14 DAY TRIAL // Apple users will be the first to gain access to a pre-alpha version of Heartbeat, a private social network meant to facilitate data transfer – including files – without having to rely on servers.
The idea sounds ambitious, to say the least. The people behind Heartbeat plan to roll out a test version of the network in November, and OS X Yosemite users will be the first to try it out.
“Clouds are centralised. They’re owned and controlled by someone else. And they can spy on you,” says the team behind the effort. “We are building a new post-cloud platform where you are the network. It’s called the Indienet.”
Project Stratosphere and a smartphone
The initiative is dubbed Project Stratosphere, for obvious reasons (beyond the clouds). Besides the social network that they’re planning for us, they also have a smartphone in the works. The phone is expected to be as private as Heartbeat itself.
“We are not waiting for the phone to be released to launch the network and the ecosystem. And yet every decision we take in the design and development of the network and the ecosystem will take the design of the phone into consideration,” according to the indie team.
What Heartbeat is all about
Heartbeat is described as “a social network client that is private by default.” As a P2P (peer-to-peer) service, it will employ “a distributed synchronisation engine dubbed Pulse to swap data back and forth.”
“You can use Heartbeat to share your thoughts, photos, or anything else privately across all your devices. You can also share privately with your friends, or publish publicly for the whole world to see via the Web,” the team explains.
The implications for this are as far reaching as they are concerning. Piracy would certainly be back on the menu, not to mention adult content and everything else that tastes good but is not good for you. Then again, you’d basically cut out the intermediaries, making yourself (and yourself only) guilty of any wrongdoing.
Coming to OS X first
“In November, we are launching a very early pre-alpha of Heartbeat for OS X Yosemite users and for developers to play with. Other platforms and further updates will follow,” reads the announcement.
That’s 37 days to go (at the time of this writing), according to the countdown timer over at ind.ie. OS X Yosemite will be deployed to the masses this month, supposedly around the 20th.