Steve Gillmor wants “a private Google, where I can find random notes without exposing them publicly–or more precisely, to unsubscribed (unauthorized) readers.” He also gives some suggestions on how to do it:
1. Get Panther. This will cost $500 for an entry level developer license today.
2. Investigate the new Mail APIs and the new TextEdit developer kit (if it exists).
3. Develop Gary Burd’s idea of a brute force private Google built on top of a local IMAP store hosted in Mail.app.
4. Produce NetNewsWire plug-in from #3’s work and contribute it to Brent Simmons with all possible speed.
5. Use NNW plug-in framework to develop additional extensions for converting iChat AV/AIM/Rendeyvous presence and message attempts into RSS feed.
6. Investigate wiring #5’s feed to iSync for persistent calendaring and scheduling.
7. Work with Mozilla-based cross-platform aggregators to migrate to Windows/Linux base.
8. Watch Microsoft and Google scramble to catch up.
