The guys and girls at Cloud Engines are my new best friends!
As a roaming freelancer (working on contracts in other people’s offices, working from home and, sometimes, working from bed) the problem of where to keep my data has always been a difficult one to solve. Not any more.
Pogoplug is a great solution. It’s got 4 USB slots, connects to a home WiFi-router and makes a homepage for that drive on the web. Yes it really is that simple… and now I have access to my portable hard drives wherever I am in the world.
So at home, right now, the Pogoplug is connected to my backup disk (I run a backup every Saturday night). And today I’m working from a Cafe in Brighton. My laptop has a 250GB hard drive which is plenty for my operating system, applications and core project folders but I also like to keep it clean (and safe) by moving old project files to a backup.
But what if an old client calls me when I’m working out of my office and she urgently needs some files she deleted accidentally? Previously I’d have had to have given up my comfy cafe corner and trudge home to get the file to email to the client.
Not anymore… I can see the entire hard drive right here on my Mac. Hey I can also see the entire hard drive on my iPhone. So… even if I don’t have a laptop I can find and even share that file with the client – I can give her a link to the folder she needs and she can download the files her self, much better (and safer) than emailing the files anyway.
Bliss!
Already a huge success in the US, this fabulous multimedia sharing device gives us way more flexibility than we’re used to.
Online storage is great but being able to store personal (or work) content safely in the home, and to be able to access, manage, and share it (on your own terms) from anywhere on the internet is an absolute God-send — especially for the lazy, the disorganised or… anyone who has been taken by surprise by the sudden need for something important that you’ve left at home.
The Pogoplug hardware has a chirpy, quirky pink design — way better than the boring black and grey boxes we keep being given — and supporting up to 4 external drives means you could, in theory, have access to over 8TB of data, files, movies (and more) via the internet.
The sharing capabilities are pretty funky too. I’ve not tried plugging in a camera directly but I can imagine photographers using the drag-and-drop interface to create slide-shows of content, available on the web, but all coming from images on their camera’s hard drive!
Media playback is pretty good. It takes a while to encode a folder of movies but, once done, all you need is a computer and an internet connection and you can access short previews of all your films and TV shows… once you’ve found the one you want you can download and watch anywhere in the world — think business trips and airport lounges… if you’ve got Wifi (or even 3G) access you can watch your stuff wherever you are.
And you can do all that sharing stuff they kids like to do with those Facebook, Twitter and MySpace type sites.
Pogoplug is a really fantastic gateway from home or office through the web — allowing you get stream not just to yourself but to others… it’s personal publishing platform running of your hard disks at home — the possibilities are endless.
Pogoplug is great for freelancers and contractors with their increasingly mobile work and lifestyles and perfect for small businesses in need of simple, inexpensive mobile data access solutions.
from www.pogoplug.com
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