Margaret Walsh

Have some extra USB hard drives you'd like to put to a good use? Though marketed primarily as a media-sharing device, the forthcoming second-generation Pogoplug is a cool and useful tool for sharing business information as well. How using them to create an Internet storage cloud for your company, yourself, or your family? The device was introduced earlier today.

It provides a hardware device and online service that together provide secure file access and sharing. Here's the pitch: For $129, Pogoplug gives you the ability to connect USB hard drives directly to the Internet. Scheduled to ship next month, Pogoplug 2 (as I am calling it) is optimized for Internet viewing and sharing of multimedia files. Because the Pogoplug service keeps track of stored files-indexing across multiple hard drives-it allows users to share files without having to upload them. It can, for example, stream video to an iPhone, which can also upload and download files from the storage cloud the Pogoplug creates. Optional Windows and Mac desktop apps provide local access to Pogoplug-managed storage.

The new model offers four USB connections, allowing multiple drives to be connected without the need for a USB hub. There is no monthly charge for the online service, included in cost of the device. Other new features include better transcoding and wider support for streaming movies on the Web or to an iPhone app. There is also tighter integration with Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace, as well as automatic organization of your music, photos, and videos. The new software also provides the ability to automatically sync photos, music, videos, and other content from apps such as iTunes and iPhoto.

An address book remembers e-mail addresses with which you've shared content for future sharing. If not, Seagate's DockStar is a somewhat less expensive device, based on Pogoplug technology. The first version, introduced in January at CES, had but a single USB connection and was pretty utilitarian in appearance. (Here is our review). The new Pogoplug is fairly attractive, if you like bright pink. The hitch? Storage is, after all, a terrible thing to waste.

After the first year, Pogoplug service will cost Seagate customers $29.95-a-year. (The DockStar is one of our "25 Top Tech Gifts" for 2009). Meanwhile, Pogoplug's maker, a company called Cloud Engines, said it will "soon" enable additional features, such as "backup, file synchronization, photo printing and more." My take: I didn't think the first Pogoplug was useful enough the buy one, but having recenty discovered a half-dozen extra USB drives around my office, the device suddenly seems almost necessary. I will probably order one online, that is if I can get past the obnoxious self-starting music and videos on the Pogoplug Web site. With the product features now improved, maybe the site can be fixed, too. It keeps repeating over and over. David Coursey tweets as @techinciter and can be contacted via his Web site.

You probably already know that many Black Friday bargains are available online too. Save the Kevlar vest for another day. Rather than brave the elements or risk being trampled at 5 a.m., it's much more pleasant to shop from the comfort of home.

We asked a few expert bargain-hunters how online shoppers can score the best deals on Black Friday. Retailers often say they won't sell doorbusters online, but that's not always true. Here's their advice: Dan de Grandpre, editor in chief of dealnews: Doorbusters, those incredibly cheap deals designed to get people in the door, may be available online too. Last year, for instance, Wal-Mart offered all of its doorbusters online-but not until later in the day on Friday. Many Black Friday deals aren't in fact great deals.

Don't give up the savvy shopping techniques you'd use all year just because it's Black Friday. You'll find better prices online. Michael Brim, president of Black Friday deal site BFAds : Some retailers jump the gun and start their online sales as early as midday Thanksgiving. Use price-comparison sites like PriceGrabber and Shopping.com to be sure you're getting the best deal. Yes, while you're eating. (You could always excuse yourself from the table to nab that $78 Blu-ray player.) Then again, many sales start between midnight and 3 a.m. (Eastern) on Friday.

Be aggressive. If you have trouble staying up, try a quick nap after dinner. You can't wake up at noon Friday and expect everything to be in stock. Well, you could reload a retailer's page for hours. How do you know when online sale goes live?

Another option is to monitor Black Friday sites like BFAds. John Dunkin, founder of iBlackFriday.com: Plan ahead. They'll let you know when sales are live. Go to a retailer's site early, pick out everything you want, and add it to your shopping cart. You can get pretty much everything you want online.

Next, log into your account on Thanksgiving Day to see if your products are available at Black Friday prices. If you don't need a doorbuster item, don't bother going to the brick-and-mortar store. Contact Jeff Bertolucci via Twitter (@jbertolucci) or at jbertolucci.blogspot.com.

The storage software market showed signs of rebounding in the second quarter, but is still falling short of the pace set last year. Within the storage software market, revenue for replication products grew 5% compared with the first quarter of this year, and data protection and recovery revenue was 3% higher than in the first quarter. Worldwide, storage software vendors raked in $2.8 billion in revenue in the quarter, down nearly 10% vs. the second quarter of 2008, according to an IDC report issued last week.\ However, some positive signs emerged.

Revenue for device management and archiving software has also grown slightly since the beginning of 2009. "The storage software market is slowly starting to recover with positive growth over the first quarter of 2009," IDC analyst Michael Margossian said in a press release. Globally, revenue for external disk storage systems was $4.1 billion in the second quarter, an 18% decline year-over-year. However, IDC cautioned that growth between the first and second quarters is typical, so the year-over-year comparisons are more significant. 9 data storage companies to watch   While last week's report covers storage software, IDC this month also reported that storage hardware sales continue to struggle. The network disk storage market declined 15% year-over-year. EMC led the storage software market with 22.4% of revenue in the second quarter, ahead of Symantec (18.5%), IBM (11.5%) and NetApp (8.5%). EMC also leads the external disk storage systems market with 21.5% of worldwide revenue.

This was the third straight year enterprise storage systems revenue declined in the second quarter.

In 2006, just as the first tweet was being Twittered, BT Global Services launched an effort to keep its customers and 112,000 employees safe in a new world of Web-based communities and other interactive sites. But while BT stands apart from many companies in that it lets employees visit social media sites within the constructs of its Internet usage policy, it still needed a way to protect the company and its staffers from potential security threats lurking in cyberspace. BT's security initiative started early, paralleling the emergence of collaborative Web 2.0 applications such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. "We see social networking sites as an enablement tool" to help extend BT Group PLC's reach to prospective customers while helping employees build new business relationships online, says Ray Stanton, global head of BT's business continuity, security and governance practice. For instance, the vulnerability of mashups to data leakage "has been one of our critical concerns," says Stanton.

A criminal could figure out where the employee lives based on the restaurant's location and the mashup of the mapping system, adds Stanton. "And yes, if you book online, then guess what, we know where you live [and] what time you're out," he says. A user might, for example, gain access to a mashup that combines a service for finding local restaurants with information from a social networking or mapping site, says Stanton. "There is the opportunity if the information is not secured across all the boundaries [that] residual information could be left or leaked at any point in the process," he says. In addition to keeping its employees safe, BT also wanted to apply technologies that would enable it to enforce its Internet usage policies. The systems include Blue Coat's ProxySG appliance, which BT uses to categorize URLs as either business productivity sites, such as LinkedIn, or sites that might be deemed improper, such as the Web pages of hate groups, says Steve Schick, a spokesman for the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based vendor. After holding a series of technical workshops with a number of security software vendors, Stanton and his team decided to use a set of URL filtering and security technologies from Blue Coat Systems Inc. about three years ago. Depending on a customer's usage policies, the rackable ProxySG appliance can be configured to block access to certain sites or issue a warning when an employee is in violation of the company's acceptable-use policies, Schick says.

For example, a company that doesn't allow most of its employees to watch YouTube at work can program the ProxySG appliance to permit access only to employees of its marketing department who might use the site while developing marketing campaigns, says Schick. The appliance can also be configured to enforce usage policies for single users or groups of users. BT is also using Blue Coat's ProxyAV, which enables the telecommunications giant to scan its network for viruses, worms, spyware, bots and other forms of malware. Stanton declined to quantify BT's investment in the security tools. While BT has taken a progressive approach toward employees' Internet use, it's important for it and other companies to also adopt practical usage policies, says IDC analyst Melanie Posey. "You have to know on some level what people are doing on the Internet and what impact it's having on network performance," she says. Schick says pricing for the ProxyAG appliance starts at $2,000, depending on the number of end users being monitored.

Revenue for the fiscal year that ended March 31, 2009: $35.3 billion Project champion: Ray Stanton, global head of BT's business continuity, security and governance practice, which has total oversight for BT's commercial security business. At a Glance BT Group PLC Headquarters: London Company charter: One of the world's leading providers of communications services, operating in more than 170 countries. Project payback: A return-on-investment study that's expected to be completed by year's end will examine the operational man-hours saved as well as capitalized IT infrastructure cost savings achieved. You can contact him at tom.hoffman24@gmail.com. Hoffman is a freelance writer in New York.

IBM on Thursday announced beta versions of new services aimed at developers who want to create and deploy applications on public and private clouds. With the Smart Business Development and Test service, which runs on IBM's public cloud, developers can get a working environment in minutes, according to the vendor. Like other vendors, such as Skytap, IBM is pushing cloud services as a way for programmers to get access to computing power quickly, something that can be difficult if many in-house projects are occurring and on-site computing resources are scarce.

IBM also said it would begin deploying its Rational Software Delivery Services for Cloud Computing on private clouds. Both services are set to be generally available in the first quarter of 2010, said Ashok Reddy, director of software delivery platform and security products. The offering, which was announced as a technology preview earlier this year, bundles best practices for agile development; services for test management and planning; and other tools, such as asset-tracking software that is supposed to help development teams run more efficiently. Pricing hasn't been finalized, but the Smart Business Development and Test service will use the now-familiar pay-as-you-go model, according to Reddy. Under such a system, companies buy a set number of "tokens" that can be moved from product to product as needs change.

IBM also expects to use a token-based licensing option for Rational Software Delivery Services for Cloud Computing, he said. For example, early in a project, most tokens could be tied to developer tools, and as work concludes, the tokens would shift to testing software. I think the concept of hosted development is intriguing, but it's going to take time for organizations to get comfortable shipping their software IP off site into the cloud." "As an aside - it's another matter for open source projects, which have been very successful using this type of model," he added. Although IBM is moving ahead aggressively with its cloud-development strategy, it's not clear when the market will be ready to fully embrace such services, according to one observer. "I'm not seeing a significant demand for cloud-based dev at this point," Forrester Research analyst Jeffrey Hammond said via e-mail. "Around 1 in 10 developers have indicated to Forrester they've even deployed a software project to the cloud at this point, and of those most are using the IAAS providers like Amazon EC2 to deploy complete apps that they've developed and tested in house. Other data shows greater interest among developers in cloud computing, but again, more in regard to deployment than soup-to-nuts application development.

But half also said they are using public cloud services like EC2 for experimentation or prototypes, versus "business-critical" applications. An Evans Data survey released in August found nearly 50 percent of respondents planned to deploy applications to a private cloud. And a full three-quarters believe in backing up applications running on public clouds, whether in storage or a private cloud.