Future tech: personal cloud servers

The Somniloquy kit – developed by Carnegie Mellon University students at Microsoft's Cambridge research labs – allows you to awaken your PC and access files while you're out and about. Leave the USB device in your main PC and together with software called ZZFS it will start up and grab any music files, photos or documents that you'd forgotten you needed.

The advantage of gadgets like this is that Google/Apple/Amazon or anyone else don't take control over your cloud storage. The Somniloquy becomes your own personal cloud server (it's a relative of the network card) plus it doesn't involve any tedious sessions of backing up whole libraries of content and then being charged for the privilege.

And it gets even better – if you make changes to a file, the original on your PC will change too. The next stop for the research team is developing smartphone and tablet apps to make the whole process even easier.