Source: http://www.emerald.ie

Mike from Techdirt is researching on a distributed backup systems which is in my perception a great area for a new venture. Backups and distributed file systems aren't such big deals anymore, or? Why has nobody taken this commercial?

" Having lost way too many hard-drives in the last couple years, I've become pretty focused on backup systems, and (judging from a few conversations here at DEMOmobile) it's a subject that a lot of people are interested in. Bob Cringely's latest column is another one of his "big idea for a company" suggestions that he simply tosses out and hopes someone builds: a peer-to-peer distributed backup system. The idea is pretty simple. You download some backup software which encrypts the data you want to backup, breaks it up into little chunks and moves it out over a peer-to-peer network. The amount of data you can backup is limited by the amount you agree to store yourself. In Cringely's plan, this whole thing should cost $3.95/month. Of course, you'd need to distribute many copies of the various pieces to make sure that there aren't chunks missing -- which will also mean that many people will need to be in the system before it's really all that reliable. Obviously, some people will freak out about chunks of their data (even if they are encrypted) sitting on random hard drives out there). In the meantime, it appears Cringely doesn't use Google, because a quick search on the topic suggests at least some people are already working on this type of technology."