From the "Cookies might be good for you" camp...

Face it, you probably use cookies on your browser every day, and enjoy the benefits. If you're like me, browsing from another computer means entering a lot of info just to get temporary privs (logging in to slashdot, amazon, nyt, blogger, jennicam, yahoo, etc) that you'd automatically have at home. Then of course you have to worry aobut accidentally clicking 'remember me' or having Amazon do it for you automatically, letting someone else pretend to be you, by accident or otherwise.

Now a bunch of people have climbed on to the 'global bookmarks' bandwagon, with varying degrees of success (I'd include links to some, but I'm lazy right now. Maybe I'll put some in later), but the global cookie market is, to my knowledge, untapped.

Basically the way it would work is something like this: A browser plug in (or possibly a deeper addition to the browser itself) would run on your home machine. When cookies are changed, added, or deleted, that info is sent to a central server. When you get to a public machine (or any machine that's new to you), you log in once to the central server and it gives you a page confirming the login and sending you a copy of every cookie your home machine has set, only with an expiration of "0", so they'll all be deleted as soon as the browser quits. Now Slashdot knows who you are, and Amazon gives you your wish list and you can view your stock portfolio on Yahoo, all without any login hassles. Note that this wouldn't require anything special on the remote machine, other than a browser that has cookies turned on.

In the interests of a quicker-to-market solution, you wouldn't even need to have a special browser on the 'home' computer, just a way to upload your cookie file to the server.

Anyone up for a little hacking? If you're thinking about pursuing this, please let me know!