TrustFabric - Most ambitious startup ever

I find it quite puzzling that "cloud computing" is still so manual and (virtual) "server"-centric. Bumping up numbers in config is less work than gutting a rack to be sure, but surely there is room to apply Apple's hands-free design philosophies to cloud infrastructure?

Food for thought.

"Most ambitious startup ever" ...in South Africa, the article continues.

I really like the idea of being able to centralise all of my information and be able to control who has access to certain sections of it all from one dashboard.

Facebook has gone some of the way to doing this, with me being able to remove access to apps I've previously given access to; however, I'd like to be able to upload customize custom documents, such as my passport or proof of residence, and then be able to share them with specific companies.

It seems like TrustFabric may go some of the to enabling the above?

It feels ambitious in a different sense than for which I'd normally reserve the word. Ambitious in the sense that it will be a long journey. But it feels like the success or failure of this will be tied much more to whether the market is ready for it (and whether for security reasons it's feasible) than how much sweat goes into it.

I've kicked around this idea on and off for a number of years. I first remember having this in 2004, because I started to move - we moved 3 times in two years, between 3 states. Repeating the same stuff, registering for the same services, etc. all got rather tedious. By 2007/2008, this idea felt like it would dovetail nicely with openid, but that subsequently failed to take off.

Was it because of the decentralization aspect? Techies seem to be in love with 'decentralization' and 'federation' (witness the diaspora love last year), but average people aren't, and you need average people to be using a system like this in large quantities before companies who might use it have to take you seriously.

This scenario they are tackling is classic chicken and egg, and I'm not sure it's going to be solved outside of a major player like google, facebook or microsoft (or potentially LinkedIn, Apple or Yahoo, but both are longshots). The population at large is starting to grasp the concept of an online identity, as well as the benefits and challenges of controlling aspects of privacy over the web. I don't want to say it would be trivial, but certainly doable for FB or Google to give you a way to allow ID pulls from companies wanting to sync your data in to their CRM systems - they're already doing it with loads of games/apps. A bit more granularity and a nicer UI would go a long way in this space to not only owning and defining it, but preventing any serious competition from upstarts like trustfabric.

If TF can find a way of leveraging existing SN identities as a jumpstart, they may have something. But... for mass adoption, I fear the brand recognition is likely going to keep us tied to a FB/GOOG duopoly for a while.