Screw the Cloud! Tonido Wants to Put Your Apps on YOUR Computer

Written by Jolie O'Dell / July 28, 2009 5:22 PM / 12 Comments

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Tonido has reviled the whole concept of cloud computing, calling it an "anomaly... in the natural order of things."

In an age when virtual computing, cloud server technology, netbooks, and web-based apps control a huge share of the startup economy, this team has decided to pitch consumers on owning, storing, and running all their applications and data from their own desktops. The Tonido product is a suite of P2P apps ranging from music- and file-sharing programs to thorough workspace software, none of which require users to be online. Tonido is also selling consumers their own miniature home servers at around $100 a pop. Is this the new price to pay for open-source, cross-platform application use and data security? For privacy freaks, it sounds like a good deal. What about the rest of us?

A mixed bag of personal preference, Tonido's list of features and benefits recall the doctrines of right-wing states' rights advocates: "We firmly believe that a handful of companies controlling everybody's data is not healthy in the long-term and could lead to serious privacy issues and reduced freedoms," the site reads.

In a blog post from Dallas, Texas-based software startup CodeLathe, the company behind Tonido, the author writes, "The current trend belies the logic and natural order of things. On one side, computers are getting powerful and personal storage devices are getting cheaper. But still we are turning the custody of our data to profit seeking entities whose market valuation is dependent on how much customer data they have in their server and how much value they can get from customers' data."

The morality and overarching commercial and social value of anonymized user data aside, the perks of running Tonido are obvious: Your data never gets shuffled across another entity's servers. For privacy as well as data ownership, this is a good thing. And the software suite, an open-source project, is absolutely free to download.

But although the site promises that Tonido will "release your computer's untapped potential," one of the greatest reasons for running apps on the web and storing files in the cloud is freeing a system's resources in the first place. Moving online functions to an online platform has led to underwhelming or completely disastrous results in recent years, particularly in the cases of Opera's Unite and Joost.

Another concern Tonido raises is backing up data. For cloud services, backing up online information, such as blog posts and photos, has become something of a hot topic in a way that backing up personal computer files never was. But how does Tonido rectify the situation? Data stored on a personal machine is susceptible to hardware failures just as data stored on a web service is subject to the success or failure of that company.

Data stored on Tonido apps isn't indexed by search engines; for many people and entities, such as myself,this is hardly a benefit.

Also, unlike something as universal as email or as nearly universal as iTunes or Microsoft Word, Tonido requires all sharing parties to download and run Tonido. And the Tonido suite of applications is still limited.

So, although the apps look good and cost nothing, users have to trade a lot of convenience for a modicum of data security. Whether or not Tonido is worth the trade-off is up to users to decide, but trends over the past several years give no cause for optimism.

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Comments

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Way to completely miss the point of Tonido. It's not about competing with the cloud per se as much as it is providing an alternative to it in terms of sharing. What Tonido does is allow any PC to become a webserver, accessible from the internet by anyone (with restriction options).

Therefore, instead of forcing you to upload all the data you want to share to some cloud service, Tonido save you time and bandwidth by simply making the files accessible to the internet in their current locations. That way anyone who wants a particular file can get it without you having to bother to upload it or any other file. Better yet, because the data is on your hardware, you don't have to worry about the policies of whims of a 3rd party provider.

The backup portion of the article makes absolutely no sense as that's not what Tonido was ever about. Get it now?

Sometimes I honestly have to scratch my head at the stuff that gets posted at RWW.

Posted by: LANjackal | July 28, 2009 8:08 PM

Well, all this info came to us from a Tonido press release, their blog, and their website. I'm not sure we missed the point at all.

Posted by: Jolie O'Dell | July 28, 2009 8:23 PM

The whole cloud thing is funny to me when you need to rely on data in a business environment. What happens when a cloud goes down with your trusted cloud? Even Google had had users suffer from cloud downtime. And what are you going to do but sit and take it? Your admin can't do anything because you trusted your information to a third party company. I wonder what office people are going to be cursing about when their IT person tells them there's nothing they can do because their data was on a cloud that can't be accessed right now even though it's needed right that very second. Little bursts of laughter are hard to suppress when people talk to me about how good cloud services are going to be for the future.

Posted by: ttt | July 28, 2009 8:41 PM

Thanks for the excellent post.

Just wanted to clarify few things in the post.

Also, unlike something as universal as email or as nearly universal as iTunes or Microsoft Word, Tonido requires all sharing parties to download and run Tonido.

All the parties don't need to run Tonido. If one want to share a file or photo or music.. one just need to send the URL to the receiving party. Thats enough. Tonido offers dynamic dns service to Tonido instances.

Another concern Tonido raises is backing up data. For cloud services, backing up online information, such as blog posts and photos, has become something of a hot topic in a way that backing up personal computer files never was. But how does Tonido rectify the situation? Data stored on a personal machine is susceptible to hardware failures just as data stored on a web service is subject to the success or failure of that company.

Tonido will soon offer a backup-sync application that allows you to backup & sync your data across PC's in your home. That will solve the backup problem.

one of the greatest reasons for running apps on the web and storing files in the cloud is freeing a system's resources in the first place.

I have a difference of opinion here. For personal sharing, current computers processing power is more than sufficient.

In short, what Tonido offers is an easy way to share stuff without relying on online services and at the same time provides any where access to your data as online services. It is not perfect. But we are working to correct the rough edges.

Posted by: dyno | July 28, 2009 8:42 PM

Isn't this like what Opera announced couple weeks back? Opera Unite?

Posted by: Adi | July 28, 2009 8:51 PM

Functionality of Tonido strongly resembles the Lantastic peer-to-peer network OS of the late 1990's era ...

Posted by: Milt | July 28, 2009 9:22 PM

It does sounds similar to Opera Unite. I like the idea though. With broadband speeds being extremely fast these days, P2P sharing at this level probably wouldn't be a concern either. Sounds interesting.

Posted by: Jason | July 28, 2009 9:23 PM

I'd come across Tonido before, and while it looked interesting I gave it a miss. Think I will put it back on the "to install and have a play with" list after having another look at their site.

Posted by: Damon Oehlman | July 29, 2009 12:33 AM

Looking at their website, i couldn't figure out what if the technology behind the various apps. what programming language or model is used to develop applications.
@Adi, right, also reminded me of opera unite thingy. but opera came out with a very clean development model that was based on very common technologies.

Posted by: elik | July 29, 2009 1:21 AM

> Moving online functions to an online platform
> has led to underwhelming or completely disastrous
> results in recent years, particularly in the
> cases of Opera's Unite and Joost.

Are you trolling or something? Opera Unite isn't even out yet! All they released was a tech demo.

Posted by: wut | July 29, 2009 3:51 AM

Finally, someone who has the proverbial nerve to say what a lot of us have been thinking . . . cloud computing is just another way for companies to make a buck.

Haven't we actually stopped to think of the down side of any media reported technology without jumping on the "cloud" of enthusiam. I for one get disturbed whe Microsoft or Apple upgrade the hardware and drop operating systems. This is "cloud" is just another solution to a problem most of the world could deal with quite elegantly, if they took the time.

Cheers.

Posted by: Chuck | July 30, 2009 4:09 PM

Having just checked out Tonido website it seems they are mainly targeting people concerned with privacy for off-site storage of data.

I for one don't see the 'cloud' as simply a mechanism for off-site storage and think it's interesting for Tonido to dumb it down to that level. But they have clearly identified their market as such so we'll just have to wait and see how long they will be able to peddle their wares to the minds of the paranoid.

Corporations and businesses are turning to cloud computing in order to cut their IT costs (both hardware and software) and provide instant scalability to their customers that are using their online products.

Posted by: Cirrus | September 21, 2009 10:51 PM