Oh! Gizmo

By Andrew Liszewski

Buffalo just upped the capacity of their itty-bitty 5mm Thumbkey USB flash drives from 8GB to 16GB, making them the perfect way to easily lose a big chunk of data. The drives should be available from Geek Stuff 4 U in black, red or white sometime near the end of June with a price tag of about $136. Expensive yes, but a ridiculously easy way to increase the storage space on your netbook.

[ Buffalo 16GB 5mm Thumbkey ] VIA [ Akihabara News ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Instead of having to connect your mobile phone and a USB flash drive to a PC in order to transfer files between the two, the Mobidapter lets you do it directly, as long as your phone has an external SD. It includes adapters for full size SD card slots as well as microSD and miniSD, and it will read any USB flash drive with a capacity of 32GB or less. Power is leeched from the cellphone’s battery, and the actual copying procedures are handled by the phone’s file browser, with the device simply showing up as a USB flash drive. (Though that could vary depending on the OS.)

The Mobidapter will set you back about $46, but it seems like a dead easy way to backup or upload multimedia content to your phone without the hassle of booting up a PC.

[ Mobidapter ] VIA [ The Red Ferret Journal ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Kingston may claim to be the first company to offer a 128GB flash drive, but DiskGO has already beaten them when it comes to pricing. While Kingston’s asking a wallet-lightening $546 for their 128GB DataTraveler, the DiskGO 128GB model will sell for a mere $389.95 when it becomes available sometime after July 31. And that’s with free shipping!

Of course if you don’t need 128GB right now it’s probably not a bad idea to wait it out because it’s inevitable that one day we’ll all have a drawer full of ‘tiny’ 128GB flash drives from trade shows or other promotions that aren’t even worth giving away.

[ DiskGO 128GB Flash Drive ] VIA [ The Gadgeteer ]

By Andrew Liszewski

It was bound to happen, but it’s still pretty cool to see the release of a 128GB USB flash drive. The Kingston DataTraveler 200 comes in 32 and 64GB flavors, but it’s the “built-to-order only” 128GB model that will have most of us drooling. All 3 drives include a sliding USB connector instead of an easy-to-lose cap, which is nice, and while the 32 and 64GB models will set you back $120 and $213 respectively, that 128GB one will retail for a hefty $546!

[ PR - Kingston Technology First to Market with 128GB USB Flash Drive ] VIA [ CrunchGear ]

By Evan Ackerman

Unlike the ambiguously betentacled USB sea creatures we’ve seen before, this is most definitely a USB squid, and not a cuttlefish. Nifer Fahrion makes each DataSquid by hand out of wool, and endows them with USB data storage which is accessible by removing the two long tentacles. 8 gigs worth of squid is $95.

[ NifNaks ]

By Evan Ackerman

Psst, let me let you in on a little secret… Your cat’s ears? They’re actually USB drives. Go on, pull them off and see. If you’ve never used them before, you might have to tug pretty hard, but trust me, they’re in there. It’s one of the many perks of cat ownership. It works on cat tails, too. Actually, just one of them is a USB drive… The other one is a USB drive cleaner.

Pretty soon, we’re going to be able to put together an entire USB cat. And when that happens… Um, I have no idea what will happen when that happens, but it’ll be it will involve nuclear Armageddon and/or a rain of frogs. 2 gigs worth of ear is $44, and 8 gigs is $65.

[ Rakuten ] VIA [ CrunchGear ]

By Evan Ackerman

This, I guess, is why they call it a “Universal Cereal Bus.”

Now that USB drives have gotten as small as physically possible, you can get creative and make some DIY USB drives of your own with little more than a tiny drive, some glue, and whatever crap you feel inspired to kludge onto it.

VIA [ TechEBlog ]

By Andrew Liszewski

I have nothing but fond memories of my Transformers toys when I was growing up, but even with impressive additions like the Dinobots or SkyLynx, my hands down favorite transformer of all time was Ravage. Why? Because he folded up into an innocent looking micro-cassette that allowed him to be smuggled anywhere. Sadly Ravage’s stealth was also his downfall because one day he went missing, and was never seen again. But my memories of Ravage will now live on thanks to this transforming USB flash drive. It’s available for pre-order from the BigBadToyStore for $42.99 (eta September 2009) which is actually pretty expensive for a 2GB flash drive. Still, even if it only came with 128Mb on board I bet it would still fly off the shelves.

[ Transforming USB Flash Memory (2 GB) - Ravage ] VIA [ Nerd Approved ]

By Andrew Liszewski

A week or so ago Evan brought news of the EagleTec USB flash drive which managed to cram as much as 8GBs into a drive that was barely larger than a USB connector. Well it seems that EagleTec has used their magic shrink ray to come up with a microSD card reader that’s just as minute. It’s pretty much as small as the company’s USB flash drive, but it allows you to read and write to microSD or microSDHC flash cards up to 32GB in size. It supports Windows XP, 2K and Vista (you guys better start listing Windows 7 soon) and OSX 10.2 or higher. And at just $13 from Brando, it’s a no-brainer if you’ve got a small collection of microSD cards.

[ EagleTec USB NanoSac Micro SD Card Reader ] VIA [ Geeky Gadgets ]