What's U3?

USB Flash memory thumb drives (UFDs) are neat and useful gizmos for storing up to 4GB of data. They are now also being delivered with small applications on them. Initially these were simple e-mail clients. This meant you could slip the thumb drive into someone else's network-connected PC or notebook and work on your e-mail with your e-mail software but using the temporary host machine's resources.

The application capabilities of UFDs have been steadily increasing. NCD of Morocco has been shipping its Pocket Desktop application. Like a software Swiss Army knife, it offers to anybody who owns a USB thumb drive a complete, secure, mobile and independent computer software desktop, with more than 20 full software applications, dependent on the UFD capacity.

With Pocket Desktop you can look at your emails anywhere in the world, receive and send as many emails you want, and navigate through the web. It doesn't leave any trace of its use on the computer your USB key was plugged in. And it offers a complete office suite with spreadsheet, text processing.

Mehdi and Réda Belkhayat, the founders of NCD, believe that people can think about computers in a very new way: The way of independence from a computer and its applications. Now, you can go anywhere you want with your data and applications in your pocket. In effect the host PC becomes a very thin client; ironic as an original thin client company, NCD, has gone away with the Moroccan company NCD resurrecting its name.

Sandisk and M-Systems founded U3 to take “USB Flash Drives (UFD) to the next level by making them the ultimate portable solution for storing data and launching applications.”

SanDisk and M-systems have been working on U3. They believe this technology will revolutionize the USB flash drive usage model and will provide more features to the end user.

U3 Platform

U3's idea is to create a new platform for developers. Obviously it is a proprietary platform. It wants to provide a common UFD hardware and software platform. That requires other UFD manufacturers to sign up for it. Sample target applications are a firewall, a password manager, Internet access, and e-mail synchronisation.

The U3 product will be based on a hardware specification and software APIs. The idea is to provide a 3-tier platform consisting of:

● U3 Launch pad — a user-friendly graphical user interface used by both developers and end-users to access and run applications.

● U3 Software Developer Kit — this includes sample code, a standard set of Application Programming Interfaces, and thorough documentation.

● U3 Web Portal — where developers can publish U3-certified applications for purchase and download. The portal is accessible via the web.

What is not clear is how UFD devices can store applications that run on a host PC without needing to be installed in the Windows sense. Software such as Office 2003, Quark, PhotoShop and many. many others needs to be installed on a Windows PC before it can run. Is it meant to be the case that a user could have a version of PhotoShop on a UFD which can run in any PC without PhotoShop having to be officially installed on that PC?

Running “client” software like e-mail clients is OK. But what about running full-blown PC applications? We suspect not and consider that only “portable” applications can run, ones not requiring full-blown PC installation.

Securing host PCs

Owners of host PCs may not be sanguine about this. Who knows what damage or discovery of sensitive data UFD applications could do? In a feature on stealing data via USB drives we mentioned Dynacom software that can control USB drive access.

Prominent amongst U3 supporters were anti-virus companies like CheckPoint and MacAfee. This is hopeful from a security point of view.

何謂U3?

優(yōu)盤是簡潔而有用的小發(fā)明，能儲存多達4GB的數(shù)據(jù)?，F(xiàn)在，它們還能帶著小的應用程序交付使用。最初，這些應用只是簡單的E-mail客戶機。這意味著你只要將優(yōu)盤插入別人的連著網(wǎng)的PC或筆記本電腦，就能用你的E-mail軟件處理你的E-mail，而你是在使用臨時主機的資源。

優(yōu)盤的應用程序能力在穩(wěn)步提高。摩納哥的NCD公司已經(jīng)在提供Pocket Desktop(袖珍桌面)應用程序。它像軟件的瑞士軍刀，給任何一位擁有優(yōu)盤的人提供完整的、安全的、移動的和獨立的計算機軟件桌面，依據(jù)優(yōu)盤的容量，可以擁有20個以上的完整應用程序。

有了Pocket Desktop，你就能在世界任何地方看你的電子郵件，你想要收發(fā)多少郵件你就收發(fā)多少，以及在網(wǎng)上漫游。這也不會在插著優(yōu)盤的計算機上留下任何痕跡。它也提供包括電子表格、文本處理等的完整辦公套件。

NCD公司的創(chuàng)始人Mehdi 和Réda Belkhayat認為，人們可以用一個全新的方式，即獨立于計算機和應用程序的方式，看待計算機。現(xiàn)在，你能在口袋里裝著數(shù)據(jù)和應用程序，到任何地方去。實際上，主PC機成了極瘦的客戶機。有諷刺意味的是，最初的瘦客戶機公司NCD已經(jīng)消失，而摩納哥的公司復興了NCD這個名稱。

Sandisk和M-Systems兩家公司創(chuàng)建了U3平臺，使優(yōu)盤最終成為儲存數(shù)據(jù)和發(fā)送應用程序的便攜式解決方案，將優(yōu)盤提升到新的高度。

Sandisk和 M-Systems兩公司在對U3開展工作。他們認為，此技術將使優(yōu)盤的使用模式發(fā)生革命，給最終用戶提供更多的功能。

U3平臺

U3的想法是給開發(fā)者創(chuàng)立新的平臺。顯然，它是一個專有的平臺。它要提供一個公共的優(yōu)盤硬件和軟件平臺。為得到它，其他的優(yōu)盤制造商需要簽訂協(xié)議。預計中的應用程序的例子有防火墻、口令管理器、互聯(lián)網(wǎng)接入以及電子郵件同步等。

U3產(chǎn)品將基于硬件規(guī)范和軟件API(應用程序編程接口)。該設想是提供由下列三層組成的平臺：

● U3發(fā)送板: 一個用戶友好的圖形用戶界面，由開發(fā)者和最終用戶共同使用，以獲得和運行應用程序。

● U3軟件開發(fā)者工具包: 它包括樣品的代碼、一組標準的應用程序編程接口和完整的文檔。

● U3門戶: 在該門戶上開發(fā)者公布U3認證過的應用程序，供購買和下載。該門戶通過互聯(lián)網(wǎng)接入。

現(xiàn)在還不清楚的是，優(yōu)盤裝置能如何儲存應用程序，使之在無需以Windows方式安裝，就能在主PC上運行。Office 2003、 Quark、PhotoShop等很多軟件需要安裝在Windows PC上才能運行。這是不是意味著這種情況，用戶可以擁有一個優(yōu)盤版本的PhotoShop，就能在任何一臺沒有正式安裝PhotoShop的PC機上運行?

運行電子郵件一類的客戶端軟件沒問題。但運行龐大的PC應用程序行嗎?我們懷疑它不行，認為只有“可移植的”應用程序能運行，而需要完整安裝在PC機上的應用程序不行。

確保主PC機的安全

主PC機的擁有者可能不希望看到它。誰知道優(yōu)盤的應用程序會造成什么破壞或者發(fā)現(xiàn)敏感數(shù)據(jù)?對于通過優(yōu)盤竊取數(shù)據(jù)的特性，我們提到了Dynacom公司的軟件，該軟件能控制優(yōu)盤的接入。

U3支持者中最突出的是防病毒軟件公司，如CheckPoint和MacAfee。從安全觀點看，它是有希望的。