Metadata Metachallenges

Today I would like to touch one of the most underestimated problems we face today. The Metadata problem. Or a challenge, if you like. First, let us define what we mean (we can use Google for that). In short metadata is "data that is used to describe other data". Examples? Links and bookmarks or favorites in your Internet browser. Or iPod playlists. Or picture slideshows defining the order and transition between pictures.

Imagine your computer today. What has taken most of your effort in configuring it when it arrived from a factory? Aha... metadata. It is easy to set up Windows or install Office or copy your music over from CDs or a backup USB drive. But then you spend hours, if not days configuring. Setting up the internet bookmarks, arranging music into playlists and rating the songs, configuring the UI preferences. Very hard work, fortunately you do that only once a year or two.

Now imagine you buy a second computer. Say you have a desktop PC and you have fallen in love with Origami (this will prove to be fatal attraction, I'll tell you why in a second). So you spend another day or a couple of them configuring the device. Same process over and over. Bookmarks, playlists, slideshows, user interface settings at al. Finally it is done and you are happy again. Then you sit at your desktop PC and start using it for daily work. You keep on adding some more links, your browser's history fills with new pages as you visit them, you purchase some more songs and add tem to your playlists. And you go for vacations. Of course the Origami goes with you. But where are the links you added on your desktop? Where is other metadata you created for the last couple of days? Simply left on your home desktop PC.
Shouldn't the two be synchronized? So that when you add a bookmark on one of them, it shows on the other? Or if you change a playlist sequence or add a new song on one of them, it changes on the other as well?

In my opinion the lack of good metadata synchronization schema is a really big problem we have today. It stops people like myself from having more than one PC and gives us huge overhead in terms of effort we take to keep things clean an ordered.
Now imagine. Your PC as a cache. Your data (and metadata) stored somewhere in an Internet Data Bank. Your personal Internet Data Bank mirrors in the background the bits you create and change when using your PC. And when you buy a new one, you just point it to the Bank and it synchronizes in seconds. If two or more are used, all of them replicate the changes to the central storage, so you may just add a bookmark on an Origami while sitting on your sofa, and when you turn your desktop PC on, the new bookmark will show there. A service like that is a must.

Unfortunately Microsoft failed to deliver this for years. Their thinking is still too "PC centric" (or motherboard centric, should I say). It should be user centric. They promote having more than one computer per user (that is the idea behind Origami and many other initiatives), yet they consistently fail to deliver tools that would ease the burden, especially for people who pay the premium of having multiple Windows licenses. Recently there has been a speculation (confirmed) of a Life Drive, a Windows service similar in concept to the GDrive from Google. Probably both will be launched soon. But the difference will not be the storage space they are going to initially offer. The difference will be how well they handle metadata. The one that turns your PC into a pure cache will be the winner.