Another USB Music Release – The Fratellis

Matt Laboff March 20, 2007 USB Hardware & Gadgets, USB News & Press Releases

Doing music releases on a flash drive are slowly becoming more popular. Now available are The Fratellis on flash.

The 256MB flash drive includes the single Baby Fratelli (listen now), the video which goes along with it, a web link and “competition,” whatever that is. I would say The Fratellis have a touch of Penny Wise, Wild Flower and my buddies band Imperial X. Continue Reading

MagicJack the Magic Phone Jack

Matt Laboff March 19, 2007 Tutorials & How-To Guides, USB Hardware & Gadgets, USB News & Press Releases

UPDATE: The MagicJack phone jack received Product of the Year in 2007. After the purchase of the MagicJack USB dongle (about $40) you pay a one time fee of $19.95 per year for unlimited calling. Not $19.95 per month BUT $19.95 per year. This will reduce your phone bill to just $20 a year! The MagicJack phone is available at Amazon. Review: GetUSB.info reviews MagicJack, the Magic Phone Jack.

MagicJack is a convenient USB dongle with phone jack attached to it. By connecting your regular phone to the MagicJack phone port, you can now make free calls anywhere within the US for free. If traveling in Canada, Mexico, UK, China, Italy and Israel then you can call home (USA) for free.

MagicJack is a VoIP service which doesn’t have phone charges but rather an upfront cost for the USB dongle. No pricing yet, but it does provide not only free calling using your regular phone, but includes Continue Reading

Poll Results: Do You Own a Flash Drive with U3 Software?

Matt Laboff March 15, 2007 Flash Storage & Memory, Industrial Duplication & Media Management, USB News & Press Releases

We wrapped up another poll this week and it appears 64% of the GetUSB.info readers have U3 software loaded on their flash drives. Interestingly enough, today Kingston made the announcement they will drop the U3 platform do to high royalty costs and low demand for the product. I for one, think the platform and idea are a nice addition and if you haven’t tried U3 flash drives, you should – you may never go back. Continue Reading

Plastic and Fantastic – USB Poll Dancer

Matt Laboff March 15, 2007 USB Hardware & Gadgets, USB News & Press Releases

Often those USB novelty gadgets are quite lame, but put a little music to it and become very funny. Take, for example, the USB poll dancer.

U3 Gets The Axe From Kingston

Matt Laboff March 14, 2007 Flash Storage & Memory, Industrial Duplication & Media Management, USB News & Press Releases

Kingston Technology released a statement yesterday giving U3 the axe for pre-installation on USB flash drives. Kingston will stop selling the U3 product because the royalty fees are too great for the price sensitive flash memory market.

Kingston explained its decision in saying that extra bundled software means additional costs for consumers. The company already has its own similar platform to substitute for U3, according to company sources.

According to some IC controller design houses, SanDisk – the big player advocating U3 – charges about a 5% royalty fee for adopting the U3 platform. Continue Reading

Mini USB Dock Replaces 2G iPod Dock Station

Matt Laboff March 13, 2007 USB Hardware & Gadgets, USB News & Press Releases, USB Security & Compliance

The iPod Shuffle comes with the 2G Dock station which is a little large, relatively speaking, so replace it with this inexpensive iUSB dock connector. The Essential Tech iUSB connects directly to the iPod and directly to your USB port.

The iUSB dock station supports full USB 2.0 transfer speeds, is ridiculously small and eliminates any cables. At just 5.6 grams it’s truly the best mini iPod dock station available. Mac and PC compatible for only $10. Continue Reading

Apple TV Shipping

methodshop March 20, 2007 Flash Storage & Memory, USB Hardware & Gadgets

I got an email from Apple this morning at 4 A.M.. Guess my Apple TV is on its way. And it looks like they gave me a discount. I only got charged $281. It’s listed for $299 on Apple.com. I pre-ordered my Apple TV the day it was announced. Maybe I got the discount because it got delayed a month?

USB Hack: Disable Writing to USB Drives

Matt Laboff March 16, 2007 Flash Storage & Memory, Tutorials & How-To Guides, USB News & Press Releases

So here’s a poor mans USB hack to secure your network from unscrupulous characters downloading company secrets via USB. In Windows XP SP2 and Vista you can disable writing to USB devices altogether by implementing a simple registry hack.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\ Control\StorageDevicePolicies] â€œWriteProtectâ€=dword:00000001 **Note: I inserted a break after …Set\< br>Control… to fit into post page.

Once done, reboot and you’re set. Make sure others don’t have Administrative rights, otherwise they could easily set things back. Here is the Vista error message upon copy attempt:

There is an auto executable download available to disable writing to USB drives without searching for the registry area yourself. If interested in this USB hack, then jump over to How-To-Geek and snag it. Continue Reading

Buffalo Silicon Flash Drive – It’s the World’s Largest

Matt Laboff March 15, 2007 Flash Storage & Memory, Tutorials & How-To Guides, USB Hardware & Gadgets, USB News & Press Releases

One year ago, almost to the day, IOCell introduced the self proclaimed “World’s largest capacity flash drive” at the CeBIT 2006 show. Today, you can find 16GB flash drives from Transcend, US Modular and Pretec, so why is the Buffalo 16GB announcement of interest? Well, it uses Silicon HDD Technology.

Silicon hard drives are different then normal hard drives in that no magnetic discs are present, rather the data is stored in silicon memory. How the silicon (HDD) hard drive works is by Continue Reading

How Popular Is U3 Software

Matt Laboff March 15, 2007 Flash Storage & Memory, Industrial Duplication & Media Management, Tutorials & How-To Guides, USB News & Press Releases

Yesterday GetUSB.info reported on Kingston giving U3 the axe and their decision to stop selling the portable application bundled into Kingston UFDs. Interestingly enough, part of that announcement indicated sales for U3 devices are lack-luster and demand for U3 drives aren’t high enough to offset the royalty fee associated with platform.

However, as the story broke, GetUSB.info just finished their latest USB Poll on “Do You Own a Flash Drive With U3 Software?” The results concluded that 64% of GetUSB.info readers have U3 drives, where as the balance do not. Seems to us, there are some mixed numbers. Continue Reading

ATP USB mini ToughDrive and CoSoSys Team Up

Matt Laboff March 13, 2007 Flash Storage & Memory, Tutorials & How-To Guides, USB News & Press Releases

The CoSoSys Carry It Easy software we recently reported will now be found, pre-installed, on the ATP USB ToughDrive. The preloaded CoSoSys software will allow for quick and easy sync of email, contacts and personal bookmarks.

If not familiar with the ATP ToughDrive, it’s a ruggedized flash drive designed to withstand water, dust, static discharge and extreme temps. Include the Secure It Easy software from CoSoSys and now you’re not only portable but iron-clad secure too. Continue Reading

Review: Terratec Headset Master 5.1 Surround Sound USB

Matt Laboff March 13, 2007 Flash Storage & Memory, USB Hardware & Gadgets, USB News & Press Releases

Gadget Centre has once again pulled through with an excellent review. The Terratec USB Surround Sound Headmaster is one high-tech, well built, hard core headphone system.

…held together by a unsightly looping support which wouldn’t look out of place in a medieval dungeon, it’s a good job the Headset Master is for your PC: if you took it outside people would go out of their way to point and laugh at you.

Chris Russell points out that although they are a little heavy, they are well built and designed for the hard core gamer who’d appreciate every tweak of sound during an all intense Counter-Strike tourney.