Once in a while, things happen that have incredible potential, and a couple of months down the road, everyone thinks “I could have had this idea!”. Antsle is one of them.

Looking like a smallish box, it is actually a blue ocean. It is oriented towards the creative maker-power of the developers, not at the end-user in the first instance (in spite of the fact, that it is easy enough to satisfy these, too). Don’t confuse it with a storage device that carries the misleading name of “cloud”, this is something from a different galaxy.

Just thinking about the endless opportunities, this little sweet box which serves as your home-based internet node and server brings, waters my mouth. A couple of them come to mind immediately:

create a firewall for your IoT device collection

With the advent of all kinds of “smart” things populating your living rooms, from wearables to big-brother-TV-sets, we are all game for the predator-like data collectors. Why not have a control-unit developed which sits in your own cloud server at home in your basement or attic, that acts as a firewall for your IoT units that might send out tons of things you don’t want them to?

Hey, if all the flurry.coms of this world permanently want your information, why the heck don’t they pay you for your data? They could take every other installment for the new TV set, couldn’t they?

At least while your mobile is logged into your home network, you might cut the wire to these data-sucking hoovers that give a toss about your privacy.

Do your own home-automation locally without sharing stuff

A creative developer could come to the conclusion that home-automation is a great idea and having a look at the home via a security cam as well, without having the wish to “share” all this information with potential hackers and the manufacturers, Apple, Samsung, Sony and all kinds of interested third parties, including of course, potential burglars.

There are pretty clever approaches on the market and already enabled and integrated in a lot of connected devices.

However, all this assumes a limitless level of trust between the user and the manufacturers, as well as the cloud operators involveld.

As long as the Agile development cycle is not yet the standard, this trust is not justified at all. We live in a world, where the “Hello Barbie” might silently share kids’ secrets with third parties and without parents having control over what goes out of the home.

So why not put the gearbox for your home automation and connected life into your own hands? For a maker creator, the Antsle is a wonderful platform.

These are just some examples of ideas that come to mind immediately between day and dream.

Not a server, but an ocean

What dreams may come, when the creative folks find this platform and make innovative use of it?

The antsle has the capability to be the gearbox between the SOHO office or home and the world, bypassing the vampires and vultures of the internet and sharing only what was meant to be shared, in a conscious decision process and keeping in store the earlier decisions and making sure the home or office is connected, but not as an open system, but as a controlled perimeter.

The use cases are myriad. The makers can count on many things which are easy to plug into with their ideas and easy to realize. So…..

Antsle is a platform that supports all kinds of small applications running independently from each other in a server-type environment in a coll alumnium box without noise. It is the basis for developing loads of things that can be marketed in an ecosystem.

A good example for this kind of ecosystem is Sonos. They developed a meshed-WiFi-music system, that has since grown into an impressive ecosystem, due to the quality and absolute ease of use and administration. Loyal followers (like the early Apple users) due to a strong committment to backwards compatibility and superior quality of build. This is the basis for makers. This is the mindset of creators.

What’s missing?

Of course, there are always compromises when starting something new. It would be terriffic, if there was a forum or platform, where like-minded developers could meet with regards to the antsle and share ideas, get together, inspire each other, share solutioins for puzzling questions and exchange open source code.

This could be something easily created on one of the new antsles, but of course, it’s not yet there.

Also, while the antsle smart OS is a great idea and has a lot going for it, I would have simply loved to see the concept of qubes-OS taken into the commercial world. Joanna Rutkowska deserves to be lauded for an innovative idea and it could basically be the fifth gear for a security-antsle in the future… Folks, how about this for the next release? Maybe someone in antsle is interested to explore this….

On the other hand, the OS choice is with the creators and it makes a lot of sense in many respects – the team at antsle have researched the necessities down to the question which RAM to use (only ECC will do) and how to assure data integrity and safety (by mirroring SSDs). So they probably have spent months on analysing what would be the best basis. But we do have a lot of sympathy for Joanna.

December 15th, crowdfunding for antsle will start. We will order our first antsle right away and contribute to the crowdfunding. We do hope the spirit of innovation will become inspiring for the developer community and are anxious to see the next news about it.

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Go see: Autonomous Web Hosting – antsle.com and get it while they are hot and new! Be one of the first and be one of the early flock!