“On My Disk: Search Integration” PROJECT
🤔Did you know that mainstream data processing can compromise your privacy?
Discover how the NGI Search program is making a groundbreaking difference by supporting the development of cutting-edge algorithms for enhanced privacy and security in our exclusive interview.
In this blog post, we will interview Alexey Volkov and Aurelie Herbelot, from the “On my Disk: Search Integration” project, who have shared with us some of their experiences since they participated in the NGI Search Project and what goals they want to achieve in the long term.
Are you curious about this exciting project? So, this interview is a must-read whether you are a web privacy enthusiast or simply interested in cutting-edge technologies to help you make the internet safer 🔐
Can you introduce yourself and your company, and explain what makes you different?
We are Alexey Volkov and Aurelie Herbelot.
👨🎓Alexey is the founder and CEO of On My Disk. This personal cloud storage system lets users host files locally on their private devices while providing secure access to selected third parties.
👩🎓 Aurelie is the instigator and lead developer of the PeARS project. PeARS is an open-source search engine that can be run locally inside a browser. It allows individuals to index and search Web pages and to share their indexed data with others, bypassing centralised search engines.
In the NGI Search programme context, On My Disk and PeARS have partnered to provide a decentralised search system over personal cloud data. The joint project will provide On My Disk users with a seamless search of documents across networked devices. It will also be a foundational stone for a new ecosystem combining private hosting and distributed Web search.
The cooperation distinguishes itself from solutions that require environmentally damaging energy consumption, such as blockchain-based systems. The On My Disk and PeARS code stacks have been tested on single-board computers, and their respective teams are actively researching green networking solutions.
What services or products do you offer?
On My Disk offers a user-friendly solution to the problem of setting up a private cloud. Its software presents an innovative networking technology which provides instant remote access to files stored on user’s devices.
The software offers 100% privacy and can be set up on a home PC or as a DIY solution on a single-board computer. On My Disk is also available as a built-in app called “Innbox Share” on WiFi routers of the product family “Innbox”, developed by technology partner Kontron.
This app turns any external drive connected to a WiFi router into cloud storage, an entirely plug-and-play solution!
PeARS offers an open-source codebase to developers who require an easily deployable search engine for local problems. Its ‘Lite’ version is a robust Web application offering various indexing solutions via a browser interface. Once installed, the system lets the user index content in multiple ways: for instance, from a list of URLs, browser bookmarks, or a local text corpus. Indexed documents can immediately be searched in an entirely private fashion. PeARS also offers tools to efficiently train search models in any language, making the framework suitable for multilingual settings.
What milestones have you achieved so far since your project launch?
Since the project’s launch in June, we have achieved our first milestone, which involved a proof of concept to ensure that the On My Disk and PeARS systems could be integrated. We have additionally revised and improved how we access searchable file attributes over the distributed file system to increase organisation and provide a smoother user experience.
We are now working towards our second milestone, which focuses on training the PeARS model to work on the wide variety of data stored by On My Disk users. This is challenging from a machine learning perspective since we cannot access our users’ privately stored data or directly train and evaluate the PeARS model over the correct data distribution.
To alleviate this problem, we have built a development pipeline over artificially generated data – a common practice where data sparsity hinders the training process. We are now evaluating the quality of our search results and refining our algorithms to provide the best search experience to the On My Disk user base.
What have you achieved with your idea thanks to the NGI Search project?
NGI Search gave us the resources to set up a new collaboration between PeARS and On My Disk and hire a team dedicated to making our new system work. But even more importantly, it has given us a frame to push the idea of private file storage and search systems into the open.
Mainstream solutions involve hardware and algorithms that process data in a centralised way, thereby impacting the privacy and security of end-users. Moving away from this situation requires building new types of algorithms. Supporting a prestigious funding programme like NGI Search makes this challenging transitional phase easier.
What are your goals for the middle/long-time future?
In the mid-term, we want to increase our user base and find more technology partners like Kontron, i.e. telecom equipment vendors, consumer electronics manufacturers, and/or service providers, interested in providing the On My Disk platform as a service for their customers.
Thinking of the long-term future, we are already exploring further interactions between On My Disk and PeARS. One possible avenue is integrating energy-efficient AI systems into the framework, which would help label and search extensive picture collections, music files, and external Web content.
Any piece of advice for those who are looking for public funding?
Find someone who shares your values and vision, is passionate about innovating, and can help you make your great idea even more significant💡
Join your forces and apply!
Writing a funding proposal is an ideal way to crystallise your ideas and develop a realistic working plan. So, the experience is always worthwhile, regardless of the outcome. When writing, be sure to mention your previous achievements and show how they will help you work towards the goals of your new project.
Finally, remember that you are applying for public funding. It is about improving the lives of the people in your community.
🔥So don’t be shy and show how your contribution will one day improve things!
