Hi Jon,
How do you manually upgrade the firmware? I never quite understand how/when firmware is pushed to the unit. can't seem to find good instruction. Any hints?

Okay, so I've finally be able to get videos to play on the web. I do have a couple of immediate requests (long term requests will come at another time).

1. Have an option to remove transcoding that was done by the pogoplug on any file. Since it's not overwriting the file, but rather putting a transcoded version in the .cedata file, you should give the user the choice to remove this on any file..

2. It takes a REALLY long time for a movie to load, even with proper transcoding. I understand there are limitations due to upload speeds, network traffic etc. however, there should be a better way to tell the user the file is loading, than just a spinning image that says "..loading". How about some sort of status bar? Something that gives the user some indication that it will be done at some point. As it is now, unless you know it takes a really long time, I think a lot of people will just assume it's not working and give up..

2.5 Something I'd love to see, but I'm sure would be difficult to impliment, is a way of variying the bit depth of video on the fly to match the available bandwidth. The slingbox does this and enables video to play with very limited resources..

3. This one is both for the web app as well as the Iphone app: Contextual search. (ie. using the search for contacts in the iphone). As you type files should start showing up that match the text that is in the search box. I have a large amount of files, and having to wait for it to search after I finish is really annoying. Might be best to have the pogoplug create some sort of index file that has the names of all files on the drive, so when you search it's a lot faster..(as files get added/removed this index gets updated etc.). Also, this search should be capable of reading ID3 music tags.

4. The option to play music on the web is great but it's soo rudimentary (basic). Look at the Tonido Jukebox This is more of what I expect the functionality of the website to have.

5. This one could be cool: When you are playing a video through the web app, and it buffers, save that buffer on your local machine, so if you close the movie, and re-open it, you don't have to start buffering all over. To prevent buffer files from overtaking your machine you could set a Number of buffers to save limit, as well as a date to expire, possibly both adjustable by the user..

I have more requests, but I think these are a few of my most critical requests.

1: My thinking is that if you are telling the user you are making a modification, then you should give them the opportunity to undo it (I consider this proper usability regardless of what it is regarding). So mainly it's a user control thing, but if there is an issue with a bad transcode on a file, then it allows the user to remove it and then run a new transcode...OR it gives the user a choice to try the transcode or their own etc.

2: Again it's a useability issue. If users don't get enough information about a process, then they will start to assume something is wrong if it doesn't finish quickly. I'm fairly tech savvy, and I at first thought the videos weren't still playing properly cause they took so long to load..

3: Maybe I should be a bit clearer with "contextual" search. As you type a name of a file, you should start seeing all the files that match the pattern list. Right now, you have to type the name, click "search" and wait for the results. I don't think the web or iphone app currently do that, but when I have a chance I'll take another look at them. My biggest gripe with the searches are that I have thousands (litterally) thousands of files, and when I don't have an intelligent, well organized search tool, it quickly becomes very frustrating..

4: I would also recommend that you guys look at simplify media. What's really nice about them is that you can use Itunes to play/interact with your library remotely.

Thanks re: the suggestions. Hope they help.


Cheers,
Brian