CES 2013: Transporter Lets You Create Your Own Off-site Cloud for $200

Strolling the aisles of Digital Experience, an event for CES press attendees held last night in Las Vegas, there were lots of shiny, colorful, cute, or sleek objects on the hundred-plus tables, with eager entrepreneurs, designers, and marketers ready to convince me that their product/software/service is the next big thing. A fair number were fairly easy to walk by. But the simple silver cones on one table, however, drew me like a magnet. I loved the industrial design and the name, Transporter, seemed to fit the design. I hoped that whatever the heck this gizmo was made as much sense as its look and name.

Geoff Barrall, Transporter founder, convinced me that it did. The Transporter is essentially a cloud in a cone; pop it somewhere it can connect to the Internet (preferably in a different building than your computer) and it acts as offsite backup or file sharing device, requiring no setup or computer connection. Barrall first envisioned his customers as lawyers and other professionals who don’t want to entrust confidential information to a commercial cloud, but at $200 for a bring-your-own-drive version or $300 for a 1terabyte version, sees the product catching on with consumers who want off-cloud storage, or to share files within a small group.

Barrall said his campaign on Kickstarter, the micro funding service, hit 200 percent of its milestone yesterday, and the company will start shipping Transporters by the end of the month.

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