Friday, October 11, 2002

File storage on mobile phone using Bluetooth I can't wait for this. It must be coming - has anyone seen any announcements? My previous posting on wireless servers reminded me of the convenience of those wonderful flash-memory-on-USB devices like Disk-On-Key, the one I use and have found loads of uses for. Anyway, it struck me that wouldn't it be nice (better?) to have a nice chunk of Flash memory on your mobile phone and be able to simply stuff files onto it via the file manager and Bluetooth? Of course, that means you need Bluetooth available on any machine to get the files on and off, especially if you want to hook it up to someone else's PC - this is a favourite feature of the plug-and-play USB storage devices, I can plug it into a friend or colleagues PC and swap files on the spot (operating system dependent of course). Well, you could carry a Bluetooth USB dongle with you and if it's designed to work with a mobile storage solution (which technically is part of Bluetooth's capabilities) then we could make sure it automatically offers up the plug-and-play file storage access at the very least (I don't know how many of the USB Bluetooth solutions are plug-and-play - still waiting to get my hands on the TDK one, but I notice their one mentions that it will be compatible with the unreleased Microsoft Bluetooth Driver which Microsoft says will be plug-and-play on the USB bus). The more widely accessible and cheaper solution however would be to provide a simple USB dongle with a cable up to the mobile phone serial port (EMMI) so that the phone's storage capability could be utilised by any PC (USB-capable of course) and plug-and-play. The logical extension of that idea is to enable remote file access via such an interface where the files no longer have to sit on the phone, but could be on some secure server accessed via WAP (2.0) over GPRS (or UMTS), so with a simple plugging of a cable any PC can be used to remotely access a personal file store. Lots of spin-offs from that I'm sure..... 6:56:31 PM     Using wireless to protect data from theft I've been burgled twice in recent months. I pray that it does not happen again as it is not pleasant and scares the kids. Of course, I have taken retrospective security measures in abundance, even though I read in a magazine in the library (yes - those places still exist post web and which means I don't have a link for you) that the statistics say you should only get burgled once in every 25-30 years on average. It was a warning not to adopt siege mentality - too late here! One measure I took was to put a file server in a secure and hidden place so that if my home office was broken into, then the files would hopefully remain safe (notwithstanding backups and all those other things we're supposed to do diligently but don't). I managed to connect it up using wired Ethernet due to cabling I had in the home already. But it struck me that a wireless file server sitting in the loft (attic) or hidden in some cupboard would be a neat solution, using Wi-Fi of course. I thought about the product design and practicalities. My main concern was how to offer such a solution to people without networking skills - this wireless server might be the first time they have hitched up a networked device. The solution I came up with - hardly novel in essence, but maybe in application, was to provide a USB interface box for the PC that utilised the wonderful plug-and-play file device service that those dinky little disk-on-key-ring (Flash memory) products offer - which I adore by the way. I use the Disk-on-Key product. This way the user doesn't even have to mess around with networking services in Windows. Easy you might say - but what could be easier than simply plugging something in? 6:28:18 PM

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