The iTwin Makes Your Computer Think It's Seeing Double

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The iTwin is every small-business road warrior’s data dream come true. It’s a simple and secure USB device that lets users remotely share and transfer files between online computers from anywhere in the world. The company says it’s the world’s most secure “personal cloud” USB device.

It's like traveling with your computer without all the baggage — and TSA pat-downs.

The iTwin, which looks like two USB flash drives joined at the hip, consists of two identical halves. One serves as a home base while the other becomes its traveling twin when they are separated. Your data is always safe, because nothing is stored on the device itself, making it more secure than cloud storage and remote-access software solutions. iTwin employs military-grade encryption and only the two halves know the key.

The iTwin uses Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) for authentication and encrypted file transmission.

It's a plug-and-play device with drag-and-drop file transfer, said Brian Chamberlain, iTwin's VP of marketing. Unlike standard USB flash drives, there are no size constraints. When the second twin is removed, a user can plug it into any computer anywhere and access, backup, copy or edit its twin's files. What's dropped and dragged into one is immediately available to the other when they're both online.

If the separated half is lost or stolen, iTwin has a proprietary remote disable feature that will protect your files. Unlike many paired devices, however, the remaining half of the iTwin does not become useless when its mate is lost; replacement halves are available. When the new half is joined to the orphan, a new encryption key is generated that allows them to function as twins.

The iTwin supports Microsoft Windows 7, XP and Vista and on Aug. 22 becomes interoperable with Mac OS X versions 10.6 and later, making it a complete cross-platform device. The iTwin costs $99 and replacement halves are available for 49.99, Chamberlain said.

With a USB hub, a base computer can support multiple iTwin users. The company is currently developing iTwin Multi bundle packages and pricing.

The iTwin comes in lime green and gunmetal gray, with the green outselling gray by 2 to 1,  Chamberlain said. Other colors are the works.

"My 10-year-old daughter would love to see purple," he said.

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Reach BusinessNewsDaily senior writer Ned Smith at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @nedbsmith.