Could this be a military technology booby-trap?  Doubt it, but it would be cool that’s for sure.

The Hand Grenade USB drive is your classic gadget gift for that x-military relative or friend who can’t get enough of the History channel.

Available in four colors [white, blue, orange, black] and different GB capacities.

The starting price is $20 of 4GB storage from Gadget For All.

Converging technologies collide.  At first, I thought this to be just another MP3 player, but it does more than just play music.

The USB MP3 cassette player also works as a car stereo adapter to connect your iPod or iPhone, CD player or a different MP3 player.  Or simply insert a loaded SD card with MP3 files and your car will play that too.

If that isn’t enough, connect the USB cassette player to your PC via USB cable and turn it into a SD, micro or miniSD card reader.

It may seem over simplistic or gimmicky to you, but to me it’s a nice mix of converging technologies.  Believe it or not, I’m buying one right now.

Brando product page.

NEC uses the term of “unmatched viewing experience” for their new 43 inch curved wide screen monitor.  Lets forget about the $7,000 price tage for a moment.

It’s a seamless curved design which is the most impressive feature, and includes connectivity as a single DVI-D input, HDMI 1.3, or USB 2.0.  NEC doesn’t clearly spec if the USB connection is for the monitor or an internal hub that just gives you access points for promotional flash drives, cameras and camcorders.

Some notable features which I didn’t think about, but NEC did the convenience of reminding me are the lack of bezels of multiple monitors side-by-side, and auto extended taskbar that spreads natively across the screen.

NEC Curved Wide Screen product page.

Do you wonder if a USB stick will drop below $2? I don’t think it ever will, and for several reasons. First, the bare cost of the Flash, Controller and case will keep the price much higher than it’s predecessor [CD/DVD] but also consider the millions of dollars needed in equipment just to make these things in bulk.

So let’s find out how a USB stick is made…here is a behind-the-scenes video of the Kingston USB flash memory plant. With step-by-step video it’s an amazing process.

Note: The narration is nothing close to an award winning voice over.

Source: Engadget.

iBUYPOWER is best known for their gaming rigs and powerful laptops, who knew they also dabled in USB board components.  Well maybe you did, but I didn’t.

iBUYPOWER released this sweet little internal expansion board for USB devices.  The point of the expansion board is to provide additional power to those growing number of gadgets you’ve seemed to accumulate.

The board includes two internal USB pin-out connectors and one USB-A standard connector.  The board is $14 for what you see, or $24 which includes a bluetooth module…this will allow connectivity to those wireless keyboards, mice and printers.

Flash drives are getting so small, they are the size of the USB connector itself.  How cool is that?  Well, in size it’s cool, but in functionality…it won’t become your favorite flash drive.  Take this new 4GB EagleTec USB nano drive…

This friggin tiny drive is too small.  Too small to easily connected and, more importantly, disconnect from your computer.  As I’ve said before, once you starting saving SOME files on that stick..you’ll soon be saving ALL your files on that stick.  So why deal with something so small it’s a pain in the a$$ to get out.

Product page.

So here is a sweet little deal I stumbled upon at USBFever.  For $27 you can get a USB hard drive case with biometric fingerprint encryption scanner.

Given how cheap USB hard drives are these days, it’s easy to have them become your backup device of choice.  Well, if you’re like me, chances are you are backing up the QuickBooks or MAS90 accounting programs which need a bit more security.  It would be bad enough to lose your portable hard drive, so at least protect it with your fingerprint.

The USB hard drive case with biometric encryption supports the IDE / USB 2.5″ hard drive sizes along with plug & play insertion and removal.

The fingerprint biometrics supports all Windows platforms, but not Mac.  So if you’re about to drop $15-$20 for an external case, pay just a couple bucks more and get the USB encrypted version.