A lightweight and extensible platform for processing personal information at global scale

Abstract

Advances in digital devices, computing, and networking have led to an ever increasing number of personal information being exchanged across the globe. Typically, this is done through centralized, web-based applications like Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, or Facebook. In this paper we propose an alternative architecture for the dissemination of personal information at a global scale. Our solution runs both within a data center as well as on a pool of personal devices such as mobile phones, desktop and laptop computers, or Internet gateways. Our approach leverages idle resources available in millions of devices, allows for much more flexible applications than the predefined services available on the web, and permits users to exchange personal information in a peer-to-peer manner with the possibility but not the requirement to store the personal data in a data center. © The Brazilian Computer Society 2010.