

Posted by: Nikolaj Nyholm on April 20, 2005 10:10 PM

Links are posted naked here at classy.dk: http://www.viksoe.dk/code/gmail.htm

Visually, yes.
I don't think it actually integrates at the OS level. It's a shell extension. Which means it works for you the user, but not from the command line, and not for applications accessing the file system.

Posted by: Claus on April 20, 2005 10:13 PM

ah, damn it you developers. ;)
i'm a user and it actually integrates quite well!

Posted by: Nikolaj Nyholm on April 20, 2005 10:48 PM
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