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 ]

By Evan Ackerman

This concept from Ennova Direct is a USB flash drive with all kinds of fanciness goin’ on. On top of the drive is an OLED screen that incorporates a biometric fingerprint scanner to keep all of your stuff secure. The screen can also be used as an “interactive interface that allows the user to select specific files and initiate specific functions.”

Although it’s just a concept at the moment, Ennova seems to actually get around to producing what they file patents for. They’ve produced a flash drive with a retractable USB interface as well as a flash drive with integrated Bluetooth, so it’s at least reasonably likely that we’ll see this sometime in Q1 of 2010.

[ Press Release ] VIA [ OLED-Display ]

By Evan Ackerman

Looky here, it’s yet another smallest flash drive ever! The EagleTec Nano flash drive measures a minuscule 19 x 15 x 6mm and weighs only 3 grams. It manages to stuff as much as 8 gigs of memory in there somewhere… To be fair, I can’t really see how a flash drive could get much smaller than this without being totally impractical and an accidental inhalation risk. But, I have faith that those issues aren’t going to prevent it from happening anyway.

The EagleTec Nano flash drives comes with 4 gigs for $22, or 8 gigs for $33.

[ Brando ] VIA [ Ubergizmo ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Today Fujitsu Laboratories announced a couple of new technologies that should help prevent data stored on a USB flash drive from ending up in the wrong hands. The first is the secure USB memory device prototype pictured above that may have been inspired by a piece of Babybel cheese. It works like your standard USB flash drive, but it’s got a processor and battery on-board that can be used to automatically erase the data after a specified amount of time, or if the flash drive is plugged into an unregistered computer.

The second development is a file redirect technology that can prevent files on a USB flash drive from being saved to another computer, or uploaded to an unapproved server. I’m not exactly sure how that technology is designed to work, since the Fujitsu press release is a little vague on the details, but the goal is to prevent confidential files from being emailed outside the office, or even printed.

[ PR - Fujitsu Develops Secure USB Memory Device Featuring Automatic Data-Erase Function ] VIA [ Akihabara News ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Don’t get too excited over this classy white USB necktie, since it doesn’t appear to be available for sale, but the concept was created by the designers at dialog05 as a means for making business contacts. Instead of swapping business cards, you can just download their contact info to the handy USB flash drive you have hanging around your neck all day long.

[ dialog05 - Business Class ] VIA [ Inspire me, now! ]