Every company is looking for a way to make a custom flash drive and Canon is onto something hot here with the 5D minaturized down to a USB stick.  Well, not the entire device, but the lens pops out to become the flash drive.

It’s not clear if the 5D custom flash drive is made of plastic or rubber, but from the image, it looks spot-on to the real deal.

The minature 5D Canon knock off is a cool $100 on ebay.  It’s a 4GB drive.

Source: OhGizmo.

Don’t know about you, but I’ve been searching for a USB hub with a change tray.  It would also be ideal if the hub was in the shape of a turtle.

Oh wait, here we go.  Thomas of USBFever answered my prayers.  The 4 port high speed 2.0 Hub is a nice addition to your desk where you need a space to store the extra lunch change, post-it notes or small paper clips.

So why is the turtle’s jaw dropping to the floor?  It’s an SD card reader for SD, microSD and miniSD flash cards.

USB Fever offers the turtle USB hub for $13.99 + $3 shipping.

Review of 16GB Flash Drives

Our friends at Test Freaks gathered up 17 different 16GB drives and did some hands on benchmark and testing.  First off, props goes out to Mr. Brozio for convincing all the manufacturers to give up free 16GB drives.  Second, I give him kudos for the in-depth analysis and benchmarking test.  Well done.

The 16GB USB review includes the following drives:

• Adata Sport Series RB19 16gb
• Corsair Flash Voyager
• HP USB Flash Drive v125W
• Imation Swivel Flash Drive
• Kingston Data Traveler100
• Kingston DataTraveler HyperX
• Memorex Traveldrive
• OCZ Diesel
• OCZ Throttle
• Patriot Exporter XT
• PNY Attache
• PQI Traveling Disk 1221
• Ridata EZdrive Lightning Series
• Sandisk Cruzer Micro
• Super Talent Pico-C
• Transcend JetFlash Elite Enabled
• Verbatim Store ‘n’ Go

I wont give away the full details on the 16GB USB review – please check with Test Freaks.  However, it is painfully clear that Transcend Jetflash is a horrible drive.  Which is funny as they spend a good amount of marketing time and money saying they are the best performing.  Transcend must be taking Ford’s marketing philosophy and advertising their weakness.  “Built Ford Tough” ha – those cars are anything but tough.

To get a bit of their approach Test Freaks considers:

If I’m looking for a USB drive, the first thing I look at is the Copy To or Write speeds, this is what is most important to me, the next thing would be the Copy From speeds, as for me what I do most is put data on it, then take it off, reading from the drive is not that important to me really. So it all depends on what your priorities are concerning USB drives, the results are here, you can judge for yourself which is best for you.

For the full 16GB USB Drive review please visit Test Freaks webpage.

Lebedev Studio released a prototype USB hub based off a light prism.  The creativity and look as very cool with a clear communication of how data transfers through the device.

To bad the colorful USB cables aren’t available and I believe it’s just a design style not yet available.

What do you think?

Here is a great looking Steampunk Custom flash drive.  The creator, Marcos, put a brass shell around the outside of this USB stick, then decorated the outside with miniature gears and watch components.

It appears Marcos took the USB cap and attached it to the end with some included brass gears and other Steampunk detail.

The custom flash drive uses a piston gear from the USB connector to the watch components as a representation of the power from the PC being transferred to the heart of the USB stick.

The 2GB steampunk custom flash drive is only $50, is 100% handcrafted and completely unique.  There is limited stock, so if interested get on it.

The USB Steampunk can be found and purchased at Etsy.

Pretec is about to introduce an aptly named eSATA/USB dual interface flash drive named Cobra.  This ultra fast flash drive has max read speeds of 90MB per second and max write speeds of 60MBs per second.

The dual channel interface has the eSATA connector at one end and the USB connector at the other.

The Pretec Cobra is available in 32GB and 64GB sizes, which is respectable given the fast transfer rates.  This info was sourced via Engadget China, so no word on pricing or availablility.

The latest Did You Know? from Rome Italy, version 3.0.