The Y-Shaped USB hub from Apacer is a clever design, but it’s not the first time we’ve seen it.  RiDATA introduces a flash drive with combo two port hub on the back side, which I’m still wondering why it hasn’t gained more popularity, about a year ago.  The Apacer Y-shaped USB hub increases the port connectivity over the RiDATA by two fold, but doesn’t have flash memory storage.

The Apacer PH151 uses a miniUSB connection to the host computer [via cable] and then provides two vertical ports and two horizontal ports.  To me, once you’ve put a cable to the hub, it doesn’t matter what shape it’s in.  Just stick your device in and go.  The clear advantage with this design, is increasing (more…)

USB Fever is thinking outside the box on this one.  Going away from standard box USB hubs, this hub is all cable.  To continue along the lines of abstract thinking USB Fever includes a separate power cable to extract juice from the system bus solely for the purpose of powering up those peripherals.

So we are looking at one upstream USB connection, a 4 port USB hub held together by cables along with a dedicated power line (red cap) for those thirsty gadgets.

You should note, one of the four USB ports is a mini USB connection.  All this for just $14 + $3 shipping.

USB Cable Hub product page

What else would you need as the ideal desktop clock watching device other than the USB Fever Temp, Clock and hub gadget.  Not only does the 4 port USB hub have a clock to insure you exit work at exactly 5:01pm, but you’ll get an accurate reading on temperature.

The USB hub clock includes data and alarm settings as to wake you from the mid-afternoon slumber after the fat turkey sandwich lunch.

The USB fever hub, clock, temperature thingy is $16 plus $3 shipping.

With the exception of Mickey Mouse…is a mouse really that cute you need to make a million gadgets shaped like them?

Nope.  But that doesn’t stop Brando.  Here is a classic example.  The USB mouse stands on four USB port legs.  The legs can swivel around for easy connection, but even after a single device is connected the mouse wont stand…so what’s the point.  Oh there isn’t one?  OK.

Available in two colors of green or pink with high speed USB transfer rates you can add another animated animal to your drawer of crap for just $12.

USB Mouse by Brando

Yesterday we spoke about the asterisk USB hub which solved a basic problem of USB ports being too close together.  Today, Brando announces a new turnable USB hub which also address tight layout of USB ports found on most hubs.  The turnable USB hub not only offers the ability to rotate 180 degrees for each connector, but Brando spiced it up with some flashy color.  Making it easy to find that hub in your pile of papers, coffee cups and other desk junk.

Running through the rainbow colors you have a 4 port hub with one up-stream port.  From purple, to red, orange, yellow and finally green.

It’s definitely a fun looking little hub which might double as a 1 year old twisty-turn toy.  Price from Brando is $12.00 with a few more chips for shipping cost.

Brando Turnable USB hub product page.

The Asterisk USB hub is one fancy looking device, too bad it doesn’t work. This is another design prototype from contempo designer Joel Escalona. What I like about this layout, besides the bright Ferrari red is the space between each USB port. Too often have I not been able to use all the ports of a USB hub, making it half as efficient as what it should be.

The issue I see with Asterisco hub (Asterisk hub) is how wide it would be if directly connected to a USB port. It would clearly block other ports to the sides, so an extension cord would be needed to make this ideal. Give and take I suppose.

If you are not familiar with Joel’s work, maybe you can jump over to view his USB bomb or USB furniture. Both are enjoyable to consider.

Joel - if you’re out there - has anyone picked these up for production? (more…)

Here we see a Hershey’s bar style USB dock station which is great on creativity but short on functionality.

Judging from the picture it’s hard to determine what the LCD display is for as without an internal processor of some sort there is now way to parallel the drives or sort through the data which resides on them.

Now the modular look of the device is interesting and IF you could strip together the drives for a modular type hard drive there might be a buyer out there…somewhere. Even in that instance sharing data on multiple devices would prove useless if one of the UFDs was removed.

SO, given the concept design is seems nothing more extravagant than a USB hub with customized UFDs.