The company announced this week that it has launched a new edition of its Personal Site Server, designed to be able to run from an external USB drive, including flash drives, pen drives and thumb drives. None of the components, says Renasoft, such as files or DLLs, need to be installed on the host computer.

The product has obvious potential as a testing ground for developers or a plaything for the gadget crowd. But George Robertson, president and chief architect at Renasoft believes the new portable product will actually be serviceable as a Web server.

He says customers can install the product on an external drive and then detach it and move it to other computers, including laptops. Renasoft's domain registration service can automatically update a customer's domain to forward to the new IP address when the portable server is moved. And customers with domains registered elsewhere can use one of several dynamic domain services to map domains to their new IPs.

"The future isn't hard to see," says Robertson. "Cheap computers now are more than capable of running most Web sites, and Internet speeds in the home and small business are high enough to support Web site traffic. The only obstacle stopping the normal user from developing his own Web site is ease of use. The practical usage with this portable server is you can take your Web sites anywhere you want. Computer to computer, home to home or business to business. Personal Site Server is really no different than any other product in terms of practical usability, it is simply a matter of ease of use and education."

Robertson says the portable Personal Site Server can be used in a variety of scenarios, providing instant Web sites with pre-built applications and no installation required. It could be used, he says, at educational institutions where teachers can plug Personal Site Server into their class computer and be ready for presentations, teaching and transferring files including audio and video. It could be used by the military to disseminate of vital information in the field.

Despite the variety of possible applications, says Robertson, Renasoft's main target for the portable product is for general use by the general public.

"Not to diminish the industry, but the technology is over complicated for most people. This forces them to either not get involved or they have to hire someone to do the work for them and keep it updated constantly. There is no need for it to be that complicated," says Robertson. "The secondary objective for this innovation is to help the Internet grow the way it should grow. Individual contributors should have an opportunity to engage at any level of publishing. We admire the Google philosophy and [want] to enable normal people to do extraordinary things.  Everybody has ideas, let them express themselves."

Robertson says users should be interested in Renasoft's newest offer because it is easy to use, there aren't any forced advertisements on a Web page and there are no hosting fees. Above all, he says, it's a user-friendly way to get more people creating presences for themselves on the Web.

"When a normal person can walk into a business, church, school, home or any place, build a Web site for them using his laptop computer right there, on the spot, then detach the USB drive and give it to the owner and in five minutes be live on the Internet, then we have some good progress in the right direction," says Robertson. "People will say, I remember the future and it wasn't this easy."

Renasoft recently released a free version of its Personal Site Server, which includes an advanced Web server, InstaFlash Web designer and its own FlameOn technology for creating Web pages using drag and drop components.