There’s no question that we’re entering into a completely new computing era, driven by super small devices with low power needs and our insatiable desire to be connected everywhere. So far the smartphone is picking up a lot of the slack left off by the laptop, but what if there was another way to carry around a full computing environment which safeguarded privacy while offering easy tools for everyday use?

That’s the goal the Keepod developers are aiming for. The product is basically a credit card sized computing environment stored in a USB format, either on a specific Keepod device or downloaded onto any generic USB drive or device.

The idea is you carry around this environment, which you can plug into a laptop or any other type of PC, at which point you’ll have access to your emails, data and other private info, which you can edit and use as you wish. When you finish, just unplug the card and no trace of your activity is left on the host machine. All nice and clean.

It’s not a new idea, and in fact it seems to circulate around every few years as a new team re-discover the attraction of more secure computing, but it’s becoming harder in this smartphone age to see a reason why this kind of idea will work any more. If you’re going to carry around a computer and secure environment, why not the phone? Anyway, it’s a nice idea and the kind of thing that corporate suits may well like because of the super secure encryption on the system.

It’s hard to see this taking off with the rest of us mere mortals, until someone comes up with a way to unify all this carry around computing on any platform, operating system and device…small, large or in-between. The system is currently available on private beta download if you leave your email address.