Journal Entry
Mojopac and carry-and-go personal computing
On a panel in Boskone I said I was intrigued by the idea of putting your operating system and important files on a portable storage device (like a 16 gig USB thumb drive on a necklace) or on a small wallet sized hard drive (like your iPod).
Mojopac lets you do this with your iPod and your computer.
The idea is you boot off your iPod. Then shut the computer down, take your iPod. Next time you use a computer, any computer, you whip out your iPod and plug it in and restart the computer to work in the same environment you left.
Slick. I like seeing my calls ring true like that.
(link found via Biz Opps weblog)
Filed under the topic Tech: Computers on February 27th 2007 at 2:54 pm. You can subscribe to the RSS feed for this entry to keep track of comments. You can also use to trackback.
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Tobias is a Caribbean-born SF/F novelist who lives in Ohio.
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# Arctic Rising – Tor Books (Feb. 2012)
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Her
The Shackles of Freedom (with Mike Resnick)
Necahual
Four Eyes
Aerophilia
Shoah Sry (with Ilsa J. Bick [pdf]
Audio
1. Dave Klecha on Feb 27th, 2007 at 4:19 pm
Pardon me while I go all geeky…
It’s interesting to see how the battle between distributed apps and local computing is shaking out, almost like there’s a confluence between the two. Storage gets smaller and cheaper almost daily, so it’s easier to “lug” around all your work, music, TV shows, etc., but Google’s suite of apps makes it much easier to work anywhere in the precise environment that you like, all saved on their servers.
Raises the inevitable Big Brother concerns about data privacy and whatnot. But if I can keep all my data on my physical person and use the same apps and such wherever I am, at whatever computer I’m on… that’s freedom, there.
My only real hangup is that MojoPac is Windows XP. I’m too in love with my Mac OS X interface, these days.
2. Tobias Buckell on Feb 27th, 2007 at 5:14 pm
Yeah, OS-X for me as well, although I do fantasize about the semi-secret portable user directory project getting married to the iPod. *drool* I’ve kicked around the idea of using an iPod as my OS-X user directory, but I’m just not quite sure yet of the logistics.
3. Dave Klecha on Feb 27th, 2007 at 8:30 pm
I would need to dump music off my iPod to make that work. But that’s what I get for having a library already too big to fit on my poor little 30GB model. (Of course, a lot of that is the wife’s ’80s hair/arena rock collection which I’m not always as interested in.)
But I can see it.
For that to be more than a novel backup method, though, I’d have to have more than one Mac to use–not a reality just yet, though I’m scraping my pennies together for a MacBook Pro.
4. Steve Buchheit on Feb 27th, 2007 at 9:22 pm
I seem to remember a white paper about having networked computers and remote user interfaces, carrying some RFI device, and any computer you sit at (or walk up to) instantly conforms to your interface preferences and with access to your work/files. This was back in the mid nineties. I think that could be changed to carrying the data with you, and having a higher bandwidth version of bluetooth connect to your data pack, interfacing with any terminal (oh, new version of plug and play).
5. Jack on Feb 28th, 2007 at 2:31 am
Old technology idea recycled and aimed at a new generation. Linux users have been doing this for about 2 years. Simply put a distro of Linux on a USB drive, make it bootable, then run your PC off it.
Even the $100 Laptop is going to be bootable from Flash memory.
Not a new idea. Sorry.
6. Tobias Buckell on Feb 28th, 2007 at 4:22 am
I didn’t say it was new, Jack, so your tone is not entirely welcome. I foresee it happening in widespread use with usable flash prices and high amounts of memory as well as 1 inch drives making this usable for the common user, and showed a link to something a regular consumer could use. A handful of linux users do not a trend make.
7. Ryan on Feb 28th, 2007 at 6:43 am
I see this becoming even more common and useful as more and more end-user applications are moved online. I already do all of my email, calendar, to-do lists, journaling, photo management and even word processing online, so all my portable drive would really need is a web browser.
8. Dave Klecha on Feb 28th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
I knew a friend who put a Linux distro on a Zip disk and booted to that ten years ago. He used it to run an IRC server while he was working the counter at 7-11 so he and his friends could take about their car mods.
He was going into genetics, of course.
9. Tobias Buckell on Mar 1st, 2007 at 1:57 pm
Yeah, that’s true, Ryan. I prefer the devices that synchronize the info and let me access it on a program and on a website.