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By Evan Ackerman

Well, okay, maybe it’s not literally zero steps. You do have to plug something in and go to a website. But in practically zero steps, you can turn any USB hard drive into a networked hard drive that’s accessible from absolutely anywhere, without going through all of the complicated and nausea inducing networking drama that’s usually required to do something like that.

Pogoplug is a piece of hardware that looks like one of those A/C adapters we all hate because they’re huge and they take up a bunch of outlets. On the bottom, it’s got a USB port, and an ethernet port. You attach your USB HD to the Pogoplug, and the Pogoplug to your router. Then you go to the Pogoplug website, set up an account, and you’re done. You now have access to your drive just like it was physically plugged into your computer, except it works like that from anywhere you have internet (it just might be a little slower). You can even get at your files via an iPhone app.

I got a demo of the Pogoplug at CES yesterday, and it seems to work exactly as advertised. There was a drive showing up on the demo computer as local network storage, except that the physical location of the drive was in Arkansas or something. It’s completely, impressively transparent. The file browsers online and on the iPhone are simple to use, and I’m told the security is excellent. Oh, and you can even hook up multiple USB drives to one Pogoplug using a USB hub.

Pogoplug is on pre-order at the moment for $79, and even though Pogoplug is also a service, there’s no subscription fee. Look for it in March of this year.

[ Pogoplug ]

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By Evan Ackerman

ShowStoppers Macworld, which was the only selection of exhibitors I had a chance to see since I had to get my ass out to Vegas for CES, was kinda disappointing. There were perhaps 15 exhibitors in a room which felt the size of a small closet, and most of them were selling services of one type or another. We don’t generally like to write about services, mostly because they don’t tend to come with switches or buttons or LEDs or anything. But, there were two things that caught my eye:

Truphone is a VoIP company (i.e. works on the iPod touch) that specializes in cheap international calls. Much like Skype, Truphone users can call each other for free over the internet, and pay a little bit per minute to call regular phone numbers. Truphone bases its rates on your phone number and the number of the phone you’re calling, not your physical location. So, if you’re in Azerbaijan with your US based cellphone and you want to call your friend in the US, Truphone bills you for a US to US call. Downside is, if you’re in Azerbaijan and want to call across the street, it works the other way. What I found entertaining, though, is that Truphone has predefined call rates for Antarctica, which is not only not a country, but I’m not entirely sure that it HAS cell service, much less landlines. But if it does, $2 a minute is probably pretty damn cheap to call there.

One more mildly interesting thing, after the jump.

The other potentially useful thing I saw was some data recovery software from a company called Stellar. The Stellar Phoenix software is (the PR rep assured me) able to recover your data from just about any problem short of physical destruction of the medium, including “accidental format, virus problems, software malfunction, file/directory deletion, unexpected shutdown, or even sabotage.” Kinky.

The Phoenix software is totally free to try… If you use it, and it finds your lost data, it’ll show you a little teaser of it, and then it costs $99 if you actually want it back. Yeah, that’s a lot, but if you lose pictures or music or important work stuff, it could be a small price to pay to have it restored.

[ TruPhone ]
[ Stellar Phoenix ]

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