A start-up firm in the French Alps put together one Pretty Hot And Tempting USB stick. This one only has 256MB of memory, but IS a full working computer.

Based off an Atmel processor this SoC (System-On-Chip) design has a 190MHz processor, 64MB RAM, 256MB of memory, USB connectivity and a 10/100 Ethernet port.

The company, Calao, didn’t give a price tag but did mention some useful applications like GPS and image processing.

I for one saw that lovely USB connector and immediately thought of the new Samsung USB monitors and wondered if this is our future of computing.

Not only is the Calao Linux computer PHAT it’s also fat. Measuring at 3.3 inches long and 1.4 inches wide it is much larger then your average UFD…but also clear there is nothing average about this concept. (more…)

Kithara Software has a USB toolkit for quick development of USB devices in the Windows environment. The USB driver development kit also supports the most recent, Vista OS.

The biggest claim: non-technical folks can get their hands into USB driver development with little or no previous experience with USB. Simply edit an INF file and configure the USB stack to perform just about any function you desire.

Now, I’m no programmer, but have been around enough that I know nothing is quite this easy. None-the-less, with the popularity of USB, development kits such as the Kithara USB toolkit is a welcomed sign. (more…)

One year ago, almost to the day, IOCell introduced the self proclaimed “World’s largest capacity flash drive” at the CeBIT 2006 show. Today, you can find 16GB flash drives from Transcend, US Modular and Pretec, so why is the Buffalo 16GB announcement of interest? Well, it uses Silicon HDD Technology.

Silicon hard drives are different then normal hard drives in that no magnetic discs are present, rather the data is stored in silicon memory. How the silicon (HDD) hard drive works is by (more…)

Now that Wireless USB products are starting to ship we’ll see a lot more of USB-IF certified chips and controllers. Take the LucidPORT L800 WUSB Device Controller.

This is an 8 or 16 bit memory mapped DMA slave chip to provide wireless connectivity to 31 devices. The L800 supports all the drivers offered by USB spec such as Mass Storage Device, Printer, Scanner and Video Classes and will auto switch between wired USB and Wireless USB connections.

So what does this mean? Here’s an example, the LucidPORT L800 would be integrated into a PC, either onto the motherboard or an adaptor card, from there the L800 can pick up (more…)

SLAX is a mini Linux operating system which fits onto a USB flash drive and runs directly from it without installation. It’s fast and beautiful. This nicely refined compilation is based on Slackware Linux and is packaged up in a little zip file specifically made for use on a USB flash drive. Make the jump to Pen Drive Linux for all the grub on Linux on USB flash drives.

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USB ReadyBoost drive from Super Talent is the first official USB drive that is specifically targeted at the Windows Vista ReadyBoost technology. By using either the Super Talent 1GB or 2GB flash drive you can instantly boost PC performance via increased RAM by inserting the flash drive into your PC. This is a nice technology Microsoft developed which greatly aids in the ability (more…)

Although not flashy news, EPCOS introduced a new CeraDiode which provides protection to USB ports from either high or low voltages shot through the system from a, not so good, USB device. The CeraDiode CDA6 is a small diode placed on the PCB (Printed Circuit Board) that truncates positive or negative spikes of voltage to protect (more…)