Examancer

Several months ago I started working on ExaNotes as a lightweight personal tool to write, access, and search notes from one of the many computers I may use throughout the day. I told a good friend of mine about the simple web app I was building and she said it sounded like a great tool for keeping a journal. I asked her if she could help test the app by keeping a journal and she hesitated. As good of friends as we were the idea of me having access to her journal was not a comfortable one. The convenience of being able to access her journal from any computer was appealing but she didn’t want to trade control of her privacy for convenience. Her desire for privacy gave me the idea of developing a system that was so secure that even the developer or administrator of the tool could not access the content users of the application have stored within it.

I decided to use this as a chance to learn much more about building secure web applications and I spent a few hours diagramming the concept. Then, I spoke with my friend again. I explained the design to her and she agreed the design would keep her journal secure enough that she would feel comfortable testing it and using it. Read more »