Here is a useless USB novelty item that definitely has a little fun to it. The Spongebob USB Stick is part of the Dima Komissarov flashbag USB stick series. They all have one thing on common: thanks to a micro air pump, they become larger when filled with data. A big round Spongebob indicates an almost full USB drive while

Powerstick from Ecosol just received a “best of” award from CES. It’s a USB shaped power adaptor with a fuel gauge. Although the Powerstick website only has a photoshop version pic the concept is great. Plug in the Powerstick and juice up via any computer. Tote it around for a while. When needed, plug in the Powerstick – juice up that USB powered gadget.

Shutterfly Studio has a nice utility for your U3 flash drive. Most features are typical but here are some highlights which stand out. View photos any number of ways, including keywords, captions or simply date…but Shutterfly includes a 5 star rating system – nice. Included in the studio package are 10 easy tools for photo editing like crop, auto-fix, red-eye removal and even pet-red-eye removal! You can download the free U3 utility from U3 and when signed up for a Shutterfly account you get 15 free 4×6 photos and unlimited on-line storage.

The MasterView USB KVM switch is massive in connectivity at 16 ports but slim on size with rack-mount design. Now take control of 16 resources via one Keyboard/Video/Mouse console access point. Aten designed the switch for daisy-chain capability to include another 31 KVM MasterView switch boxes – that’s a total of 512 computers

Although this product was out in August the Samsung K5 MP3 player and speaker system is worth investigating. Using DNSe, Samsung’s proprietary Digital Natural Sound engine the K5 provides virtual surround sound in a hand-held device. The K5 has a back plane which slides up to allow the speakers to resonate. Although only two speakers Samsung claims an all natural sound with higher accuracy to tones and pitch.

Mimoco creates a full breath of USB storage products and bring them to life with their artist rendition gadgets. Their latest is the Star Wars Stormtrooper Mimobot. If you’re into this kinda thing, then preorder your drive now as only 2,500 are being made. The limited edition mimobot will also carry exclusive Star Wars content.

Mimoco is 2/3rds the way down on a four character set and the Stormtropper is the third in series (USB Darth Vader, USB Chewbacca & USB Stormtrooper). Capacities range from 1GB to 4GBs and prices from $79 to $170USD respectively. So belly up with a non-refundable $10 deposit and book your 2 3/8in. Dark-Side protection. Items should ship early Jan 2007.

Source: Mimico

Many wannabe Internet and technology entrepreneurs think this new phenomenon called VoIP is a guarantee to make money – well think again – at least 85 VoIP services have shutdown in the past 15 months.