[Nexus 7 General] SoonerLater:
TL;DR I have a cool, but hypothetical, idea for an alternate non-cloud way to access your data

There are many threads in which people are asking (and a few hyper-ventilating and a few ranting) about how they are to access non-cloud data on an N7 in light of the Nexus 7's lack of an SD-card reader. Just to name a few threads, there are: OTG USB cable, Questions About Specs OTG or WIFI Direct, The N7 Supports OTG Through Root, HDMI out and OTG Support and For Those Worried About Lack of Storage (USB-OTG Discussion Thread). And that's just for starters. As of this writing (which may be expired, null and void by tomorrow), the options seemed to boil down like this:

1.

OTG (on-the-go) use of USB-based storage

. Whether this refers to a way to read a memory card, such as an SD Card, or reading from a thumb/jump/flash drive or from an external USB HDD (hard disk drive) or external USB SSD (solid-state drive).

Concerns and Disadvantages: We don't know yet the voltage of the USB port (or the electrical current load it can sustain), but it's starting to look like maybe 3.3 volts is all she wrote.

If

that's true, then virtually nothing that is currently available will run off the USB port unless you put a powered USB hub between the N7 and whatever you're trying to read-write from.

I don't know how you feel about dongl'ing a powered hub (or battery-powered hub) between your N7 and your storage (whether that's an SD card in a card-reader or a thumb/jump/flash drive or whatever) , but that's a lot of stuff daisy-chained onto your tablet. Perhaps acceptable when you're at home, but it's sort of Rube Goldberg-ish to think of doing that on the road, in a plane, at a coffee shop. at work....​

2.

PRIVATE CLOUD.

Devices such as the Seagate Satellite (500gb) and the various models (64gb, 32b, 16gb) of the Kensington Wi-Drive have an on-board server and WIFI wireless access point. The Seagate claims 7+ hours (6+ in my experience based on heavy ues) and the Kensington about 4 hours. Other than turning it on, you can leave it in your pocket, backpack, purse or attaché, and it will serve, by wifi, whatever you want.

Concerns and Disadvantages: The 500gb Seagate Satellite is about $150 (if you shop hard). The 32gb Wi-Drive is about $85 and the 64gb Wi-Drive is about $180.

The Satellite is bigger than than the Wi-Drive, but both are bigger than you probably want to haul around with you.​

I might... maybe... possibly... have a better idea. But it's hypothetical for the moment.

The Satellite and Wi-Drive have on-board computers (on a chip) and WIFI hardware, but their overall size is maybe more than you want. But if you removed the drive (on the Satellite) or the flash memory (on the Wi-Drive), it would not be so big, even with the battery.

What about a device like the Satellite / Wi-Drive that just reads SD Cards instead? The Satellite and the Wi-Drive are just Linux computers-on-a-chip with a battery. They're sort of like this, I guess. Anyway, what if someone manufactured a battery-powered device whose only job was to serve up, by WIFI (and to create the WIFI environment, as needed) whatver storage appeared on a memory card, such as an SD Card?

What would you pay for something like that?

Heck, I bet that many... several... a few people on this forum could take off-the-shelf components (a Linux computer-on-a-board, WIFI circuitry and a battery, plus a card reader/writer) and make it all work -- and sell it for under $99.

Google / Amazon / Apple / Big Brother, may want us to live within a "cloud envionment" but we don't have to accept that.