Almost a year ago, I suggested that anyone attempting to replace Apple’s overpriced .Mac system should call it !Mac. Since then, a number of concepts and hints on how to do this have been posted to the internet. The most thorough one that I’ve seen is Matt Simerson’s How I created my own .mac replacement. It is fairly involved and does a lot, but still doesn’t support the one feature I’d actually use: machine synchronization.
Now, however, someone named Kent has issued a bounty on an “easy install” version of such a system called, oddly enough, the notMac Challenge. He’s also matching contributions. This site was evidently just mentioned on MacWorld, so in the ten minutes I’ve been watching the site, the prize jumped from $879 to $2,874.
I still think !Mac is a better name, but it’s harder to Google.