The PogoPlug, reviewed earlier this year, is a simple no-fuss NAS solution. PogoPlug offers a lot of bang for the buck, costing only $129.
Features include:
Four USB ports
New address book feature
Gloabl search across all drives
Plus all the PogoPlugs associated with a single account
Here’s the full press release, for your enjoyment:
Second Generation Pogoplug™ Unveiled Today
Next-generation Hardware Design and Software Provide Enhanced Storage, Multimedia and Social Media Capabilities
San Francisco, Calif. – November 20, 2009 – Cloud Engines, Inc. unveiled the second generation of the award winning Pogoplug multimedia sharing device today giving consumers more flexibility to store personal content safely in the home and access, manage, and share it from anywhere on the Internet. The new Pogoplug hardware sports a new design boasting multiple USB ports supporting up to 4 external drives for expanded data capacity. The new Pogoplug also gives users improved sharing capabilities, an easy drag-and-drop interface to create engaging multi-media slide shows, seamless media playback, and enhanced sharing with friends on Facebook, Twitter and MySpace.
Pogoplug acts like a gateway from your home or office through the Internet. It allows you to access, share and even stream your personal digital media directly to anybody, anywhere in the world. Your content always remains physically in your home or office, making it secure, convenient and available on your terms. Pogoplug is perfect for those individuals with increasingly mobile lifestyles and small businesses in need of simple, inexpensive mobile data access solutions.
“The reaction to the Pogoplug has been incredible. By listening to user feedback and following our own product roadmap, we are bringing a great second-generation product that gives our customers access to a host of new features that both improve the function of the Pogoplug, and add to the fun of using it as well.” said Daniel Putterman, CEO of Cloud Engines, Inc. “We are committed to giving our customers the best way to access their data from anywhere in the world, pushing the envelope with both product quality and design aesthetic. The result is what you see here today.”
NEW HARDWARE
The new Pogoplug design retains the simplicity and ease of use of the original while listening to consumer feedback and adding the ability to directly connect up to 4 external hard drives at once. The resulting product boasts an improved design with greatly improved functionality for users with multiple drives and an increasing need for easy synching and sharing of their digital libraries. This upgrade turns the Pogoplug into an even more prominent feature in the modern digital home or small business.
NEW FEATURES Automatically Synchronize Photos, Videos, Music and Other Selected Content
Users can synchronize their Pogoplug with their PC or Mac to automatically import new content from popular applications such as iTunes, Windows Media Player, and iPhoto. This feature allows Pogoplug owners to “set it and forget it” and always have access to new photos, videos and music from anywhere on the Internet.
Drag-and-Drop Music and Photo Slideshows
Users can easily create and share fun and engaging slideshows using their stored photos, videos and music. Creating a slideshow with Pogoplug is as simple as drag and drop, and sharing these slideshows is just as easy as ever. Once a user’s link is shared and viewed, their slideshow will immediately begin with the photos, videos and music they selected, playing seamlessly in the viewer’s browser.
Easier Sharing with Pogoplug Address Book
Pogoplug Address Book greatly improves the speed and ease of use of sharing with a user’s friends and family. Pogoplug automatically remembers all email addresses entered in a user’s previous shares – even if that share no longer exists – and makes them available in an easy to use address book to make sharing truly one click away.
Global Search Across Multiple Drives and Pogoplugs
With support for multiple drives on a single Pogoplug (and multiple Pogoplugs on the same account) Pogoplug has added “global” search support across all of a user’s Pogoplugs and drives. Search filters are now a distinct feature, allowing users to view all of their photos, videos and music in a single organized view, or to search for a specific file across all Pogoplugs and drives.
Organize Your Music, Photos and Videos
Pogoplug automatically displays music by Album, Artist and Genre, and shows cover art for quick access to a user’s favorite music. Photos are now displayed by photo timeline and videos are only a click away, including the ability to watch a preview in the thumbnail itself.
Play movies directly from my.pogoplug.com, or even to the iPhone
Pogoplug now supports the playback of videos directly from a Pogoplug, with support for the most popular cameras, video cameras and mobile phones. Movies can be shared and viewed directly from the Pogoplug website – or even from an iPhone!
Pricing and Availability
We are currently taking Pre-Orders for Pogoplug at www.pogoplug.com Units will ship before the end of the year – just in time for the Holiday Season. The Pogoplug has a suggested retail price of $129, with no additional service fees.
ABOUT THE POGOPLUG
The Pogoplug is a device that connects up to 4 external hard drives to the Internet. It is designed for consumers who have an external hard drive and have high speed Internet. Consumers can securely access and share all of their content [Files, Photos, and Video] from any Web browser or enabled mobile device with no additional monthly fees. Free your inner drive.
ABOUT CLOUD ENGINES, INC.
Founded in 2007 by experienced entrepreneurs from the digital media and security industries, Cloud Engines is located in San Francisco, California. The company was formed with a mission to change the way personal content is stored and distributed over the Internet. The Cloud Engines philosophy is that by making a product simple, open and affordable, the community will participate in making it better. For more information, please visit our Web site, www.cloudengines.com.
Sony has announced that they are planning on launching their own Apple iTunes competitor which will be an online store selling music, movies, and books as well as other downloadable applications for mobile products. This does sound very familiar, as Sony has already tried to compete with iTunes on the Sony Connect product which is no longer in existance. Sony’s top executives didn’t specify when the Internet store, tentatively called Sony Online Service, would go live or what it would look like. But the online storefront, announced at a management strategy meeting in Tokyo, is likely to bear some similarities to Apple’s iTunes store and would be Sony’s most ambitious attempt to link its products to its own vast library of digital content.
Current Chairman and CEO Howard Stringer has been set the mission to for a cohirant software strategy since taking over the top job in mid-2006.
The global recession has pummeled Sony’s businesses and left its earnings in a shambles. With consumers cutting back on electronics, Sony says it’s heading for its second straight loss. This fiscal year through March 2010, Sony predicts an operating loss of $674 million, from last year’s $2.6 billion loss. Sales are expected to slide 6%.
Sony executives refused to say how much it plans to invest in the new online service. Kazuo Hirai, executive vice-president for networked products and services, said the service would be based on Sony’s PlayStation Network. The Web-based gateway for PlayStation 3 video game consoles has been Sony’s most successful push into online commerce so far. Launched three years ago, the PSN has 33 million registered users and sells thousands of downloadable games, TV shows, and movies. This fiscal year, Sony expects the service to bring in $500 million in revenues, triple the previous year’s total. Last month, Sony signed a deal with Netflix that lets PS3 users stream movies and other content through the gaming console. “There’s some debate as to whether all PlayStation Network users would migrate to the new service,” Hirai said. “We would target quite a few of them.”
Will this new online store save Sony and get them back on track to the revenues of previous years? Will this also mean that Sony will remove their music from iTunes in the aim to get users to quickly adopt their new service?
Google Image Search is used by most of us when we want to find an image for our blogs our websites – or even our desktop wallpapers. I’d like to introduce to you a new type of image search (currently in Google Labs) called Image Swirl. It’s a new way of displaying search results and it make the whole process much easier and more…fun!
When you first search for a term, the results are divided up into categories and are all stacked together as shown below.
When you click on one of these stacks the results are shown in a swirl format like below. At first, only one circle is displayed but then you click on an image that circle is moved further down the swirl and a new circle appears. This process repeats itself until your left with a huge swirl of results and the main circle has only one image left in it. When you click on that you’re brought to that image’s page.
A cool new way of searching for images. Check it out here.
Cross Fire is a completely free online multiplayer First Person Shooting game.
Gameplay:
It is very clear that the developers have aimed to just build a normal game that everyone will want to play. No photon lasers, No energy fields, Just some blood and guts.
Due to the developers spending less time on the flashy features, they spent a lot more time tweaking the features and trying to provide a complete and finished gaming experience.
Game Modes:
Search and Destroy: You win by either eliminating all members of the oposing team, or by completing set objectives (e.g. defusing or planting a bomb). This game mode is usually played in multiple rounds. The team with the most rounds won being the victor.
Team Deathmatch: An explanation shouldn’t be needed here. Eliminating as many members of the enemy party as possible is your sole mission. There’s only one round, with instant respawns for whoever is killed. The victor is the team that reaches the kill limit first.
Elimination: Similar to Team Deathmatch, only without instant respawn. The team that manages to eliminate all members of the enemy party wins a round. A set number of rounds needs to be won to win the game.
Ghost Mode: This is an innovating and unique game mode, newly introduced by Cross Fire. The Black List members are invisible, but have only a knife and C4. They need to blow up a target, but can be heard by the Global Risk members, who are visible, but have access to all weapons.
Download Cross Fire
Cross Fire is a free 268 MB download. It’s intensive action, but light graphics ensure great fun on both the stronger and weaker computer systems.
We thought we would let everyone know what our favourite five blackberry applications are.
Facebook For Blackberry
Everyone knows what Facebook is! Facebook lets people share pictures, messages and online applications with their friends. Facebook seems to be everywhere and they even have a Facebook application for the Blackberry. A really neat feature of this app is their recent update which allows you to automatically link Facebook profile pictures of your friends with their contact entry in your Blackberry’s address book. You can download Facebook for Blackberry on your Blackberry’s browser here: http://www.facebook.com/blackberry.
Twitterberry
If you use Twitter and have a Blackberry, then Twitterberry is for you. With it, you can send out Twitter updates quickly and easily as well as see your friends timeline, view replies to your Tweets and direct message your friends. Download Twitterberry here: http://orangatame.com/ota/twitterberry/. Crenk Twitter account – http://twitter.com/crenk
Blackberry Appworld
Made directly by Blackberry, Appworld allows you to browse through a wide variety of many other Blackberry apps and download and install them on the spot from the application. Many different developers contribute their applications to the library that’s available for download. The limitation to this application is that you must have a free PayPal account in order to get through checkout of some apps. You can download Appworld from your Blackberry’s browser here: http://www.blackberry.com/appworld
Viigo
Viigo is a feature-rich application which lets you view news & RSS feeds, audio clips & podcasts, stocks & money data, weather and more. From the one application, you can do a lot of things and browse many blog RSS feeds, see sports scores, view local weather, and even read books. Viigo also bills their software as “the one app you’ll never want to be without” because of its wide range of features it makes available to you. You can download Viigo from your Blackberry browser here: http://www.getviigo.com.
Pandora
Pandora, has a great free Blackberry application which allows you to do almost everything you can do on the desktop version except right on your phone. You can create new stations, listen to already created ones, rate songs and more. Download it from your Blackberry’s browser here: http://www.pandora.com.
Last week I did a post about how the Internet was getting all decked out in preparation for Black Friday. Well this morning when I checked my e-mail I had a newsletter from Amazon Affiliates who I occasionally use on my blog. They were pretty much telling me that if I wanted to make money now was the time to do it.
They have prepare special banners such as the one to the left and set up a special Black Friday section. What’s more (I’m sure this will please many bloggers reading this) affiliates earn 15% for every sale they refer on Black Friday – not bad.
Their entire new range of banners and widgets is available to view here.
Online sales for the week of Black Friday are set to rise into the millions as big sites such as EBay and Amazon prepare.
Is it really worth standing in line and charging around malls when you could do it all at home?
So much has happened in the last few months with regards to Skype. eBay which bought Skype for $2.6 million back in 2005 has finally settled its litigation with Skype’s founders, and now the sale and restructure has been finalised.
The result: Skype now owns all of its technology, the founders received 14% of Skype and two seats on the Board of Directors, eBay keeps 30% of Skype, and the rest is owned by outside investors.
1. eBay now owns 30% of Skype, outside investors (including Silver Lake, Andreessen Horowitz, and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board) own 70%.
2. 14% or so is owned by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, the founders of Skype who have been added to the investor pool.
3. The Skype deal values the company at $2.75 billion, which is a little higher than the price eBay paid for Skype in 2005.
4. Joltid Limited is an investor in Skype. Joltid is owned by the Skype founders and was a major part of the legal dispute between eBay and the founders. The company held a key P2P technology that Skype now owns as part of this deal.
Thats the full recap on the new situation for Skype. Hopefully now Skype can move forward and start more innovations with their product.
Twitter have just announced the official release of a French version of the popular micro-blogging service. Over the past couple of months they have been aiming to release the service in Spanish, French, German and Italian. So far, they got Spanish completed and now they got the French version ready just in time for le Web – a massive tech conference in France held annually.
They released a blog post on their official blog but fittingly, it was all in French, so here is a rough translation for you:
The French twitteurs golds can already track people and companies they are familiar. Whether you attended @lepicerie or @lopera for your gastronomic outings, you read @lemondefr way to work or you listen @theteenagers on the way home or you’re a fan of @CanadiensMTL, there is a wealth of information useful to discover at any time.
To see Twitter in French, just check your settings and select “French” from the menu.
One last thing: some of the Twitter team will be in Paris on 9 and 10 November for LeWeb conference, presented by @loic. The specialists of our platform, Ryan Sarver (@rsarver) and Marcel Molina (@noradio) will present, among other things, a session developers. If you are in the region these days, please join us!
So now Twitter is available in English, Japanese, Spanish and French. Next? Those zany Germans!
Yesterday, Google released public information about its new Chrome OS at the official press event. They showed videos of the OS and gave real-time demonstrations to reporters.
It looks a lot like the popular browser of the same name. It uses tabs like those in the browser instead of buttons in the task bar. The colour scheme is also very bright with a lack of colour. This may pose problems for laptop users in terms of battery life.
Here are a few screenshots to give you an idea:
I guess this would be the equivalent of the start menu in Windows. It’s called the applications panel and it’s where you launch programs from. May of these are affiliated with Google as you would expect such as YouTube, Google Reader and GMail however they also have others such as Facebook, Twitter and their old rival, Yahoo Mail.
The Chrome browser is integrated fully with the OS, as one would expect. Other Google services such as Google Talk also work seamlessly with it by launching discreet pop-ups and notifications when user interaction is needed.
Here is chess, an example of an app, running in a tab in the new OS. All apps can either run as a tab or can be viewed in full-screen.
There’s a lot of sites out there that offer collaboration tools. From the simplified office collaboration tools like Google Documents and Zoho Writer, to the more sophisticated like Basecamp. In the end each of them appeal to different markets, different segments of the industry and each of them function differently. So with those options we choose one that best fits our needs and we run with it. But what if there was a sexier option, something with real personality, but still maintaining all the same functionality?
Now there is. Introducing WIPspace, the creative collaboration tool that offers up multiple levels of engagement in a sleek, sexy, yet functional package. The image blow is a visual diagram of all the things WIPspace is capable of.
You feeling it yet? There’s real fire under this engine, and the multitude of offerings it has makes it a very robust package. Working on projects or movies, this space allows you to fully interact with off-site teams, and engage the client all at the same time.
Be sure to watch the videos and test drive it. Let us know what you think and how it compares with Basecamp or some of the other collaboration tools out there.
It’s not uncommon for us here at Crenk to come across web applications that do the same thing, the only differences are that some might do it better or worse than another. In this case, the team has come across a very interesting music listening application called TubeRadio.
Once again for the music lover in all of us, this just astounds me. Now it does not have the capability to tap into your own stored music, but as powerful as this search engine is, this could very well replace my Pandora or Last.Fm efforts, even if only for a little while. TubeRadio calls itself the Youtube for music. After you see the video below, you’ll know what I mean.
So what do you think? They search is amazing and very thorough. I’m surprised at how music it can find, and even more so by how seamless the integration of listening and/or watching your music can be. During the video the speaker mentions it being like your personal MTV. Yeah, MTV, from when it used to actually play music.
My experience with TubeRadio has been a good one. I’ve found what I want to listen to, it streams everything smoothly with little problem. In my opinion the only thing really missing is the ability to tap into my own music, but I can overlook that for now since I’m lining up some great music of my own, and of other recommended playlists.
Traffic analysis is one of the most important parts of understanding your sites and its readers. Im a firm believer that sites and blogs need to really get to know their audience and offer them whatever they want.
GoSquared has launched their new LiveStats product in which they are trying to combined with their exsiting SellAds and GetSeen products. LiveStats is a real-time traffic monitoring app for small and medium sized websites. If you head over to http://gosquared.com, you can signup and then add your site. Once accepted you will be able to see in real time users visiting your site and their basic information.
Information available includes:
Browser
Country
Operating System
URL
Enterance Source
There are a few additional options, but instead of running through everything I just thought I would add their introduction video:
The PogoPlug, reviewed earlier this year, is a simple no-fuss NAS solution. PogoPlug offers a lot of bang for the buck, costing only $129.
Yesterday, Google released public information about its new Chrome OS at the official press event. They showed videos of the OS and gave real-time demonstrations to reporters.
There’s a lot of sites out there that offer collaboration tools. From the simplified office collaboration tools like 
It’s not uncommon for us here at Crenk to come across web applications that do the same thing, the only differences are that some might do it better or worse than another. In this case, the team has come across a very interesting music listening application called 
