Seagate's D.A.V.E. will be your mobile device's new best friend
I was reading my RSS feeds and became quite excited when I read Robert Scoble's post on the upcoming Seagate D.A.V.E. device since I think it can solve all of my portable storage needs. The reason I buy large external storage cards for my mobile devices is to place video and audio content on them for viewing and listening to on the go. D.A.V.E. (Digital Audio Video Experience) is a portable hard drive (10GB and 20GB models should be available at launch) with a USB port and integrated Bluetooth 2.0 and 802.11b/g WiFi radios. Even better news is that software for Symbian and Windows Mobile (the two leading mobile operating systems) is already written and should be available when the D.A.V.E. becomes available in May or June of this year. Wouldn't it be cool if the Sony PSP could access D.A.V.E. via WiFi?
Credit: GottaBeMobile.com
Scoble reports that D.A.V.E. should have up to 14 days of standby power and 10 hours of continuous use. This should make those airplane trips even more enjoyable.I can now stick with my 1GB storage cards for application installation and use D.A.V.E. to store all of my multimedia content that can then be streamed to different mobile devices so I no longer should have to load my Yahoo! Music on multiple cards to listen to on multiple devices. This thing will save me time and money while also allowing me multiple options for storing and accessing data. The drive is also shock sensitive and will park and even lock when drops are sensed. I am sold and will be picking one up as soon as they are available.
Check out the press release for more details. Also, make sure to watch Scoble's 13 minute video for more information and a perspective on the size of the device.
UPDATE: It seems Seagate isn't the only player in this new wireless mobile device media server category as my Mobius buddy Arne pointed out to me. I missed the announcement last week by Agere Systems, but Arne posted all the details on the BluOnyx Mobile Content Server for Mobile Devices . This looks like a sweet option too and with flash model (up to 4GB) and hard drive model (up to 40GB) options it looks to actually be better than the Seagate solution. The BluOnyx can also apparently access the internet via WiFi and shoot streaming video and audio content to your mobile device. If you don't have WiFi on your mobile phone, but do have Bluetooth then you could connect to the BluOnyx via Bluetooth while it is connected to the internet via WiFi and have content streamed to you. This looks very cool and I look forward to seeing even more products in this new wireless mobile server category.