Article
An idea for an application
Here’s an idea for an application I had today. (A bunch of people probably had this same idea.)
Background
Today Amazon released S3, a decentralized web-based storage service with a web services API and very low prices. Their goal (described on their site) is to provide a robust storage platform to developers who don’t have the resources to build their own storage infrastructure.
Pretty smart, eh?
The problem opportunity
S3 does not have a visual interface. It’s for programmatic use by developers only.
So why not build one?
This interface could come in many forms (and technically speaking, any service that uses S3 will act as an interface to Amazon’s storage), but I’m thinking of a very light front-end that allows people to use S3 like they might use Strongspace or the rumored G-Drive.
But here’s the trick — you BYOAS (Bring Your Own Amazon Storage) and only pay for what you use.
It’s the best of both worlds. You get super-cheap web storage from the folks that do it best (well, maybe not quite the best) and you get your visual interface from someone who focuses on design, not server infrastructure and scaling.
Potential uses
This app could act as a:
- Web-based interface for uploading, moving and browsing files
- WebDAV proxy, facilitating OS integration
- Backup utility, running nightly or weekly backups of your stuff
What do you think? Good idea? Worth doing?