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Dropbox, Github, Google Apps for your domain, blogging, financial services and bill pay, photo + music + text + media storage and playback. Just off the top of

Dropbox, Github, Google Apps for your domain, blogging, financial services and bill pay, photo + music + text + media storage and playback. Just off the top of my head. I don't want fully self-hosted services, any more than I want fully online services. I want a sandboxed, personal subset of the service that I can add to a physical box I own or a virtual box I rent from a provider. I don't expect a company to give me everything to run on my own hardware, but I want a solution that can take the provider going under, being bought, etc. without tanking the service and having to worry about my stuff ending up auctioned off to the highest bidder. The N2N project http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N2n http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N2n is an interesting place to start. I started work of some code to do something like what I'm talking about, but that was before my day job ate my life. https://github.com/jwhitlark/unum https://github.com/jwhitlark/unum I guess the question is can we come up with a system that defines sort of a DMZ between a person and a service, something more than the current all or nothing model. EDIT: Note that I'm not disparaging Dropbox, Github, etc. They've been quite good so far, and I'm happy to pay. I trust them, to a certain extent, it's just that I shouldn't have to trust them. Isn't there some way that we can meet in the middle?

Wilduck 15y ago
I would love something like this. Ideally, I would want something that stores all of the content in a single file/folder/partition (I don't care which) and will not render my data inaccessible if I simply copy/mirror it somewhere else. From that point, I imagine a company having an open protocol for accessing my music/pictures/blog posts, and then selling the best client using this protocol. Really, the key for me is less about absolute privacy, but more about the ability to extremely easily take my data and run.
- jwhitlark 15y ago
  I'm not sure data portability is enough these days. I also need some minimum functionality to remain in the event of a dispute or service shutdown. In the real world, escrow (sort of) fills this need. Perhaps a hybrid Amazon/Heroku that also acted as an escrow agent? Enforcing that apps/services followed the data access rules and made sure that the service would keep running on that instance, even if the company went under? I'd pay extra (up front) for that.
joebadmo 15y ago
Wow, this has directly to do with a blog post I wrote a few weeks ago: http://blog.byjoemoon.com/post/6277876911/the-personal-cloud http://blog.byjoemoon.com/post/6277876911/the-personal-cloud And some earlier HN discussion here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3040047 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3040047
- jwhitlark 15y ago
  Good posting, I'd missed that one. It seems like a whole family of ideas have been evolving around the personal cloud. I've been thinking about it for a long time, but many of the necessary parts didn't exist until recently. Not sure if it's ready even now, but it's sure a space I'm watching closely.

Wilduck 15y ago

I would love something like this. Ideally, I would want something that stores all of the content in a single file/folder/partition (I don't care which) and will not render my data inaccessible if I simply copy/mirror it somewhere else. From that point, I imagine a company having an open protocol for accessing my music/pictures/blog posts, and then selling the best client using this protocol. Really, the key for me is less about absolute privacy, but more about the ability to extremely easily take my data and run.

jwhitlark 15y ago
I'm not sure data portability is enough these days. I also need some minimum functionality to remain in the event of a dispute or service shutdown. In the real world, escrow (sort of) fills this need. Perhaps a hybrid Amazon/Heroku that also acted as an escrow agent? Enforcing that apps/services followed the data access rules and made sure that the service would keep running on that instance, even if the company went under? I'd pay extra (up front) for that.

joebadmo 15y ago

Wow, this has directly to do with a blog post I wrote a few weeks ago: http://blog.byjoemoon.com/post/6277876911/the-personal-cloud http://blog.byjoemoon.com/post/6277876911/the-personal-cloud And some earlier HN discussion here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3040047 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3040047

jwhitlark 15y ago
Good posting, I'd missed that one. It seems like a whole family of ideas have been evolving around the personal cloud. I've been thinking about it for a long time, but many of the necessary parts didn't exist until recently. Not sure if it's ready even now, but it's sure a space I'm watching closely.