Happy Earth Day.  Over the years, GetUSB has reported on a number of green friendly products.  Today we’ll take a quick look at what some of those are.

For example, how would you like to listen to music with a hand crank MP3 player while making your way through a jungle?  Not adventurous - well you can still do your part with the Go Green USB Earth Drive.  But even that might be a little extreme for you.  We do have a selection of wood flash drives which might not be the best “go green” decision, but it would cut down on plastic.

Probably one of the most useful things we could collectively do is stream line production and consumption and go with one standard for power connections.  This would reduce the number of useless cables and connectors made for all different types of electronics and we could just settle for one cable which does it all.

As a closing note, we could monitor our electricity consumption a little better with a USB temperature and humidity logger.  After all, keeping a closer eye on how often that air condition goes on would not only help the environment, but reduce your electric bill.

To read up on Earth Day please visit the official website for more details on how to clean up our mess.

GetUSB.info has been translating our posts into Spanish for quite some time now.  Our Spanish site isn’t an automated translation engine either - it’s the real deal.  Carlos is my Editor in Chief for GetUSB.info Espanol and is relentless in his punctual translations.  Located in Panama, Carlos not only does the edits for spanish.getusb.info but also runs Panama Live, an online travel and tourism magazine for Panama, and Adarte Studio, an online community for designers, webmasters and SEO professionals.

Carlos just reported some interesting statistics about his visitor base and I wanted to take some time to A) say “thanks” to Carlos for being a great editor and B) share the visitor statistics.  So here we are:

Our next step is changing over the old GetUSB design to the new, fresh look of the English site.  We feel the English version is easier to read, quick to navigate and less intrusive advertising.

So, if you like what you see at GetUSB but would rather read it in Spanish hop over to spanish.getusb.info.  You can also grab our Spanish RSS feed here.  (Need an RSS Filter for those keywords?)

Once again, Thanks Carlos for a wonderful job!

Greg
GetUSB.info Editor in Chief

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?