Private cloud crowdfunding project Ark OS hits USD45,000 fund goal to be Google reader replacement

By Rizza Sta. Ana

Nov 29, 2013 10:12 AM EST

Raspberry Pi-based Ark OS reached its funding goal of USD45,000, according to a article on VentureBeat. The private cloud crowdfunding project founded by Jacob Cook was able to receive USD45,189 in investment commitments from 859 backers, and has six more days in its fundraising campaign to potential raise more funds.

As defined in the article, ArkOS allows a user to put all creative content including website, web apps and file hosting in one universally accessible place at the comfort of one's home. The service also allows the user to have complete control and decide who can have access to any of the user's digital stuff and which one to retain or retire.

The 23 year-old's open-source project was created out of Google's retirement of the Reader service, of which Cook was an avid user of.

A few weeks ago, Cook said to VentureBeat, "Google, while it is a great service that has done wonderful things for the Web, is showing some troubling signs. Their shutdown of Google Reader earlier this year means that none of the services [we] rely upon are sacrosanct if they are not profitable enough for them."

Ark OS, VentureBeat said in the article, comes in a small credit card-sized Raspberry Pie computer that a user plugs into his home internet router. Cook's open-source Genesis application, which runs on top of his Linux-based server operating system, provides a web-based interface for the user to make adjustments in the different services that run on a user's server.

Cook said, "The idea that the NSA and its global counterparts can have nearly free reign in the networks of these large companies makes users a target. "Moving users out into self-hosted nodes makes sense from this perspective: It makes wholesale data collection many times more difficult. And when coupled with proper cryptography and secure setups by design, it makes NSA-style snooping practically impossible."

The funds raised by Cook will go towards the development of the software technology, as it still requires a lot of work that developers could only understand. Cook also created a legal entity named the CitizenWeb Project who will be ultimately responsible for the project.

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