A couple of interesting toys I’ve found. The first one is the GMail Drive shell extension. GMail Drive is a Shell Namespace Extension that creates a virtual filesystem around your Google Gmail account, allowing you to use Gmail as a storage medium. [It] creates a virtual filesystem on top of your Google Gmail account and enables you to save and retrieve files stored on your Gmail account directly from inside Windows Explorer. GMail Drive literally adds a new drive to your computer under the My Computer folder, where you can create new folders, copy and drag’n'drop files to.
Definitely a unique idea, though utterly pointless unless you have quite a fast net connection. My ideal implementation of it would be to have the shell extension work from a USB drive, that way you could have direct file access to everything you’ve stored in your Gmail account.
Don’t have a Gmail account? Let me know, and if I know you, you can have an invite!
As for the other thing, it’s more of a clever technique rather than a toy. The idea is to use Flickr to store files using steganography. According to this article, Flickr isn’t doing any checking for embedded files. The upside is that you can use your Flickr account for excess storage or covertly passing files. I’m sure it won’t be long before Flickr inhibits this though. Firstly, image file sizes will shoot up and secondly steganographic methods are used by organised crime groups who encrypt files, embed them in images and then send the images. The image looks identical and it’s possible to embed in such a way that the information doesn’t show in an image’s EXIF tag. Voila, the encrypted file is invisible.
