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Every now and then this gets shared again and every time I am struck by what a terrible job the front page does of explaining what Solid is and why anyone would
by egypturnash 6y ago
Every now and then this gets shared again and every time I am struck by what a terrible job the front page does of explaining what Solid is and why anyone would want to use it. Like, okay, yeah, "control my own data" is a nice pitch in this day and age I guess, but... what can I do with it? "Any kind of data can be stored in a Solid pod, including normal files like you might store in Google Drive or Dropbox" - that sounds kinda useful, where's the link to SolidFile? Is there even a SolidFile app or is that just a thing someone could make with this protocol?
Hell, where's the front page link to check out the list of any apps using Solid? It's like two or three random clicks to find this page (https://solidproject.org/apps https://solidproject.org/apps) if you are curious, and it's super uninspiring - why does one of the apps in the "Showcase" section at the top not even have a description?
Solid always just feels like a solution looking for a problem.
- TimTheTinker 6y agoI'm in the early stages of bootstrapping a SaaS app that prioritizes security and privacy. For my business, this would be great: users are far more likely to trust an app if the app won't be storing any of the application data itself -- if they can choose their own data hosting provider. Google Cloud Drive, Box, and others already allow this kind of model to an extent. Third-party apps can access and modify user data hosted there, although not through a standardized API.
- wernst 6y agoThis project might be worth a look: https://www.etebase.com/ https://www.etebase.com/
- TimTheTinker 6y agoThis is fantastic. Thank you!
- tasn 6y agoThanks (I'm the founder of Etebase)! Let me know if you have any questions, my email is tom @ the domain.
- matt_f 6y agoWhoah!! That's frikkin awesome! Has this made front page in HN yet at any point?
- walterbell 6y agoE2E encrypted firebase equivalent, with CalDAV frontend for E2E encrypted calendar from mobile & Thunderbird clients, with OSS clients, server and multiple language bindings? Seems too good to be true! Thanks for the pointer.
- cimm 6y agoI found this months ago, lost my pinned tabs and spent _hours_ looking for this. This will teach me to not bookmark interesting stuff. Thank you!
- tasn 6y agoI'm the founder of Etebase, cool to see it mentioned it here! If anyone has any questions, please let me know (email in profile). We will also be giving a talk about Etebase at FOSDEM this year if anyone is interested: https://fosdem.org/2021/schedule/event/etebase/ https://fosdem.org/2021/schedule/event/etebase/
- NearAP 6y agoYou're right. It is still not clear to me what/how this will be used (I think I have an idea but not sure; the front page should have made it quite clear). It would have been great if they had described a target use-case right there on the front page. The writeup seems to be targeting developers but it looks to me like the product is for the public (end-users). The site doesn't seem to have done a good enough job linking both of them.