Now carry your desktop in your pocket Anand Parthasarathy
Software developed by I-Flapp Technologies PHOTO: ANAND PARTHASARATHY I-Flapp technology squeezes the PC's desktop applications on to the USB Thumb drive. Bangalore: Why carry a bulky and vulnerable laptop just so that, you can work while on the move? What if all the applications sitting on your desktop PC can be carried on a tiny thumb drive and will look and feel, exactly like your home machine, when you plug the drive into any public PC where ever you go? It is the number one on the wish list of lakhs of mobile `road warriors' engineers and executives who need to carry their computers with them all the time across States and continents. But it is a wish, not easily realised: It is relatively simple to carry all one's files on portable storage devices anything from pocket sized portable hard disk to the tiny Universal Serial Bus (USB) `thumb' drive, to an even memory card: the type you slot into a digital camera. But it has not been possible to carry the bulky applications you might like to use office suites, photo editing software, presentation and animation tools because in most cases these cannot be installed on additional portable devices without violating copyright. Now Indian engineers, working for a Singapore start-up have created a solution that neatly sidesteps all such rights issues and still enables one to carry almost all standard PC applications on a portable storage device and recreate one's home desktop environment on any PC anywhere. In the first unveiling of its product in India, engineers at the Bangalore development lab of I-Flapp Technologies Pte Ltd (the name stands for Intelligent Flash Applications), shared the details exclusively with The Hindu, of `Apps-D' (for Applications on Demand), the software tool that turns any thumb drive or memory card into an exact mirror of one's desktop environment. Will work with Outlook The Singapore-based Chief Executive Sunder Mani, who has his roots in Bangalore and Palakkad, Kerala, said that popular desktop PC applications like Microsoft Office Suite, Adobe PhotoShop Creative Suite, Lotus Notes and Acrobat Reader could be transferred to the portable device together with all the files one has created using them. When plugged into any other PC, Apps-D will synchronise the applications with the new host and swiftly create a desktop identical to the one at home. It will also work with the Outlook email client so that one can look at all one's old mails wherever one goes. When one unplugs the thumb drive, it will leave no trace of one's work behind. Adi Narayana Vemuru, I-Flapp's Technology Head who steered the software creation in Bangalore, explained that the product respected all copyright and installation regimes, because it ensured that the purchaser of the original software application used it only in one PC at any one time. Tools like MS Office or Photoshop would have to be installed in the I-Flapp-fuelled portable device from its original CDs or DVDs. Allowing users to harness the power of their PCs -- while harnessing the portability of finger-sized Flash memory devices -- has been a challenge for the industry in recent months. Only last week, Microsoft has announced a tie-up with Flash memory maker SanDisk, to jointly develop a portable personalised desktop -- but only by 2008. Other leading players are also known to be racing to create such tools. But this low-key Singapore-based and Indian ingenuity-fuelled company, might well turn out to be first off the gates with this cool and portable PC tool. Discussion on licence I-Flapp is known to be in discussion with a number of leading Flash storage players to licence its technology, after it first unveiled the product at the CeBit IT Fair in Germany earlier this year. Meanwhile it has also decided to offer the I-Flapp Apps-D technology (it is a small 5 MB programme) directly to customers in India, Singapore, UK, Germany and a few other geographies, from end June, through local dealers. For the rest of the world, there is a direct marketing link from its website ( http://www.i-flapp.com/). The software that is being supplied on a 64 MB USB drive is expected to cost the equivalent of $25, that is Rs 1000 - 1200 in India. To unsubscribe send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in
