Pogoplug is a company in order to allow people to set up their own clouds. Instead of storing your music and other files on some company's servers, you can get a Pogoplug, a sort of mini-server goes into an electrical outlet, and connect it to an external hard drive with all the data you want to access over the Web.
The company is trying now to experience available with just a free software download. Run the software on your computer, Windows or Mac and you can make files available to other computers and mobile devices.
It is an appealing idea, similar to the philosophy behind the Orb. But in my experience Pogoplugs performance was so clunky that it is difficult to recommend. Pogoplug's Android app crashed regularly and made it difficult to access files. Pogoplug refused initially to stream music files on my iPad, even though I have been able to establish to reinstall the program.
Here is how this system works: Pogoplug when installing free software and set up your account, you can select the folders you want to access from a remote computer. When you log on, you see these my.pogoplug.com original folders and digging in them, but the system also automatically recognizes music, videos and pictures and place them in the Jukebox, film and Gallery tabs, respectively. It is a much easier way to get to the files you want are likely to access regularly.
Basic Pogoplug software is free, requires streaming music outside of your home or films which preferably a share premium account.
Pogoplug, however, is not entirely about streaming media. You can also use it for remote access to other types of files. You can set up Pogoplug to automatically synchronize documents from a specified folder to another folder, ala dropbox.
You can also specify folders (but not individual files) you want to share with anyone. Pogoplug automatically sends them a link to the folder.
The system works quite well online, although it could use some Polish. There is no way to build a playlist, for example. You can choose a song, but it is there, after the Pogoplug automatically plays the next track on the album, unless you go back and choose something else.
It is on mobile devices, however, that cracks in the Pogoplug's system stand out. The free Android app, loads, for example, only a few of your files at a time (you can enter the amount between 20 and 100). If you want to add more files, you touch "load more files". Which is annoying fast if you have lots of music, and pictures. But it is not the worst: you must download the files every time you open the application! In my opinion, which is a part-breaker. I thought also that the app crashed every time I pressed "play" link.
IOS app (also free) is superior in a number of ways. The interface is more attractive and the app automatically indexes the contents and then keeps the index from a visit to the next, so you don't have to load your files as you do in Android app. When I installed the app, would the music does not play on my iPad,. After you have tried some preliminary troubleshooting steps, proposed a Pogoplug rep uninstall and reinstall the app, which solved the problem.
