A little black box with a big hard drive and a web server on it? It's called a NAS, they've been around for a while. Can someone explain to me how such talented people can come up with such stupid ideas?
also being a techstar has its drawbacks.. people always spect more from them.. but technology its all about iteration, community, cooking ideas and getting back to the sketchpad to try something better..
we SHOULD do something about it, and i take my hat off, to whoever its trying to do something.. techstar or not.. brilliant or not..
the web has a tendency to centralization and one that is creating big black-hole titans that swallows everyone in between..
economically this means the beginning of end of the middle class, and a greater abism between the super rich and the poor..
so kudos to everyone trying to do something about that, and not just using because its fine.. there are "traps and tricks" in all of those free services that we happilly use for free
storage is cheap.. processor is cheap.. computers(pc/phones/tables) are getting cheaper and faster so why are we using and depending of obscure clouds that much?
Because the infrastructure to support high availability is expensive and most efficient at scale. Proper backup, disaster recovery, redundant HVAC, redundant power, waterless fire suppression, real access control (not the $15 Kwikset lock on your front door), server-class hardware which is built to last for years rather than fly off the Best Buy shelves and get abandoned as far as updates within months like most Android phones. All of these things are expensive and difficult and necessary to support the model of computing currently in place.
I'm excited about renaissance of protocols like BitTorrent which are tolerant of failures of individual nodes, but you can't just take current client-server computing, move the server to your shitty residential ADSL connection, and call it a day. "Trying to do something" in this manner is actively harmful because people are going to lose data.
We need entirely different (not necessarily new) protocols and paradigms to have a truly decentralized Internet, and they aren't exactly mature yet.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/01/feds-give-ok-to-d...
Just because the Wired article dumbs down what they are doing a lot doesn't mean the ideas are dumb.