PogoPlug puts your USB drive on the net

PogoPlug is here at CES demonstrating their upcoming (March) product which from my point of view is the best I’ve ever seen in that category. Basically it’s a fairly easy concept, a tiny (and a bit ugly – even Jed the VP of Products could not disagree on that one) box that you power upu, connect your USB drive, a network cable to your home router, and that’s it, your drive is available.
You can access it either through an smooth Ajax web interface hosted by pogoplg where you can browse your content just like it it were local, indeed the box has an embedded processor to help with on-the-fly data processing to save your limited tiny upload bandwidth while keeping the experience optimum. If you prefere, a small deamon can run on your PC and mount the drive just like if it were local.
The real difference here comes from the software which is really amazing compared to what other vendors such as Netgear, LaCie or Linksys have been providing. The whole experience is really smooth and simple which is what an end-user is looking for.
The box will be retailed at 79USD and reminds me a lot of the RiiMOTE project we used to work on. Preorder will be up soon on their website.