Bruce Johnson of ProVideo Coalition wrote about something called the Pogo Plug today and it grabbed my attention. My first thought was, “I already have a Mobile Me account and a DropBox account, what do I need another cloud-based storage solution for?” Then I did some research. It turns out that this one is a little different.

I like backing things up and I am happy with my Mobile Me and DropBox accounts, but there are some issues. Mobile Me is about $100/year for 20 gigs of storage but it is always slow for me.  DropBox is faster, and it’s free, but it only provides 2 gigs. You can purchase additional storage from DropBox but I really hate monthly fees so I’m always looking for different solutions.  This is a different solution.

The Pogo Plug is a device that connects a USB hard drive to the internet.  That’s it.  You can plug any size USB hard drive into the Pogo Plug, connect the Pogo Plug to your router and have (seemingly) unlimited storage. Just sign up for a free account at pogoplug.com and your off. The Pogo Plug website acts as your interface between you or your client and the files on your hard drive.  Now, I have tried other network attached storage devices before, but getting them to cooperate via FTP has always been a hassle.  This promises to be idiot-proof because it uses a web based interface.

Through the web interface, you can upload files, download files, email attachments directly to the attached hard drive, share links with clients or create an open link for public viewing. Plus, you can use it as an FTP for clients.  All they have to do is email you files and they show up on a designated folder on the hard drive attached to the Pogo Plug – after some setting up, of course.  There is also a desktop client (just like Mobile Me and DropBox) so that you can drag and drop files to the attached hard drive.  To me this is exactly what I have been missing – especially since I had to go back to the office and fix an upload last week because my DropBox was full. I don’t want to do that again.

I have been reading Bruce’s articles for years so I jumped in head-first and purchased one for $47 from Buy. com – I figured, why not? Let me be the test subject here and write about it for you. The regular price is around $100 so if you’re a gambler (like me) I would take a look at it today, while Buy has the reduced price.  Check out Bruce’s blog for the link and the special offer – the link is at the bottom.

I’m hoping that it works like I want it to work – I really hate going back to the office at night to fix stuff.