When i access a web sire from somebody else's computer, the cookies that set my preferences etc are missing. The CC is some program or service allowing me to temporarily fix this!
-- pfperry, Jul 23 2002

Netscape Communicator Roaming http://www.geocitie...tscape_roaming.html
[egnor, Jul 23 2002, last modified Oct 04 2004]

Real User http://www.realuser...pages/users/faq.htm
Apparently stores links, bookmarks, cookies, user IDs and passwords. I've never used it, so I can't say how well it works - why don't you try it and tell us? [DrCurry, Jul 24 2002, last modified Oct 04 2004]

Baked with roaming profiles at most big corporations.

Baked with the Halfbakery, which evidently stores our preferences on the site, not in the cookies.
-- DrCurry, Jul 23 2002


also, a wibni - possible information as to how this would work, please.
-- yamahito, Jul 23 2002


"Baked" -- No, Windows roaming profiles only work within an administrative domain, and if you keep your preferences on the site you still need to log in again. (This isn't bad for one site, but it's a pain when you use a large number of sites which require cookie-based login.)

"WIBNI" -- No, the implementation is trivially obvious. Writing a tool to automatically synchronize cookies between multiple computers would be entirely straightforward.

There have been attempts to do this, but as far as I know there's nothing that does it well (i.e. would be an effective way to share web cookies between home and work, allow temporary access when borrowing someone else's computer, etc).
-- egnor, Jul 23 2002


I dunno. Roaming profiles seem to work pretty well for me wherever they're implemented. MSN has some kind of single login thing (across any compatible web site), but it's seen very limited acceptance (allegedly only Hotmail really uses it).

I was thinking you could probably set up a web site to do this kind of thing (the way web sites exist to hide your online identity). But unlike some people, I've no idea how.
-- DrCurry, Jul 24 2002


Who indeed.

Passport/Hailstorm (or whatever it's called now) requires Web sites to cooperate; Windows roaming profiles (or Unix shared home directories) require system administrators to cooperate. A user-level cookie synchronizer would require neither, and additionally allows the user to retain ownership of their data.

You could implement this with a proxy Web site, yes. I think some of the anonymizer services allow you to keep cookies attached to an anonymous identity which you can connect to from any browser; if so there's an (incidental) implementation.
-- egnor, Jul 24 2002


Glad to see you, egnor.
Suggestion: If a user is using "somebody else's" computer for a minute/hour/day - This "somebody else's" computer would/could/should also be set by the new user to not hold a cache or history of those particular sites upon "termination" of the temporary user.
-- thumbwax, Jul 24 2002


This seems possible if your cookies were stored online somewhere and you could configure your browser(s) to access them.
-- phoenix, Jul 24 2002


yamahito, I'm not a computer programmer, so i have no idea how to do this, but I think it is (intuitively) a great deal less wibni than a lot of croissanted ideas here ;D In the mean time, I was thining maybe i could take my cookies on a disk & temporarily swap for the file in the 'other' machine, but I can understand people not really wanting me to do that, plus I have no idea whether this works between win98, 2000 etc!
-- pfperry, Jul 24 2002


Ok, so it wasn't *very* wibni, but there was very little attempt to even motivate some background thought. I was just trying to get some discussion going (hey, that's my story, right?)

Instead of worrying about a disk, though, better to have it all done behind your back - possible mechanisms for doing so would be the internet, your watch (by bluetooth or similar), or similarly, any other electronic device nearby (even the buildings you're in), or, indeed a combination. I envision this so pravalent in the future that you would sit at anybody's computer in the world and find it (other than superficialities) the same comforting experiance as using your own.
-- yamahito, Jul 24 2002


I don't find it so comforting now, with the status quo.
-- reensure, Jul 24 2002



random, halfbakery