Network of the future, next level filesharing

Today, file sharing it’s not just about you, me, or friends and the rest of the world. Files are not just streams of bytes anymore. They are representing us, in a way. Ever since telnet was used back in the old ages of networking, the need for sending files from one computer to another has increased exponentially.

DC++ offers a simple, plain way to keep your personal files available over the network. Some may say too simple, some may say it’s perfect this way. There are people who use DC++ and are happy with it, and some people who want more.

Let’s say I’m in both categories, I like using DC++ but also want more from it.

The current trending in file sharing is about social networking and metafiles. How can this be integrated into DC++? Well, I have some ideasand I want to point them out a little.

Files aren’t streams anymore, some are personal, like photos and movies, some are educational or informative, like documents , some are general purpose programs like a linux distribution. Each file could have a metafile attached to it. This way one could add basic information into tags, except the hash which is the sole metadata for now, like keywords or a picture. Size, description can be valuable information about a file, not counting it’s name.

Like this, one could search for keywords, can look at the descriptive picture and decide whether to download or not the file. In DC++, the file list could support this kind of feature. The list could be divided into categories ( pictures, video and so on ), each file could have a thumbnail, a description attached to it and some keywords, how many other people were interested in the file ( number of downloads ), or even a ranking system created by DC++ about the file. Searching can also evolve in this manner.

Social networking can be implemented more lively and can make file sharing an easy and pleasurable way of interacting with people and spending a nice time.

I certainly hope that DC++ will grow in this kind of features but also to support basic file sharing as it always did, simple, and easy to use.