Virtual Drive/Folder on computer that lets you run remote softwares?

[snail02]

Hi,
I recently came across Skydrive Explorer, which lets you store, copy, and delete files of upto 50 mb in size onto your Microsoft Skydrive's online storage. This is great, but it doesn't really let me 'open' the file. I could view an mp3 file as if it's in a local folder, but couldn't just play it with my media player - i would have to download it first fully, then work with it.

Is there a similar service/software which lets you not only do the above, but also lets you "run" the file in real time - sort of like streaming of an mp3 file, or running of a portable application, as if it was a file on your computer?
Thanks.

[snail02]

bump..

[f0dder]

I doubt any free/cheap service will let you do this - whereas browsing remote storage can be done by coding a shell extension, which is relatively easy, being able to open/execute directly (without download-to-%temp% hacks) requires writing a redirection driver... which is substantial more work than a shell extension.

[snail02]

ehm...whatever you said went over my head...

[wraith808]

Probably not, because it's a lot of work and quite complex, is the jist of it.

[sri]

@snail02: Did you try Dropbox?

Same set of folders and files are stored on any of your computers where you have installed Dropbox and are running it.

The content remains both on their server and on your computer(s) locally so you can basically do anything w/ the files.

[wraith808]

Dropbox doesn't allow remote execution of files, though, and that was the primary question, I think.

[MrCrispy]

Streaming playback is possible because content is linear - i.e. when you're playing back an mp3 or video all you need to do is get the next few chunks of data (like frames of video) and decode it. With software, you can't do that, as programs have branch instructions that require different parts of the code. Without getting too technical, software is random access, and streaming is not. I suppose it could be done with a really fast connection and a good protocol but its not really worth it.

[snail02]

Yes, I did try Dropbox; but it requires you to either have the files on the computer as local files all the time, or you would have to download the entire folder in zip format, unzip it, then run it.

Anyhow, I found zumodrive, which seems to do what I wanted.
I uploaded many portable apps from the lupo portable suit on my zumo account, which can be loaded as a Removable drive (not a Network Drive). So the computer sees it like a usb pen drive, which is cool; it's very easy to save file directly in this virtual drive, and it loads very fast.

It seems to also allow streaming of softwares. What it does is, if i had to open Xnview portable, I would double click on xnview.exe, and it would stream it, and also load any dll or other files that is required to load the exe. All of this kept at your defined cache location, so frequent softwares load without further streaming.

Same goes for mp3 files it seems. It loads few bits of the file and streams the file, and you can even skip frames.
So far so good.