Eggcyte is Making a Pocket-Sized Personal Web Server (Video)

Eggcyte has been working on this for two years. It's on Kickstarter now; a personal server you can use to share music, video, text, and just about anything else without resorting to cloud-based services where one weak password can put your private celebrity photos (you are a celebrity, right?) into the wrong hands. If you suddenly decide you don't want to share the information on your Egg any more, turn it off. If you suddenly have something new to share, like a video you just shot of the Loch Ness Monster capturing an alien spaceship, you can connect your Egg to the Internet anywhere you find a wireless access point. The main thing, say the Eggcyte people, is that your data is yours and should stay that way. Facebook and other cloud-based "sharing" companies use your data to learn about you. Here in the U.S. their primary purpose may be to show you ads for things you might want to buy. In more repressive countries, cloud-based sharing services may use your private data in ways that could be hazardous to your health. Of course, our government people would never keep track of what we post on Twitter and other online services... or would they? (Alternate Video Link)

Comments

Web Server?

[ArcadeMan]

You did read the TOS of your ISP provider, right? Some don't allow any server at all (email, Web, etc) on your home connection.

Re:Web Server?

[davydagger]

very loosely enforced, I've been running home servers for over a decade.

Re:Web Server?

[Damarkus13]

True, but if you start streaming video of the Loch Ness monster to every amateur cryptozoologist on the internet, you will probably be noticed by your ISP.

Re:Web Server?

[jedidiah]

Once you stop keeping a low profile, being noticed by your ISP is really the least of your worries.

Re:Web Server?

[msauve]

Yet another example of violating net neutrality.

Re:Web Server?

[Damarkus13]

I have to admit, I have no idea what you are trying to imply.

Re:Web Server?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Net neutrality (also network neutrality or Internet neutrality) is the principle that Internet service providers and governments should treat all data on the Internet equally, not discriminating or charging differentially by user, content, site, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or mode of communication.

Emphasis mine.

Re:Web Server?

[WaffleMonster]

You did read the TOS of your ISP provider, right? Some don't allow any server at all (email, Web, etc) on your home connection.

Who cares what it says?

Re:Web Server?

[sound vision]

Illuminati.

Re:Web Server?

[Anonymous Coward]

You will when you wake up with your mouth sewed to someones asshole.

Re:Web Server?

[GNious]

You did read the TOS of your ISP provider, right? Some don't allow any server at all (email, Web, etc) on your home connection.

That's going to be an issue for a lot of people, who play video-games. Many games will use one of the machines as a host, to which the others connect, basically causing that player to be running a (temporary) game-server.

Re:Web Server?

[StripedCow]

And what about asymmetric upload/download speeds that most ISPs provide.
Good luck running a server with an uplink that can handle only 1/10th of a decent tranfer speed.

Website in your pocket

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that a personal website in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?

So, any WAP running DD-WRT plus a thumbdrive?

[pla]

Revolutionary! So instead of needing to actually install DD-WRT and buy a separate thumbdrive... They'll include it all in one tidy package!

But but but... "Cloud"!

Just use an old laptop instead.

[BarbaraHudson]

Take the old laptop, remove the hard drives and battery, stick in a bootable usb stick or memory card running your favorite distro, and you have a very quiet, low-energy server for all your needs.

Re:Just use an old laptop instead.

[BarbaraHudson]

old laptops didn't have USB port :)

Of course they do. Ancient laptops might not, but they're so old you can't give them away.

Re:Just use an old laptop instead.

[BarbaraHudson]

Yes, old laptops are very portable and low-energy.

Take out the battery from one of those old clunkers (you won't be needing it and it probably doesn't work anyway) and you reduce the weight by a lot, as well as the energy draw.

Remove the old hard drives (they're noisy, generate heat, and consume a - comparatively - lot of electricity), and stick in a 64 gig usb stick for $35.00

Set the screen to go blank after 5 minutes.

So you now have a device that you can actually use to SEE and EDIT what you're storing and sharing. Can't do that with the Eggcyte. And you still need to plug in the eggcyte to recharge it and you need a wifi connection (no, you can't just use a direct ethernet connection) and port forwarding at your router to avoid the whole "use their subdomain service".

Since you can get dual-core laptops for free nowadays, your total outlay is $35.00, as opposed to $200 and a 9-month wait. And your old laptop, you can always upgrade the storage by either plugging in another usb or flash card (or even buying a cheap internal or external hard drive). Get a terabyte of storage for less than half of what they're asking for 64gig. And you'll almost certainly have more than 1 gig of ram.

Re:Just use an old laptop instead.

[ihtoit]

I had a Samsung with a DX4/100 processor and a USB port. Used that right up until around 2007, when it finally expired.

Re:Just use an old laptop instead.

[BarbaraHudson]

So buy the good stuff. It's the same as hard drives - they will all eventually fail. Same as the flash memory in the Eggcyte.

But at least with an old laptop, the usb stick goes, you just buy another usb stick and you're back in business.

You can always buy good usb sticks on sale. I used a 16 gig kingston for a couple of years as primary storage on a laptop that would only boot from cd. So when I was much larger kingston usb sticks on sale, I bought one, and the laptop now boots off the usb stick directly.

What?

[sideslash]

How does this address leakage of private media on the internet? Sure, you can "turn it off" to disable public access, but you can do that on DropBox too.

The typical pattern, whether DropBox or "Eggcyte" is something like the following:

(1) You post private stuff on the cloud
(2) somebody else accesses it, whether it's intentionally or unintentionally shared
(3) bad actors download the media and publish it on other outlets such as 4chan
(4) you panic and disable the original share, although of course it is now too late.
(5) Sad stories about you are published on news sites, along with stern and moralizing finger wagging.

Re:What?

[Damarkus13]

I was just logging in to post this same thing. Just having access to the power switch on a server does not magically make it more secure.

Along the same lines, simply having control over where your cloud server is physically located, doesn't make it not a cloud server.

200 dollars is too expensive

[Karmashock]

I can buy a raspberry pi with all the addons for less then 100 USD, load a webserver on it, and have more functionality then what this thing offers.

Yeah it has a screen and yeah its probably easier to set up. But that is what I'm buying then. A screen and an easier set up... for twice the price.

As to sticking it in your pocket... The whole web domain thing is great but subdomains are nothing new. I can get a free subdomain from any of several services. I do it all the time. Any system I work with on a regular basis that is on a dynamic IP gets a subdomain synced to it so that I can always login to that system. All they're doing is setting up a subdomain on a server they own and selling this unit... which is nice but isn't really competitive with a raspberry pi.

Am I missing anything? The thing is neat... its just redundant.

Re:200 dollars is too expensive

[CaptainDork]

Actually, you are missing something ... a revenue stream.

Re:200 dollars is too expensive

[RoverDaddy]

If you'll read my other comment you'll see that I basically agree with your assessment. However, for a consumer product, this amount of markup is probably reasonable. You'll never get a raspberry pi, wifi adapter, bluetooth adapter, battery and video screen to fit into that form factor. That's where engineering design and packaging, and custom circuit design come into play. And the software has a price too. Even if you or I could cobble up the basics of this product on our own, it still might be useful for the average consumer.

All that said, I do wonder whether the market can bear a $200 price for this device.

Re:200 dollars is too expensive

[Karmashock]

Well, sure... but why do we need all that crap?

1. Why does it need a screen when it has a web interface? Totally pointless.

2. Why do you need to be able to upload things to it directly without a network interface? Also totally pointless.

3. Why does it need a wifi adapter? This thing is going to live on someone's desk. This notion of bringing it around your purse... why? The unit will work most effectively plugged into a router sitting on a shelf somewhere.

So subtracting those three features which are utterly superfluous... 200 dollars? Nope.

I have three raspberry pis. They're great. One of them is a personal web/file server for my home. One of them is a home media center. The last one is a pure toy that I use in projects.

The Pi is cool. I can do anything with it. If I change my mind about something I can repurpose it for something else. I can't do that with this egg thing. It is what it is what it is.

And that is fine if people know what they want and don't mind the 100 percent mark up and features that even they won't give a crap about. Go with it.

But for me... for the sorts of people that read slashdot?... uh no.

Re:200 dollars is too expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll never get a raspberry pi, wifi adapter, bluetooth adapter, battery and video screen to fit into that form factor.

Why wouldn't I. That's called a smart phone. A Huawei Y300 (for example) has a faster processor than a Pi, the same amount of RAM as a Pi, Wifi, Bluetooth, battery and a touch screen. And since it's a phone, it also has GSM and 3G. Plus it runs reliably on USB power. And it costs $100.

Re:200 dollars is too expensive

[cmseagle]

For a lot of people, "a screen and an easier set up" are easily worth that extra $100 over a Raspberry Pi.

Re:200 dollars is too expensive

[ihtoit]

my ZTE F930 has all except wifi, is smaller than a WD Passport hard drive, is currently equipped with an 8GB SD card (it'll take a 16), and cost £35 in 2010. Still works, no need for an "upgrade" which pretty much means I get to keep my battery that's still good for a week between charges :)

Re:200 dollars is too expensive

[Karmashock]

Same difference.

Re:200 dollars is too expensive

[uolamer]

I agree, before I would do all that I would just setup a server maybe at..

https://aws.amazon.com/free/

and run a site from there.. I can can setup any level of encryption, authentication, etc I want and not have to charge, carry that thing around, rely on wifi and sell out $200.

Interesting project for Rapsberry Pi

[RoverDaddy]

Almost everything (maybe everything?) this does could be done with a Raspberry Pi, but the result would obviously be a bit larger to carry around. It does seem like they've added some nice polish to the software in the form of the automatic data gathering (from a USB connected device), and they obviously need a back end system to give each Egg a subdomain under eggcyte.com.

Solution looking for a problem.

[kuzb]

Now that everyone has a smartphone in their pocket there doesn't seem to be a lot of need for something like this. Why would I buy another device to carry around when I already have a perfectly capable computer in my pocket?

Re:Solution looking for a problem.

[gnupun]

Lots of storage and the ability to share data with other computers and only a select group of people (i.e. exclude strangers, and companies like dropbox, facebook etc.)

Re:Solution looking for a problem.

[kuzb]

If I'm really that worried about people at a company potentially seeing pictures of my kids I'll set up my own server at home with an SSL connection and stream from that.

uptime as spotty as wifi coverage

[jjbarrows]

So my website goes down everytime I'm not in wifi range?

Re:uptime as spotty as wifi coverage

[ihtoit]

I think the idea is that you have not only control of the killswitch, you have instant control over access to individual files on the device instead of adjusting settings over a web interface and waiting x number of hours for the new settings to propagate. Nice idea, not new, but the implementation is fairly novel in a "I want one of those but in shocking pink" kind of way.

FreedomBox

[PineHall]

Eggcyte reminds me of the work of the FreedomBox Foundation. Both talk about being in control of your data and both are aimed at very small servers. FreedomBox appears to be more privacy oriented than Eggcyte, but both are responding to the same need of being in control of your internet life.

Nothing special

[davydagger]

For a low end webserver, the HW of a cellphone will do, as will many ARM development boards like odroid xdroid, beagleboard.

In addition there is pogoplug, plug computers, etc....

This has been done already, and there are already many viable solutions, commericially

Encryption?

[TubeSteak]

The Kickstarter page makes no mention of encryption between my device and the Egg.
Nor anything about encrypted storage on the device itself.

If your selling point is personal security, you should really be mentioning how your device is meaningfully secure.

Re:Smartphone?

[jedidiah]

...here's an even more novel idea: just store data on your phone and stop worrying about Rube Goldberg machines meant to get around the limitations of locked down and crippled mobile platforms.

This sounds like an alternative to a network hard drive and likely to be used for similar reasons.

Spamming the world may not be it's actual intent.

The web is probably supported by your highly proprietary mobile device even if nothing else is. Probably simple to use too.

So they just reinvented Pogoplug?

[El Rey]

But a lot more expensive?

Re:So they just reinvented Pogoplug?

[gnupun]

Pogoplug costs $50/year. Why should you pay that much to store on your own device? You can get get your own shared hosting webserver for that much money.

Re:So they just reinvented Pogoplug?

[El Rey]

I'm not saying you should. I have a Pogoplug that I bought for $20 on clearance and put Arch Linux on it. It works fine as a light web server for static pages and file sharing.

I'm just saying it's not exactly an original idea and the hardware is more expensive than other plug computers. The hardware only Pogoplug (i.e. before they added cloud storage) didn't seem to have great success and I'm not seeing anything in this product that is so different than the original Pogoplug concept that seems like it would be a game changer in the space.

From looking at their website for about 30 seconds, it looks like for the $50/year you also get "unlimited" cloud storage and some backup software. Might be worth it from that aspect but I haven't priced cloud storage / backup lately since all of the free offers out there cover my needs at the moment.

prior art?

[ihtoit]

I used to use an ICQ account (redirected via a domain account on 123reg) and client as a webserver for various files, when I didn't want the webserver on I just switched my computer off (or just killed the ICQ client). Worked very well for years.

Putting all your eggs in one basket ...

[BarbaraHudson]

Notice that you can reserve your sub-domain for only $9. Whoopdee doo ding dong! Now, is that per year, forever, or what, they don't say. And when you go to the demo link, it's "currently offline".

You see, the cloud services companies take advantage of the fact that most of us don’t know how to buy a domain, set up a website and program it to do what we want. So, what choice do we have but to click the "Accept" button when they show us the license agreement to use their service.

So instead you want us to buy a subdomain and tied hardware from you, hardware that isn't upgradeable. I can use an old laptop and get a much better screen, much more storage, much better performance, and a wider choice of software. And unlike Tizen, where "the entire SDK has been published under a non-open-source Samsung license", which you can read . Some exerpts:

IMPORTANT NOTE: This license is primarily applicable to several proprietary components, which are not open sourced. If applicable, the Open Source Software license shall take precedence over the rights and restrictions granted in this Agreement, but solely with respect to such Open Source Software.

... and ...

3.1 Except for the limited license granted to You herein, You agree that all right, title and interest in and to the Tizen SDK including the concepts and technology inherent in them, Samsung or Tizen trademarks, copyrights, patents, trade secrets and other intellectual property rights, are, and at all times shall remain, the sole and exclusive property of Samsung. Except to the extent permitted under this Agreement or by applicable law, You shall not (i) modify, reverse engineer or disassemble any portion of the Tizen SDK; (ii) lease, rent, copy, redistribute or sublicense the Tizen SDK to third party; or (iii) remove, efface or obscure any copyright notices, logos or other proprietary notices or legends included in the Tizen SDK. You may not use any component part of the Tizen SDK in any way independent from the Tizen SDK. You may not load or install any of the Tizen SDK onto mobile phones or any other devices, except a personal computer.

... and ...

8.1 You acknowledge and agree that the Tizen SDK was developed at considerable time and expense by Samsung and contains valuable trade secrets and confidential information of Samsung. Accordingly, You agree to maintain the Tizen SDK in confidence and except as expressly provided in Section 2, You (i) will not disclose or provide access thereto to any person, or (ii) use the Tizen SDK for any purpose not expressly authorized hereby, or permit or authorize any other person to do so.

Why is this hardware? Why not just write an App?

[Zenin]

Why not just run a web server App on your smart phone?

-No second device to buy, carry around, or keep charged.
-No second device to constantly "sync" with.
-Far easier to keep patched with security and feature updates.

Of course, that's putting aside all the issues around trying to run a web server on personal internet access accounts (cell, public wifi, home wifi, work wifi, any of it). The bandwidth issues of trying to share a video of your kids with your family alone will trash most any common internet connection, and that's if it'll be allowed at all (inbound port 80/443) or legal ("no servers on this connection!").

This project has Epic Fail written all over it.... So I'm sure in classic Kickstarter fashion it'll get funded 10x over it's target. Because, sheeple.

Re:Not a cure-all

[ihtoit]

watermarks and due diligence - how much are your photos worth to you in terms of litigation?

Re:Apache runs on an old ipod.

[ihtoit]

I used to have a TCP stack running on an Epson HX-40. Thing ran for two months on one set of AA alkalines. Still got the computer somewhere, it might even still work.

Because of course...

[SavvyPlayer]

The Eggcyte is immune to discovery, hacking and theft.

brilliant!

[silfen]

The solution to insecure devices connected via cloud services is supposed to be another insecure device connected via another cloud service?

If you want secure hosting, run your own server. You can do that on your desktop, a phone (current or old), or something like the Raspberry Pi.

cute, but flawed

[Tom]

It's a really cute idea, but from what I've seen so far is lacking a few fundamentals.

Firstly, there's little mention of user interface design, which if you want this to be used by average Joes and Janes is about the most important thing.

Secondly, sharing your stuff on your own server is cute, in fact we've only had it for about 30 years, even before the Internet with BBS etc. - the problem is connections, networks. Facebook solved that problem and that's why it works and people use it. If everyone has mynamewithsomerandomadditionbecauseitwasalreadytaken.eggcyte.com - how do you find them? You will need a social network layer on top, at which point you're basically back to Facebook, minus distributed data storage.

Thirdly, the idea of having it mobile and being able to plug it in anywhere is cute, but it also means that the device - and thus everything I want published - is unavailable while in transit. In practice, the mobility will be a non-issue because of this.

Glorified

[danknight48]

USB drive, For idiots.
Lets be honest.

Re:False sense of security

[gnupun]

As soon as any of the data leaves the device, you've lost control of it.

Even if it's encrypted?