Everydisk brings post-cloud storage to everyman

PORTLAND,USA: Five-year-old bootstrapped startup Avatron Software has launched a Kickstarter project to help develop its new software platform,

Everydisk. Everydisk will let people easily access and interact with all their files, on any of their computers, from anywhere in the world.

Everydisk is an alternative to costly and high profile cloud storage solutions that may be targets of hackers, spies, and others seeking access to our personal demographic data, said a company release.

The release further added that cloud solutions like Dropbox and Google Drive offer storage space on servers governed by arcane and compromising user agreements, Everydisk establishes direct, secure connections between a user's devices and the increasingly affordable desktop hard drives attached to them.

How Everydisk works:

Avatron's web-based server platform maintains a registry of each user's computers. When a user logs in, they are presented with a menu of their connected devices. Once the connection is made between the user and their remote computers, no data goes through Avatron's server. User data always stays on machines directly in the user's control.

The resulting data security comes at a time when privacy consciousness is a hot mainstream issue, due in part to the revelation that the National Security Agency's PRISM program has been analyzing the data of millions of U.S. citizens.

Avatron is using Kickstarter to fund its latest project. Kickstarter is a crowdfunding service that allows people to contribute to projects they believe in. Avatron's founder, former Apple engineering manager Dave Howell, explains, "The rise of Kickstarter's crowdfunding model is an important step in a worldwide trend toward democratization of technology, and we see it as an important new way to develop the products our customers want."

Companies that use Kickstarter to launch apps get to talk directly with their customers as the software is being developed. The project's backers have the opportunity to influence the feature sets and design of apps they are interested in. The results are better products and an enthusiastic user base, added the release.

Avatron's latest app, Everydisk, lets people work with all of their files, free from the limitations and privacy concerns built into cloud storage products. Howell asks "Why should we have to pay hundreds of dollars per year for cloud storage when desktop hard drives are so affordable?" And working with cloud storage requires forethought: files must be copied into a special folder in order to be accessible remotely.