The iTunes store offers hundreds of games for adults and teens, but what about the younger kids. The kindergartners, preschoolers and 1st graders? Today I am reviewing an iPhone application called Shape Builder.
Shape Builder is a puzzle game where a youngster drags puzzle shapes over a silhouette to build an image. Once the image is complete either a sound effect or spoke word is played for the graphic.
The game is amazingly simple. I have a 3 year old who figured it out instantly. The shapes are familiar and in sync with what kindergartners are learning. Shapes such as fire trucks, letters and animals.
The graphics are excellent. Colors are vibrant. The voice over was done by a speech thearapest so the words are phonetically correct.
Check out the video:
I look forward to additional puzzle sets for older kids, or focus on specific group of items, such as the just the alphabet.
The iPhone application for kids, Shape Builder, gets a five star rating from GetUSB.info. Well worth the pennies you’ll spend to buy it!
It’s not often you need a USB spy camera, but when you do, this is a quick and easy method. The setup is putting a USB camera into your hoodie pocket then running the camera from your laptop stuffed in a computer bag. The situation reminds me of a perfect setup for college days where you need to video a test or capture some funny footage at a party.
Plenty of applications for this type of setup, check it out.
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Every company is looking for a way to make a custom flash drive and Canon is onto something hot here with the 5D minaturized down to a USB stick. Well, not the entire device, but the lens pops out to become the flash drive.
It’s not clear if the 5D custom flash drive is made of plastic or rubber, but from the image, it looks spot-on to the real deal.
The minature 5D Canon knock off is a cool $100 on ebay. It’s a 4GB drive.
Source: OhGizmo.
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Our friends at Test Freaks gathered up 17 different 16GB drives and did some hands on benchmark and testing. First off, props goes out to Mr. Brozio for convincing all the manufacturers to give up free 16GB drives. Second, I give him kudos for the in-depth analysis and benchmarking test. Well done.
The 16GB USB review includes the following drives:
Adata Sport Series RB19 16gb
Corsair Flash Voyager
HP USB Flash Drive v125W
Imation Swivel Flash Drive
Kingston Data Traveler100
Kingston DataTraveler HyperX
Memorex Traveldrive
OCZ Diesel
OCZ Throttle
Patriot Exporter XT
PNY Attache
PQI Traveling Disk 1221
Ridata EZdrive Lightning Series
Sandisk Cruzer Micro
Super Talent Pico-C
Transcend JetFlash Elite Enabled
Verbatim Store ‘n’ Go
I wont give away the full details on the 16GB USB review – please check with Test Freaks. However, it is painfully clear that Transcend Jetflash is a horrible drive. Which is funny as they spend a good amount of marketing time and money saying they are the best performing. Transcend must be taking Ford’s marketing philosophy and advertising their weakness. “Built Ford Tough” ha – those cars are anything but tough.
To get a bit of their approach Test Freaks considers:
If I’m looking for a USB drive, the first thing I look at is the Copy To or Write speeds, this is what is most important to me, the next thing would be the Copy From speeds, as for me what I do most is put data on it, then take it off, reading from the drive is not that important to me really. So it all depends on what your priorities are concerning USB drives, the results are here, you can judge for yourself which is best for you.
Here is a great looking Steampunk Custom flash drive. The creator, Marcos, put a brass shell around the outside of this USB stick, then decorated the outside with miniature gears and watch components.
It appears Marcos took the USB cap and attached it to the end with some included brass gears and other Steampunk detail.
The custom flash drive uses a piston gear from the USB connector to the watch components as a representation of the power from the PC being transferred to the heart of the USB stick.
The 2GB steampunk custom flash drive is only $50, is 100% handcrafted and completely unique. There is limited stock, so if interested get on it.
The USB Steampunk can be found and purchased at Etsy.
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The Register.com website has been down far to long [over 3 hours]. I’ve got customers from California, to New York to Israel who don’t have a site running – anyone know what is going on?
Is this another story of a big boy falling in these uncertain times or we just talking about some serious technical support issues?
Corsair put an interesting twist on backup technology. They have devised a one touch USB flash drive backup adapter. The adapter has a female USB port sitting on the top of the device. This is where you can plug in any flash drive. The adapter then connects to your PC via miniUSB cable.
At this point, the USB backup adapter is ready to suck information off your PC and stuff it onto your flash drive, with the push of a single button.
Of course you need to set some configuration options in the NovaBackUp software, but once set – you’re ready at any moment.
“Our research indicated that over 80% of users have a My Documents folder of less than 64GB, and more than 85% need to regularly transport less than 64GB of data between different PCs. This shows that USB flash drives are an efficient method of backing up your data, and with high-capacity USB flash drives, there is still plenty of room for your favorite music, photos and even movies,” said Jim Carlton, Corsair’s vice president of marketing.
This is also an excellent marketing tool to encourage users to break away from their 2 year old 1GB drives and saddle up for a larger 16GB, 32GB or 64GB flash drive.
I for one, am a lazy backer-upper and a device like this might encourage me to be more vigilante about data backups.
The Corsair USB backup adapter has an MSRP of $35.
Corsair product page.
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Don’t know about you, but I’ve been searching for a USB hub with a change tray. It would also be ideal if the hub was in the shape of a turtle.
Oh wait, here we go. Thomas of USBFever answered my prayers. The 4 port high speed 2.0 Hub is a nice addition to your desk where you need a space to store the extra lunch change, post-it notes or small paper clips.
So why is the turtle’s jaw dropping to the floor? It’s an SD card reader for SD, microSD and miniSD flash cards.
Lebedev Studio released a prototype USB hub based off a light prism. The creativity and look as very cool with a clear communication of how data transfers through the device.
To bad the colorful USB cables aren’t available and I believe it’s just a design style not yet available.
What do you think?
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Pretec is about to introduce an aptly named eSATA/USB dual interface flash drive named Cobra. This ultra fast flash drive has max read speeds of 90MB per second and max write speeds of 60MBs per second.
The dual channel interface has the eSATA connector at one end and the USB connector at the other.
The Pretec Cobra is available in 32GB and 64GB sizes, which is respectable given the fast transfer rates. This info was sourced via Engadget China, so no word on pricing or availablility.
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The World Fishing Network could use this as a network give-away, the 4 port Fishing USB hub. Besides the fun form factor, this little guy uses it’s two fish eyes to light up when data is being transmitted through the hub.
The 4 port USB hub is only $10.99 plus a couple bucks shipping. Colors include black and purple. For more details or order information please visit USBFever.
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