On the road to Bandol

I am currently the happy owner of a pocket hard drive that usually sits on my desk at work, and that I use both as a backup device for my home computer (I do that by hand, by bringing it home on an evening), and as a way to have access to my entire music and photo collection at work. USB 2.0 works just fine; I don’t even need an external power.

Now, many people have thought of wonderful applications for hard drives. In the past week, I looked at two of them, which go in completely opposite directions.

• The Globull is aimed at employees of large companies or governments, who need to move around with their entire work environments in their pocket, while still being able to use them in a secure environment. Quite impressive, I would just love to attack it. Of course, the price is undisclosed, and I don’t expect this thing to be cheap.
• The Pogoplug goes in the exact opposite directions. You plug a USB drive on your Pogoplug, then plug your Pogoplug on your network, and poof, your drive is on Internet. The device is dirt cheap ($99), and of course, reviewers are criticizing its security.

Here we are, with the typical issue. As a professional, my data requires security and a high-price device, while as an individual, I only get a simple device with no security. I admit that I am not being fair here, because these devices are very different, and they do very different things.

Still, I want a device that protects both my professional and my personal data with the appropriate level of security, while making it available anywhere anytime to anybody allowed to. I am sure that I can get close to that on the professional side, or more precisely I would be able to do that if I worked in a large company, ready to pay Bull enough money to do that. However, on the personal side, I have no solution. The Pogoplug is great, and a little more sophistication on the security side would make it a fine device.

We then get to the most interesting question: what happens if I plug my Globull on my Pogoplug?