sMoRTy71.com: I'm lovin' Pogoplug

I'm lovin' Pogoplug
Got my hands on a first-generation Pogoplug this week and wanted to share my first impressions.

First of all, if you're not familiar with Pogoplug, it is best described as a magical little box that allows you to share just about any USB hard drive over the internet. It does all of this for around $100.

Because I have way too many PCs and servers in my house with photos, video, music on them, I wanted to set up a common backup location for all of them while making all of that shared data available anywhere.

I'm using my Pogoplug to share my Drobo, which has 2TB of redundant storage, "in the cloud."

Set up was really simple. Plug the Pogoplug into a wall outlet (it looks like a big power adapter) then connect it via a USB cable to your hard drive and an ethernet cable to your router or switch. The final step is logging into the Pogoplug website to activate your device and create a web account to access your data through your browser.

Now, I can use a program like Sync Toy 2.1 from Microsoft to backup all my important files from each of my PCs to the Drobo over the network. Very handy.

It also allows me to stream music or other content to any internet-connected PC or mobile device (it has an app for iPhone). I've been using it all week to stream music to my laptop at the office.

One of my favorite features is being able to map the Pogoplug drive in Windows so you can just drag and drop files like you would with a local drive.

A second-generation Pogoplug has just been released. In addition to updating the look of the hardware, it will also add 3 more USB port so you can connect multiple USB hard drives. It retails for $129.