The announcement of Microsoft developing a UFD platform to replace U3 could turn into a similar battle we saw 25 years ago between VHS and Betamax.
Major suppliers have already dropped the U3 platform because of high royalty fees (around 5%) to bundle less expensive software which does the same thing. As these suppliers, like Kingston and Memorex, begin to choose the alternate like Migo Software, a heated war could surface between flash drive manufacturers.
Originally SanDisk partnered with M-Systems to develop the U3 solution, but as time went on, SanDisk bought out M-Systems and the evolution of U3 continues with this most recent partnership.
Microsoft is developing the software platform and SanDisk will continue offering their hardware for a total solution (yes, it’s a hardware/software thing). In addition, SanDisk and Microsoft will bundle in the TrustedFlash security technology developed by SanDisk.
“The U3 platform was established with the vision of giving customers a consistent and portable computing experience. The existing 20,000 U3 software developers that joined us show the potential for smart flash memory devices,†said Yoram Cedar, executive vice president of the mobile business unit and corporate engineering at SanDisk.
“We expect this relationship with Microsoft will raise the overall experience for consumers given Microsoft’s unique software expertise, and grow the momentum given the large community of 3rd party companies capable of utilizing Microsoft’s technologies.â€
The migration process for the 20,000 U3 developers is a straight forward and simple one – Microsoft puts the pressure back on you to make the migration. Microsoft did say there will be tools to ad in the process, but the bottom line is U3 developers better get cracking if they want to see the light-of-day come mid 2008.
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We’ve seen the capacity meter before from Lexar and they’ve now officially introduces the capacity meter technology to the Secure II USB flash drive line.
The load meter doesn’t require connection to display the amount of storage left, it doesn’t require firmware and isn’t OS specific. It’s a standalone technology to communicate one simple thing and ultimately provides a little more flexibility and convenience for the user.
The Lexar Secure II ships with 256-bit AES encryption technology which lets users protect data quickly and easily. Users can easily create multiple password-protected encrypted areas and simply drag files into the secure area for automatic encryption. Drag the files out again, and they are automatically decrypted.
An excellent feature Lexar includes is their File Shredder utility that safely erases files and destroys the digital trail usually left behind with a simple file delete command. With the File Shredder whatever is deleted cannot be recovered or restored.
The JumpDrive Secure II is available now in sizes between 512MB to 8GBs.
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New Launches posted this old school eraser which houses a USB flash drive.
The clever design is an irony of sorts, the eraser erases your mismatched efforts while the USB Drive stores them!
The flash drive is a 1GB size and is available for about $100 USD. What is hard to get my hands around is the ability to turn anything into a flash drive these days. I did a post yesterday of the top 19 cheeziest flash drives from over seas, on top of the strange one’s I’ve reported on, like Spongebob, Pez figures and the USB bullet.
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Tis the season for card readers…yesterday we had the latest from Kingston for the MobileLite announcement, now Buffalo introduces their latest line up – the MCR-A28 USB card reader.
This USB card reader supports 30 card types and most notably the new SDHC and Memory Stick Pro format – which are not backward compatible with other card readers which previously supported SD and Memory Stick.
Since the Kingston MobileLite is a 9 card reader focused on mobile memory cards, if you need something with a wider range of support YET still compact in size, the Buffalo USB card reader makes our short list.
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The MobileLite 9-in-1 card reader is Kingston Technology’s version of hatch back – reminds me more of a beetle.
MobileLite takes the shape of a flash drive but where you would typically find the flash memory, Kingston has placed a host of card reader slots. The top pops open reveling the memory card slots.
The PC connection is USB (of course) and the nine flash memory formats are; microSD, miniSD, Secure Digital, SDHC, MMCmicro, MMCmobile, RS-MMC, MMCplus and full size MMC (MultiMediaCard).
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I read an article today about the growing concern of worms embedded on USB flash drives. With the popularity of UFDs it’s important to protect yourself so that viruses, worms and identity theft don’t happen to you. This new type of worm is embedded on UFDs, than automatically runs when connected to an operating system.
Computer owners should tread very carefully when plugging an unknown device into their PC as it could have malicious code planted on it.
The best way to prevent a worm or virus from entering your system is disabling the autorun file on your Operating System before connecting the USB thumb drive.
Since memory prices have dropped the USB stick is a hot item for tradeshows, give-aways and direct mailers. For this reason, it’s important to protect yourself from unwanted viruses. In addition, these flash drives could become a big threat to companies as the financial motivation to obtain secure information has big payoffs.
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Linksys, a division of Cisco, released their new Wireless G USB Network Adaptor aimed at small business. What Linksys did with this product is incorporate range booster technology to increase signal strength and improve data transfer speeds.
The RangeBooster technology makes the claim that range will increase by double and data transfer speed will increase by about 35%.
And if you’re concerned about security, well then wireless products might be a little scary. Linksys covered their bases with a WPA2 256-bit encryption engine along with a Security Monitoring abilities to get the low-down when there’s a crack-down.
No word on pricing or availability.
Excited to see the new Spiderman 3 movie? Well nothing would show off your enthusiasm better then a Spiderman themed MP3 Case.
For the new release, Sony Pictures teamed with Proporta, a leading MP3 case design firm and manufacturer to develop a spider web like silicone case fit for the latest Sony MP3 player, the NW-A800.
Katrina from Proporta said, “The soundtrack to Spiderman 3 is packed with class acts such as The Killers, Snowpatrol and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs which can all be downloaded onto your new Sony NW-A800 – the latest offering from Sony’s MP3 player range.”
The Spiderman web silicone case along with a Sony Video Walkman are free at the movie premier
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The Coca Cola USB can doesn’t look as refreshing as the real thing, but will definitely last longer. The USB stick is available in 64MB-2GB sizes, high speed USB and available in silver, blue or red.
The USB Coke Can 2.0 drive has a new, faster version coming out which also stores more data…it comes in a RockStar can.
Last week Apple sent out an email (screenshot courtesy of TechCrunch.com) to video podcasters asking them to increase the quality of their productions and start formatting their videos for the big screen. Since the launch of the Apple TV (full review here) in March, Apple TVs have been selling like hotcakes and video podcast subscription numbers have skyrocketed.
Apple TV owners, who don’t necessarily want to spend lots of money in the iTunes Store, are gobbling up video podcasts like never before. Even though there currently isn’t any HD quality videos for sale in the iTunes Store, the Apple TV is capable of HD video playback. So several popular video podcasters, including The Washington Post, TWIT (MacBreak), Revision3 (Diggnation) and Vintage Tooncast, have decided to fill the void of HD content by distributing their podcasts in HD or hi res quality.
Why hasn’t everyone started distributing their video podcasts in HD? Money. Not only does producing an HD podcasts require extra hard drive space (roughly 4 times more), special cameras and editing software, but just hosting these giant video files on the Internet can be enough to bankrupt your entire production. For example, the iPod Video version of MacBreak episode 63 is 21 MBs. The HD version is 93 MBs. To help alleviate increased HD production costs, many podcasters have reached out to HD television manufacturers like Samsung and Panasonic to get them to sponsor their new HD podcasts.
For video podcasters who are still producing content at 320×240 but want to do something to increase quality, there is an intermediary step before going HD. Podcasters can start by migrating their productions to 640×480, or even 640×360 (letterbox). This way their video files will still be compatible with portable media players like the Zune and iPod, but will also work on the Apple TV. If the material is carefully encoded, it will look as good or better than typical TV.
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TrueCrypt has just what you are looking for, provided you are looking for free USB flash drive encryption software utilities.
The best feature of TrueCrypt is the automatic, on-the-fly, real-time encryption process. So it’s completely transparent.
The other great feature is the Plausible Deniability feature which provides two levels for you.
Level 1: Hidden volumes. This is where a volume is created within another volume by TrueCrypt. The upper level (the one seen by a person forcing you to get the content) is filled with random data, so you can show them “Look man, there’s nothing there!”
Level 2: A volume appears to consist of nothing more than random data, no signature or typology what-so-ever. Therefore, it is impossible to prove that a file, a partition or a device has been encrypted.
To round out the offerings of this free USB encryption software, TrueCrypt includes a key-log which records the time and date the last time modifications were made. Such as password changes, data access or more concerning information such as last time the device was mounted in an OS, or attempted to be mounted.
The only down side, which I feel
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