These USB fish are rubberized drives giving them a very unique shape and bright, vibrant colors. I don’t think the typcial computer geek would appreciate these, but for someone a bit more into aquatic life these could be of interest.
First up:Â USB Swordfish
In the heat of getting a new site launched over the weekend, I needed an .ico Favicon for the website. I came across this free on-line tool which made everything a snap. No software download, no .exe to load…just down and dirty ico creator. Today I thought it would be a great review [from original post] to go over How To Make a Favicon for a Flash Drive.
It’s just several easy steps. Lets begin.
Using a program to create an image file, make a jpeg for what you want the ico to look like. You can use something as simple as Microsoft Paint or something as fancy as Photoshop. When you make the jpeg, make the overal shape square. Try and keep the logo simple – simple will translate best into an ico file.
Browse to Chamie and click the “Favicon from Pics” link. Upload your file. Chami will automatically generate your ico file. Chami gives you some great options for the USB favicon file. You can get a static image or an animated .gif file.
Once you have the .ico file, save that image to the root of your USB flash drive.
Next, open Notepad in Microsoft [or any plain text editor] and type the following:
[autorun]
icon=favicon.ico
Save this to the root of your USB stick as “autorun.inf”
Wouldn’t it be cool that whenever you plug in a USB device your computer would make an awesome artillery sound? I think it would – for at least the first 30 times – and so I found a solution for you. The USB hub artillery gun.
This hub looks very cool and plays a three second sound effect upon connection of a USB device. This really had me…until I read it was USB 1.1 compliant. I didn’t know China was still cranking out USB with ONLY 1.1 support…especially with USB SuperSpeed just around the corner.
The 1.1 spec means this USB hub artillery gun is really only good for mice, keyboards and other slow input devices. Meaning you wont get the awesome sound effects all that often. Still, it might be worth the
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Louis Vuitton is getting into the designer USB flash drive market with their new Platinum series Damier Graphite USB key. This 4GB USB flash drive not only sports a good amount of storage, but a bit more stylish and trendy than your typical custom flash drive.
The Louis Vuitton USB stick comes with a platinum ring, a durable cord – much stronger than your typcial lanyard – and a carabiner that can attach the USB stick to your bag, cell phone etc.
The Damier Graphite collection includes matching accessories from Louis Vuitton such as belts, wallets, motorcycle keg and case for iPhone.
The USB stick is available for
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Typically we see a USB monitor in the form of a screen with some sort of VGA converter with a USB port, like the one from USB Fever, but today we see a different version. Samsung has introduced a monitor which runs by simply plugging in the USB cable to any laptop. There is no adapter or converter required.
The conversion from an analog signal to digital signal is made within the monitor itself, thus eliminating the need for external VGA converter.
The Samsung model reports an impressive 30,000:1 contrast with speedy 5ms response time.
Samsung did not comment on availability within the states or the pricing, but it’s nice to see the trend of external monitors go the route of USB. After all, what other connectivity is as simple and convenient?
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Today I updated the official company GetUSB.info iPhone to software rev. 3.0. It only took two blue screens of death in Windows to accomplish the task. Hint: Make sure all other applications are closed during the update.
So there are 1.2 million’ish bloggers, blogs and websites that have reported about the iPhone 3.0 software, and I’m adding just one more review. So far 3.0 version is working great. I have many different applications and they all seem to be working just fine.
Three notable features I just love are:
1) The ability to Copy and Paste. About time and love the way Apple has integrated the feature. Here is a snap shot [gotta love the message of the snap shot… Moto Razr crashing…too funny!].
The last time GetUSB.info did a post about the largest USB stick it was for the 64GB Transcend flash drive. That little guy retailed at near $200, but that was also back in September of 2008.
Two days ago, Kingston released their 128GB USB flash drive. The Kingstong DataTraveler 200 is “now” the largest USB stick in the market. 128GBs.
This guy retails for $546. That is a very expensive drive when you compare it to the Western Digital Passports where Terabytes are under $300…but you can’t put a price tag on portability. Or can you?
There are no special features nor auto-backup software included in the bundle, just a simple drive with a ginormous capacity, a sliding cap, and password utility for extra security. Strangely enough, Kingston will only sell the 128GB version as a made to order process. Go figure.
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Waaay back in August of 2007 we purposed everyone get a new USB Front Man for the boss, girlfriend or co-workers. Well, Tengu [your front man] now has an updated look. Introducing the “Peace Out,” the “Lightening” and “Wild Child” Tengu USB talking gadgets.
The Tengu automatically moves it’s LED mouth to the music it hears in the room.
Here is a video clip of Tengu doing his thing.
It also looks like SolidAlliance did some mark-up with their mouths and legs to give the Tengu a bit more personality.
Dane Memory is running a special this week through Buy.com for a 16GB USB flash drive for $27 and change. This is a great price considering almost all the other 16GB drives are between $38-40. In addition, you are getting some great produce. Dane Memory uses only the best controllers and flash memory [Toshiba flash] so the performance is Category 6. Considering most netbooks these days have 64GB hard drives, this nice little pocket addition of 16GB could make all the difference when a bit more storage is needed.
Another feature worth noting is the capless design. Much better than the swing arms we’ve seen out there.
Here is the company line for the GetUSB Deals 16GB Dane Memory drive: [only while supplies last]
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If you yank out a USB drive from your computer, do you think it hurts the stick or could damage the drive? No it doesn’t. Well, it’s possible, but not probable. The reason why is that Windows updated their removal policy for mass storage devices a long time ago.
To mitigate the likelihood of data loss in surprise removal scenarios, Windows XP refined the caching policy for removable storage. As of Windows XP Beta 2, for consumer-oriented removable storage (USB, Flash, Zip, and so on), write caching is disabled by default.
This means the write process happens immediately and when the Windows dialogue box shows complete…it’s really complete.
In the past, Windows would buffer the data first, then write. So if you pulled out the storage device there was a good chance Windows was still writing to the drive. That’s when you get a corrupted drive. So Window’s changed
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If you are like me, you’ve done a great bit of searching on the internet to remove Read Only USB partition or to remove CDROM USB partition, and unfortunately there isn’t much information out there. The only utility we’ve found, is the one used to remove the U3 platform off a retail USB stick made by Sandisk, but chances are you are dealing with a different vendor or stick.
We found a company that can do this, and they do it in bulk. USBCopier.com is a USB duplication service company that specializes in fixing your problem, like removing a Read Only USB partition. I’m not sure how they do it, but their services worked for us.
As you know, a simple format or delete attempt to the USB device simply doesn’t work…you get the “This disk is write protected” message.
I spoke with USBCopier.com about the issue, and they can remove a USB partition off all types of drives, like USB sticks with Chipsbank controllers, Alcor, SMI, USBest and many others. They also said the partition type doesn’t matter, it can be either the Read Only or CDROM and they can remove it. USBCopier also mentioned if they can remove the USB partition, then chances are, they can also recreate it.
The company was a life saver to us and I wanted to pass along the information. It was much cheaper to pay the service fee to remove the USB partition than it was to re-buy all the USB sticks and start from scratch.
Here is the link to their USB duplication service page. Here is the link to their contact page.
If you are in a bit of trouble – I wish you luck – these guys could possibly help.
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If, GetUSB.info had an award for best Steampunk drive, this would get it. Set in a nice wood case, this Steampunk USB drive is riddled with over 30 mechanical parts from six different watches. Some parts are from watches that are over 100 years old.
The 16GB hand crafted USB Steampunk also holds 26 Ruby gems which catch the light from different angles. When the stick is plugged in the standard green LED illuminates and also creates a nice look. Unfortunately no picture of it connected.
This prize winning Steampunk took nearly 12 hours to complete…and looks fantastic. What do you think?
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