These days it’s popular to take just about any house hold item, a USB flash drive, and mill out a space to make a USB mod case.  Today’s post is no exception.  Using just two dice and a mini USB, in four easy steps you can make a USB dice key-chain.

Step 1:  Get your items.  Dice, USB, Dremel, blue or epoxy and a file.

Step 2:  After some measurements, mill out the hold where the USB will be inserted.

Step 3:  Repeat step 2 for the second die as this will be your cap.  You also need to drill a hole on a dice side for the lanyard which will attached to your key-chain

Step 4:  Epoxy the USB drive into the base die, and attached the lanyard to the cap die.  Now you’ve got a USB dice key-chain.

You might want to take things a step further and

Found this today, little kid project for turning a USB drive into a Shuriken.  Not familiar with the term, then check this out.

As for the tutorial and link, it’s after the jump.

Apple has made waves in the news with their stellar 2nd Quarter results, increased stock price, new MacBook Air and Mac Mini’s computers, no wonder many are talking about them.  In addition, Apple released another OS update, the OS X Lion.  Lion is available immediately via download off the app store.  Some may not want to download a new 4GB OS update.  For that, Apple will release their Lion on USB.

First off, lets get some pricing out of the way.  The download update is retail at $30.  The USB stick is set to be at $70.  Not bad, but seems like their math doesn’t add up.  Granted you get an 8GB stick, but lets take a look…$30 for update + $15 for an 8GB stick, the retail should around $45.  Oh, and the Apple logo, that’s another $25.  Okay, now my math is correct.  I apologize.

However, if you have an extra 4GB or 8GB stick you can create your own USB OS X Lion stick.  The USB tutorial isn’t that long and only involves three steps.  For the tutorial, I’m going to redirect you to

Who didn’t love the movie thriller “The Da Vinci Code?”  Not only that, who didn’t dream about having a cool Cryptex gadget to store all your valuable secrets?  Come one, you know it would be phenomenally great to have such a device.  Well, it might not be that far off.

A Russian engineer has posted his version of a USB Cryptex case which includes detailed drawings, CAD files and component assembly.

You can’t help but to want one. [more photo's after the break]

Several years ago the concept of a 2GB luggage tag would be out of the questions.  A 2GB drive was about $15 and for that reason, most everyone would consider it too expensive.

Today however, with a 2GB flash drive less than $5.00 it makes plenty of sense to use a flash drive to store your contact information via USB.  Sure, you still write your name, address and phone number on the label above, but you can now include additional information.  Travel itinerary, medical information and 2nd contact information.

Now, if you want the luggage tag looking USB with label area, it will cost you the full price of $30, but I’d rather take an old USB or a new $5.00 and create my own.  Wouldn’t be that hard with some creative material like duct tape.

USB luggage tage webpage.

Just looking at the picture, wouldn’t it be a shame if the Porsche inspired USB hard drive from LaCie got a scratch on it?  Not many tech products get designed after house-hold names, like Porsche, but it seems LaCie is making a good business out of it.

The exclusive design is available in 500GB and 1TB size with an even more exclusive size of 750GBs only available at Porsche stores.  Wouldn’t that be odd, “Honey, I’m going down to the Porsche dealership to pick up a hard drive to expand the TiVo box.”  But, after she saw the hard drive, I’m sure she would understand.

So when you can find a 500GB USB hard drive for about $80, why bother?  Drop another $20 and get the LaCie Porsche version.  Now that is money well spent.

For the tech folks, it’s USB 3.0 so great transfer rates.  For the Uber-Geek, forget about Thunderbolt – sh!t, the spec just came out and I’m sure it took Porsche at least 6 months just to approve the design.  So stop getting theoretical

Voltaic is a company that deals with voltage.  They specialize in the solar charging to create volts.  Their latest entry is the Spark.  The Spark is a solar panel design for tablet and notebooks.

Voltaic is marketing the Spark for the iPad – and why not as there’s plenty of marketing spin going on for Apple tablets.

The Spark will generate 8watts of solar power.  So for those who don’t have an electrical engineering degree, or simply can’t do the math – one hour of sun to the Spark will generate enough power to run one hour of video off the iPad.  Not bad.

• Weather:  Panels are waterproof, lightweight and built to withstand abuse.
• Charge times: About 10 hours in direct sun will fully charge an iPad, other tablets may take less time.
• Peak Output: 6 Volts, 1,333mA or 12 Volts, 667mA
• Connector:  USB and 5 standard adapters

So here is the price – $299 USD.  To learn more, visit