Show HN: We're simplifying personal cloud storage for apps

[rgbrgb]

Hey everyone, Peter from StashKit here. We're working really hard to make it as simple to use personal clouds as it is to use the S3 style data silos everyone has now. I'd be happy to answer any questions. We'd love to get feedback from the HN community.

[lbarrow]

I like the idea of removing costs (file storage in this case) from services by having consumers pay for them elsewhere. It seems like it could allow people to build some more interesting business models.

[rgbrgb]

Yes! We had been kicking around this idea of building a version of Snapchat where all of the photos are stored in your personal cloud storage. Could we build a Twitter or Facebook that way? The problem we ran up against is how you'd choose a single storage provider to support. We came to the conclusion that you'd want some kind of transport layer to make that easy. StashKit is that transport layer combined with some widgets to make integration a breeze for devs and users.

I'm working on a little blogpost about the cool new app architectures these personal clouds suggest.

[state]

Although I'm sure I'm in the minority, I would love to see something like this go straight through to S3.

Services on top of services on top of...

[rgbrgb]

Yeah, we'd love to do that too after the big consumer players are covered. With all of the security certificates and such, any ideas on what an implementation would look like? You can't just oauth with S3 ;).

[eberyvody]

Services!

[ew]

Sounds like what http://mover.io is doing, but with a dash of http://filepicker.io

[rgbrgb]

While it does integrate with the same services as your app, I really don't see any other similarities. We've definitely looked at filepicker.io but we have a slightly different approach to the user experience and a more scalable client architecture.

[rafstone]

This could prove to be very useful tool.

[eberyvody]

Yeah, if it became standard it could make your phone even more like a computer. Could open up a lot of possibilities.

[rafstone]

When do you expect we can get an invite?

[samuel1604]

Would love to see OpenStack/Ceph there.

[hst]

Sounds cool. How does it work exactly?

[rgbrgb]

Top secret! Just kidding. We basically wrap first party cloud service API's into a consistent StashKit API and provide widgets similar to the ones Dropbox gives for picking files and doing authentication. Of course, unlike the dropbox widget, ours works with all of the providers.

[mrgreenfur]

Isn't this the fog gem?

[melodymcc]

Love this idea!

[mrambin]

Great idea!