Interesting. Been thinking about something like this. You mentioned other privacy preserving services; which products do you think are most in need of privacy preserving alternatives?
For Zood Location, I'd like to add a 'Find my phone' feature. It's already mostly done in the Android client (I don't think it's possible on iOS). I just need to implement a landing page on the web that folks can use to log in and make their phone start ringing.
Re: other services.
I'd like to implement something akin to Google Photos but where all your images are encrypted before going up to the cloud for storage. All the fun face recognition features and indexing would have to happen on your phone, but phones are plenty powerful enough these days to do that while you're sleeping and your phone is plugged in and charging.
I'd like to implement a simplified personal assistant like Google Now, that doesn't depend on sending your personal data into the cloud. Again, phones are so powerful and they already know so much about you based on local context, that I think there's a big opportunity for making a "good enough" assistant that doesn't compromise your privacy.
More mundane, but I think still very useful, is being able to store your contacts in the cloud, but making sure they're encrypted with a local key you control, so the storage provider (e.g. Zood) can't see your contact list.
An actually trusthworthy VPN provider. Mozilla entered this space a couple months ago, and I think it's great that there is at least one trusthworthy VPN brand now. It's a very confusing market for people to navigate, but I'd like to earn the trust of people so a Zood VPN product would become a viable service.
Along the theme of helping people extricate themselves from the advertising and surveillance economy, a service that helps people remove themselves from these junk snail mail lists. You can do it on your own right now, but it can be overwhelming.
I have lots of other little ideas, but they aren't quite ready for discussing. :-)
There is also https://www.mylio.com which E2E encrypts photos on the cloud, is iOS, Android, Windows and macOS and is very performant. There is also photostructure, but they don't seem to be planning to make mobile clients any time soon :|
One thing I've actually not seen is E2E contacts & calendars. Everything seems to be based on CalDAV & CardDAV which I think forces you to sync them with a server in plaintext. Email is mostly a lost cause, the closest you could approach it is something like protonmail AFAIK.
Also as far as 'good' VPN providers, I think PIA & Mulvad have fairly good reps. Mulvad even lets you pay in mailed in cash.
> There is also photostructure.com, but they don't seem to be planning to make mobile clients any time soon :|
Sorry about that. I certainly get the appeal of "one app to rule then all," but as an indy solo dev, I have to focus on building features that give my users the best bang from my limited time.
File sync is surprisingly hard to do cross-platform--most apps have pretty abysmal app store ratings, including the built-in ones from NAS manufacturers.
> One thing I've actually not seen is E2E contacts & calendars. Everything seems to be based on CalDAV & CardDAV which I think forces you to sync them with a server in plaintext. Email is mostly a lost cause, the closest you could approach it is something like protonmail AFAIK.
Totally agree. I think the natural progression of things to replace would be contacts and then calendaring. For the life of me, I can't figure out what should/how to replace email. Or simply make it more secure for the masses.
I don't think you should bother with email. If you want privacy in your communications, use signal or matrix. Making a replacement for email that is E2EE is a much bigger problem that I think would take something like signal messenger to add something like oauth & domain support.
etesync.com already does it, and has it for years. Open source and an open protocol. Supported in GNOME and KDE (starting from the next version) and a lot of clients for other platforms too.
Re: other services.
I'd like to implement something akin to Google Photos but where all your images are encrypted before going up to the cloud for storage. All the fun face recognition features and indexing would have to happen on your phone, but phones are plenty powerful enough these days to do that while you're sleeping and your phone is plugged in and charging.
I'd like to implement a simplified personal assistant like Google Now, that doesn't depend on sending your personal data into the cloud. Again, phones are so powerful and they already know so much about you based on local context, that I think there's a big opportunity for making a "good enough" assistant that doesn't compromise your privacy.
More mundane, but I think still very useful, is being able to store your contacts in the cloud, but making sure they're encrypted with a local key you control, so the storage provider (e.g. Zood) can't see your contact list.
An actually trusthworthy VPN provider. Mozilla entered this space a couple months ago, and I think it's great that there is at least one trusthworthy VPN brand now. It's a very confusing market for people to navigate, but I'd like to earn the trust of people so a Zood VPN product would become a viable service.
Along the theme of helping people extricate themselves from the advertising and surveillance economy, a service that helps people remove themselves from these junk snail mail lists. You can do it on your own right now, but it can be overwhelming.
I have lots of other little ideas, but they aren't quite ready for discussing. :-)