Last night I sent the Puttermans (the co-founders of Cloud Engines – the makers of Pogoplug) a note with a few ideas about features I’d like to see in the product. Included were requests for drop-dead simple integration with a few other products that I use including Sonos, Boxee, and AppleTV. As investors in Pogoplug, I’m an aggressive lead user and unapologetic fan boy – it’s just an incredible product with insane potential (how about them adjectives, eh?)
Dan Putterman sent me back a response that included words like UPnP and Rendezvous along with a link to OpenPogo – a new website aimed at “getting the most out of your Pogoplug.” The super cool thing is that Cloud Engines has nothing to do with this site – it was created by a user / fan / hacker that is building a series of guides for getting the most out of your Pogoplug. For example:
- OpenPogo-Base Installation + Package Manager: You need the package manager installed as a starting point.
- Web server: Lighttpd (and PHP): How about a Web server on your Pogoplug.
- MySQL: Installing MySQL on your Pogoplug!
Extremely cool.
This looks cool from a hacker perspective, but I still haven't seen the killer use case. What do you use it for?
Comment by Derek Scruggs — June 22, 2009 @ 2:32 pm
I guess the important feature is how it allows you to share documents out with private links etc…
Comment by JChauncey — June 22, 2009 @ 5:17 pm
What is wrong with these people at Cloud Engines allowing something like Open Pogo?
Seriously, don't I have enough work on my plate, not to be sidetracked even further with this?
I just got my new iPhone yesterday for Father's Day, how am I going to juggle the 5 minutes of goof off time I have everyday between work and kids and dogs, my pogoplug and my upgraded iphone. Its just wrong.
Comment by Brad Nickel — June 22, 2009 @ 8:23 pm
use case – Wife is sick of photos on 3 different PCs. I don't want to manage a central server, but I don't want to store them remotely. Moved all files there and pointed Drop Box at it for remote backups and TADA, my wife is off my back and can manage our thousands of photos all by herself as if they were on her hard drive.
Comment by Brad Nickel — June 22, 2009 @ 8:25 pm
The software for file sharing is pretty fine grained at this point and improving with every release.
Comment by Brad Feld — June 23, 2009 @ 12:22 am
Amy and I have multiple computers in multiple locations. We have 50 GB of Music and a ridiculous amount of photos. Pogoplug allows us to have a single drive (mapped to P:) available to each of us from any computer from anywhere on the Internet.
Comment by Brad Feld — June 23, 2009 @ 4:35 am
I am still trying to decide if there are any benefits to pogoplug over using my base station extreme's usb port to slave a drive.
Comment by JChauncey — June 23, 2009 @ 12:39 pm
From my perspective, one of the most exciting benefits is that Pogoplug elevates your home to "cloud" status. That means that all capabilities are available from anywhere on the Internet without a user ever having to think "where am I and will that work?"
Comment by dputterman — June 23, 2009 @ 2:21 pm
yeah, i think the downside to the ABSE is that the internet capability is only available if you ahve a mobile me account and a mac…
Hrm I may be ordering a pogoplug soon =)
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Comment by Lexington-Fayette — June 25, 2009 @ 2:26 pm
Any coupon codes available for PogoPlug?
Comment by Xenia — July 7, 2009 @ 3:29 am
Nope – don’t have any. C’mon – it’s only $99!
Comment by Brad Feld — July 7, 2009 @ 3:31 am
After reading up on this device, I was absolutely convinced it was worth the $100. Then I went to the site and dug in a little deeper. Being a Canadian, the $50+ for shipping killed the deal for me.
Hopefully someday this device (or an alternative) will make it to more mainstream sales channels.
Comment by krg — July 8, 2009 @ 12:21 am
Expect mainstream sales channels in the fall.
Comment by Brad Feld — July 8, 2009 @ 4:24 am
One of our Pogoplugs is now a web server: http://www.AzaleaRSS.com/Pogoplug/
Running Nginx and PHP on an 8GB flash drive! What fun.
Comment by Jerry Whiting — July 9, 2009 @ 10:59 pm
Awesome!
Comment by Brad Feld — July 10, 2009 @ 12:56 am