14 DAY TRIAL // There are many anti-virus software products available to people, both free and pay-to-use, but they can't exactly be called easy to employ, especially by the many people who've yet to accumulate technical skills, so the folks at Jumpshot decided to make a USB drive that handles everything instead.
David Endler and Pedram Amini are two proud computer geeks that met in college and later started on the road of computer maintenance and security.
After a while, it just became too frustrating and tiresome to stay in front of computers for hours and input hundreds of commands just to eliminate an infection or two.
That was when they started to think of a way to create an item that could perform all those things independently.
The result of their efforts is the Jumpshot USB drive, a fully automated stick that just needs to be plugged into a PC's port.
When recognized by the system, the drive launches an application which, upon being allowed to begin operations, sedates the PC and begins going through everything on it.
That includes trial software, special apps and all the bloatware that OEMs agree to install on pre-configured desktops and notebooks (it can even remove them altogether).
The usefulness of “sedating” the PC is that the all possible interference from viruses is prevented while the Jumpshot “crew” is doing its thing.
As if this wasn't already useful enough, the application presents feedback in the form of an interactive game that earns you Karma whenever an infection is dealt with. Furthermore, Jumpshot gets smarter whenever someone uses it (or them, since the minions have a personality apparently).The guys who made the Jumpshot say they did it in order to get away from the hopelessness of always being called to repair so many infected PCs that were acting up (they even mentioned PTSD).
Fortunately for us, they are sharing their creation so that no one needs to go through the same pain as them. Thus, if an anti-virus software can't get rid of a virus, if your new PC has too much junk software you'll never use, if the PC runs slowly for no reason or if you just want “an adorable USB memory stick,” Jumpshot is eagerly awaiting a pledge.
Speaking of which, the project will be receiving funds until September 8, 2012, but it has already accumulated over five times its financing goal. That should say something about how much of a need there is for something like this.
