With over 5,300 Diggs, I figure this would be a good article to report about on how to make a sawed-off USB key.  Nothing about this project is too technical, but the idea is clever enough it’s gained a lot of attention.

The sawed off UFD is a mod of using a slim Kingmax USB drive, USB cable and some glue + knife for a very cool looking storage device.

The intro line to this tutorial from the main page is:

“Holy crap– somebody just went and TORE MY FREAKING USB CABLE IN HALF while it was still attached to my laptop!!!

No– wait– sorry. That’s just my USB drive. My bad. Never mind.”

Which I think is pretty funny.

So besides getting a slim Kingmax USB drive (here is a 4GB for $15), you will need the following:  USB cable, X-acto knife, glue, pliers, small screwdriver and some mad cutting skills.

First thing you will want to do is cut open the female end of the USB cable so you can insert the memory for storage.  It’s fairly straight forward in the process.  Some additional pictures are available (more…)

OWC is giving you GB hungry data hoggers some extra storage space. Their new 500GB Mercury portable hard drive is their largest [portable] edition yet. It’s got Firewire and USB connectivity to support any gear you’re dealing with. A couple concerns I have are a) it’s a 5400 RPM hard drive, which is standard for portable hard drives - but I like 7200 RPM, and since the Mercury is b) bus powered, the 7200 RPM wont see the light of day. As I’ve mentioned before, if you are looking for serious use off your USB hard drive, don’t deal with bus powered devices.

So given those two knocks, it’s still super slim for a half Terabyte of data storage, and at just $359 it’s doable, but I’ve seen plenty of options out there.

Nothing posted on OWC’s site for purchase, but check their homepage and use the search function.

I’m on the left coast, so not exactly sure on why Pexagon had the motivation to create a New Yorker USB Hard Drive [customer request], but none-the-less, it’s here and available.

The Pexagon New Yorker hard drive has over 4,000 issues of the East Coast’s favorite magazine.  The Complete New Yorker gives you instant access to every poem, short story, cartoon and ad since the magazine’s inception back in 1925.

Pexagon is known for their engraving to USB storage devices and The Complete New Yorker is no exception.  The hard drive measures 3 x 5 inches and has a brushed aluminum front with beautifully etched New Yorker logo and icon.  The magazine archive takes up a small percentage of the 80GB hard drive so the $65 price tag gets you not only storage but a great opportunity to educate yourself and become well read if you’ve been living under a rock for the past 80 years.

I would imagine someone interested in this would need to be a die hard fan of the magazine, so now the question is: Are you?

Flash update - Blogged.com reviewed GetUSB a week ago and just sent in the results: 8.5 out of 10. Not bad & others have done worse {haha}. Blogged.com reviews, rates and categorizes each website by their editors, so you won’t have to experience the frustration of filtering through blogs that are either spam, outdated, or irrelevant. You’ll be able to find quality blogs that you would have unlikely found through a traditional blog search.

“Our editors recently reviewed your blog and have given it an 8.3 score out of (10) in the Technology category of Blogged.com.

This is quite an achievement! We evaluated your blog based on the following criteria: Frequency of Updates, Relevance of Content, Site Design, and Writing Style.

After carefully reviewing each of these criteria, your site was given its 8.3 score.”

Well, we didn’t score a perfect 10 like TechCrunch or Gizmodo but don’t worry, you can help. Jump over to Blogged and review my site - let me know where to improve - and maybe the next go around we’ll get into the 9+ range.

8.3 or 5.0, either way I’m happy took the time and energy to read and review my blog. I though only family did that.

Amy - if you are reading this you want to review some of my other sites like free RSS Filter utility or Flash Memory News?

If you find my site as valuable and useful as Amy did, you can sign up for GetUSB’s RSS feed or get-the-goods via email.

On a closing note: Don’t forget to review my site - Cheers!

The Parasolar umbrella performs the very obvious of shielding you from UV rays, but did you know it soaks up those UV rays and converts them to energy? Oded Shorer is thinking outside-the-box with this concept design. The Parasolar pops open a cloth canopy which converts the sun’s rays into electric energy thanks to it’s integrated photovaltaic panels.

The Parasolar can discharge it’s stored energy via a 12v outlet or two USB ports. As UberGizmo points out, this is a great gadget for those camping trips. After all, what’s worse than losing iPod energy while stomping the North 40?

So what could they think of next? A USB pregnancy test kit? - you have got to be kidding me! Nope.

Pteq is taking the process totally digital with their new USB pregnancy test kit. I’m not sure why, as any test kit is a simple pee on the stick, and wait for one strip or two. So what does the USB bring to the table?

Well, to answer that question lets visit ThinkGeek and see what they had to say…and I must say, the did a great job describing the product. Take a read:

Quote:One line or two. Yes or no. Pregnancy tests are binary by their very nature. So when we found p-Teq’s USB Pregnancy Test Kit that’s chock full of extra scientific information, we knew we had to get this geeky goodness to our potentially spawning fans.

The process starts off like most pregnancy tests. You pee on a stick, specifically the absorbent test strip at one end. But everything’s different after that first step. Remove the cap from the other end of the stick (cleverly provided to keep you from accidentally contaminating the wrong end) to reveal the USB connector. Pop it in your computer. The power from your USB port starts the electrospray ionization process, creating a spectrograph of the various masses for your analysis. Get it? Your analysis? Urinalysis? *rimshot* Moving on. (more…)

MSN has this exclusive i-Buddy design for their instant message customers.  The idea is providing a visual message when a new instant message arrives.  Akihabara reports the i-Buddy will perform various motions when an new instant message arrives which corresponds to the emotion of the sender.  Not sure how that works, but…

The i-Buddy connects via USB port and cable and stands about 3″ tall.  I’m not clear about the details, but it seems you must be apart of the i-Buddy community to use the i-Buddy USB figure.  All features provided by the i-Buddy Community are free of charge, exclusively to those  members. i-Buddy customers can login to express themselves through the innovative functions designed it.

Don’t get too excited for this IM buddy, as Japan will be the first to try it, before the i-Buddy community rolls out to other countries.

All major browsers are supported by i-Buddy.com, including Microsoft Internet Explorer 6/7, Mozilla Firefox 2, Safari 3 and Opera 9. However, to ensure maximum compatibility, we recommend users to use either Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0+ or Mozilla Firefox 2.0+. Flash player is required to browse certain parts of i-Buddy.com

Source:  Akihabara News.