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Friday, July 4, 2008

USB Webkey May Replace Flash Drives As Corporate Swag

By Luke Anderson

If you’ve ever been to any kind of trade show in the last few years, you’ve no doubt gotten a USB flash drive from one of the vendors. They hand them out like candy these days (I think I had close to a dozen by the end of my last show), but unfortunately they don’t help the company stand out. This Push Button USB Webkey may very well start replacing promotional thumb drives.

Rather than giving you a 512MB flash drive (or a 16MB one, which is almost completely useless these days) a company may hand you this strange-looking USB hub. There’s actually more than meets the eye with this two port hub. If you press the top of the hub, it will automatically open up your default browser and navigate to a specific address. Seems interesting enough, though I’d rather take a flash drive any day. Then again, free stuff is free stuff.

[ Alibaba ] VIA [ Redferret ]

catergory Related Tags: gadgets, USB

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Ace 3 months ago 1 point
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This has to be the dumbest thing ever posted on a geek blog.

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Mike 3 months ago 1 point
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As long as I can reconfigure the address it goes to, this would make an excellent boss key.

Doesn't do much good if my boss walks in and I switch from porno to Microsoft's job listings page though...

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Yocto 3 months ago 1 point
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Could this be from the same manufacturer as this "ecobutton"? http://www.ohgizmo.com/2008/01/30/ecobutton-pro... I mean, once you register the design patents for USB buttons, you may as well try and get the most out of them. People must find at least ONE of these ideas useful...

USB drives as a transport medium for promotional material, sure. But letting an external device control your machine at the push of a button? Removable devices are becoming a fast growing attack vector for spy- and malware, especially in the business area, because everybody's so careless about autorun. Any business where a device like this is expected to work has a seriously flawed computer security plan.

So I don't understand why any self-respecting advertiser would distribute USB devices that rely on autorun features.

Unless you WANT to single out people with low-grade security. Because this usually also means they'll be gullible enough, er, I mean, valuable enough as a new customer. Hum.

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