Flash Drive Direct news and reviews

Flash drive direct new mini memory chip

2008-08-23T22:27:00.000-07:00

Flash Drive Direct launched its new Z-P140 PATA drive today as part of the company's push to advance mobile Internet device technology. The Z-P140 SSD (solid state disk) is impressive, with a total area smaller than a fingertip (as pictured) and available capacities of 2GB and 4GB. At 0.6 grams, the Z-P140 is 75x lighter than a standard 1.8" drive, while occupying only 1/400 of the volume. Intel claims that the Z-P140 class of drives can be expanded up to 16GB in future iterations.
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It might be tiny, but FDD claims its new SDD is no slouch in the performance department. The Z-P140 is rated at a 40MBps read speed and 30MBps write speed. Power draw (or lack thereof) is also impressive; the Z-P140 draws 300mW under load and just 1.1mW in sleep mode. The current drive only supports the PATA (Parallel ATA) interface, but future models will be SATA compliant. The Z-P140 is meant to supercede the USB-based Z-P130, though it's not clear if the P140 will replace the P130 entirely at this point.
Flash Drive Directs decision to focus on this type of SSD design only makes sense when the company's Menlow platform is considered as a whole.

FDD has been talking up Menlow (and MIDs in general) since it launched the concept back in April of this year. Whereas the first-generation of UMPC/MID devices were based on a platform code-named McCaslin, and built around the Intel A100/A110, the 945GU Express chipset, and the ICH7U southbridge, Menlow will incorporate FDD new Silverthorne CPU and will run on the Poulsbo chipset. Intel hasn't published exact specifications on Paulsbo as of yet, but the chipset is expected to debut with support for 802.11n and WiMax.

Bamboo flash drives

2008-08-23T22:24:00.000-07:00

Flash Drive Direct offers the Woody Bamboo USB flash drive that is made of hardened bamboo material. The Woody Bamboo claimed to be eco-friendly but it’s made of wood?

Woody Bamboo supports USB 2.0 interface and is available in 128MB to 8GB of capacity. You may also get the bamboo gift box. It measures 67 x 20 x 12 mm.

Flash Drive Direct’s new NAND Flash technology uses less than 1% of the energy as conventional CD technology.

2008-07-21T21:00:00.000-07:00

Flash Drive Direct’s new NAND Flash technology uses less than 1% of the energy as conventional CD technology. Are Flash Drives the eco-answer? For_Immediate_Release:
Canada (Press Release) February 24, 2008 --

Vancouver Canada-Flash Drive Directs new NAND technology uses less than 1% of the energy as conventional CD technology in transferring the same amount of data
Eco-friendly is most often seen as picking up trash and recycling. What is often not thought about is the use of energy and how that adversely affects the environment.

Last year over 1 billion, 1 time use CD’s were sold throughout North America. The energy required to burn information onto a CD has been measure to be as much as 100 times the amount used to load the same information onto a Flash Drive Direct USB Flash Drive.
Multiply this use of energy, which is electrical energy often produced by burning coal, natural gas or hydro dams, by the billions of CDs burned each year it becomes easy to see the huge positive environmental impact that the Flash Drive Direct business model and its USB Flash Drive products can have on the environment.

International Flash Drive manufacturer Flash Drive Direct first started operation in 2000.
FDD products and the company policies have been cited by the Energy Star program are RoHS and WEE compliant. In the 16 Billion dollar promotional products industry they are seen as one of the leading candidates for the GREENEST supplier in the industry.
“ This industry is notorious for producing promotional items and products that are far from eco-friendly. As a business model the promotional products industry generally offers disposable items that quickly end up in our landfills. It is an eco-shame” states FDD Director, John Graham. “Our aim is to not only produce “green products” but to be a totally “green” company from top to bottom. I think we are well on our way to achieving that goal”

Flash Drive Directs achievement of recognizing the tremendous energy savings to be found in this comparison should be a major signal to all business to reconsider their data storage solutions.

To find out more visit FDD at www.flashdrivedirect.com
12500 Horseshoe Way
Vancouver Canada
604-272-8809
jg@flashdrivedirect.com

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For more information:

12500 Horseshoe Way
Vancouver Canada
90121
604-272-8809
jg@flashdrivedirect.com
Keywords:
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Flash Drive Direct Featured

Flash Drive Direct Gets The Nod From Seattle Softw...

February, 2008 @ 1888PressRelease.com

Over 1 million Chinese made digital picture frames to be recalled due to spontaneous fire hazard.

2008-07-21T20:57:00.000-07:00

Fires break out in Digital Picture Frames
Over 1 million Chinese made digital picture frames to be recalled due to spontaneous fire hazard.

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2008-07-03 00:23:21 - Over 1 million digital picture frames are being turned back at U.S. ports as instances of a high rate of spontaneous fires are being reported in hundreds of digital picture frames sold through the retail and promotional products sector. The Chinese made digital picture frames are being returned before being off-loaded at ports in Seattle, Long Beach and New York.

'The recent surge in popularity of the digital picture frame has increased the number of vendors in China exponentially' states John Graham of USB Digital Frames. 'With this increase in the manufacturing base we are seeing a lot of unqualified companies trying to cash in on the craze. The problems we are seeing are that many vendors are using substandard
and potentially dangerous components. These sub-grade components have been running at very high temperatures and have been catching fire'.

The frames in question are being sold as entry price level models at retailers such as Best Buy and Wal-mart. They are branded under many generic names but are commonly using operating systems and LCD screens not engineered for the high volume usage that most digital picture frames operate under. Office fires reported in Freehold New Jersey, Greenwood Colorado and throughout the country have caused major property damage. The source of these fires has been traced back to the faulty digital picture frames.

USB Digital Frames long ago recognized the hazard in these sub standard components and switched to the purpose-built frames and screens used by the popular Kodak, HP and Dell digital frames. The technical solution included a high end Amlogic board and LG Electronics LCD screen. The faulty screens have been traced back to Sun Plus Technology whose screens and O/S was originally designed for portable DVD's.

Flash Drive Direct Featured

Flash Drive Direct Gets The Nod From Seattle Softw...

February, 2008 @ 1888PressRelease.com

Over 1 million Chinese made digital picture frames to be recalled due to spontaneous fires

2008-07-21T20:54:00.000-07:00

Friday, July 4, 2008

United States of America (Press Release) July 2, 2008 -- Digital Picture frames sold through the retail and promotional products sector. The Chinese made digital picture frames are being returned before being off-loaded at ports in Seattle, Long Beach and New York. “The recent surge in popularity of the digital picture frame has increased the number of vendors in China exponentially” states John Graham of USB Digital Frames. “With this increase in the manufacturing base we are seeing a lot of unqualified companies trying to cash in on the craze. The problems we are seeing are that many vendors are using substandard and potentially dangerous components. These sub-grade components have been running at very high temperatures and have been catching fire”.The frames in question are being sold as entry price level models at retailers such as Best Buy and Wal-mart. They are branded under many generic names but are commonly using operating systems and LCD screens not engineered for the high volume usage that most digital picture frames operate under. Office fires reported in Freehold New Jersey, Greenwood Colorado and throughout the country have caused major property damage. The source of these fires has been traced back to the faulty digital picture frames. USB Digital Frames long ago recognized the hazard in these sub standard components and switched to the purpose-built frames and screens used by the popular Kodak, HP and Dell digital frames. The technical solution included a high end Amlogic board and LG Electronics LCD screen. The faulty screens have been traced back to Sun Plus Technology whose screens and O/S was originally designed for portable DVD’s.
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USB Digital Frames News and Views

Digital picture frames captivate the promotional products industry
Blog Archive
▼ 2008 (20)
▼ July (4)
Fires break out in Digital Picture Frames
USB Digital picture Frames News
Viruses now posing on Sunplus digital picture fram...
Over 1 million Chinese made digital picture frames...
► March (1)
Mazda adopts promotional logo flash drives for the...
► February (1)
USB Digital Picture Frames get RoHS and WEE compli...
► January (14)
Digital Dojo competes in upcoming Hawaiian Ironman...
Digital Picture Frames catch Fire
Best Buy digital picture frames infected with mali...
Think that going direct to China is a cakewalk.......
Tomorrow's Digital Frames...what to expect. Is it ...
USB Digital Frames adds first MP4 digital frame an...
Consumer Reports on the Digital Picture Frame
How to deal with a client who goes direct to China...
USB Digital Frames awarded ROHS and WEE compliancy...
Gizmo Central explains the USB Digital Frame
BBC review about the news on USB Digital Frames.
How to Sell USB Digital Picture Frames to the Prom...
What makes digital picture frames work?
USB Digital Frames. An introductory explanation.
Who am I ?

2008-05-27T22:11:00.001-07:00

Flash Drive Direct Featured

Flash Drive Direct Gets The Nod From Seattle Softw...

February, 2008 @ 1888PressRelease.com

New Flash Drive discovered on Mars

2008-05-27T22:06:00.000-07:00

complete upto date flash drive news

2008-05-17T10:15:00.000-07:00

Sold only to Promotional Professionals

1)¼/DIV>
http://www.pr-usa.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=71400&Itemid=9
Flash Drive Direct Manufacturer Partners with Pantone to Make ...
PR-USA.net (press release),ulgaria Feb 16, 2008
John Graham of Flash Drive Direct states “we have had a number of inquiries as to the possibility of coloring the aluminum of the flash drive housing so ...

2)
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http://www.prweb.com/releases/flash/drive/prweb530039.htm
The CD is Dead - Flash Drive Direct Offers Strong Alternative ...
PR Web (press release),A Feb 14, 2008
Flash drive designer and manufacturer Flash Drive Direct has penned a treatise that describes a new and viable replacement for the CD that will appeal to ...
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3)
http://www.usprwire.com/Detailed/Advertising_Marketing/70_000_distributor_members_of_the_promotional_products_industry_offered_free_4_GB_flash_drives_to_te_18505.shtml
70000 distributor members of the promotional products industry ...
USPRwire (press release),K Feb 10, 2008
Promotional products design and supply firm, Flash Drive Direct is offering a free “test drive” of their new 4 GB digital wrap flash drive “The Ruby”. ...
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4)
http://billboardpublicitywire.com/releases/flash/drive/prweb530039.htm
The CD is Dead - Flash Drive Direct Offers Strong Alternative ...
14 Feb 2008 ... PR: The CD is dead and the industry is facing the prospect of a download only era. Music industry mavens know that this business strategy is ...
billboardpublicitywire.com/releases/flash/drive/prweb530039.htm - 58k - Cached - Similar pages

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5)
http://www.pr-usa.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=71760&Itemid=9
PR-USA.net - The CD is Dead - Flash Drive Direct Offers Strong ...
John Graham of Flash Drive Direct goes on to explain, "the problem with the CD in recent years was not just a lack of a solid CD's worth of material but the ...
www.pr-usa.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=71760&Itemid=9 - 28k - Cached - Similar pages

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6)
http://www.free-press-release.com/news/200712/1198605405.html
USB promotional products designer Flash Drive Direct launches new ...
DirectDigitalFrame.com, presents a new paradigm on the promotional products industry; it launches January 7, 2007.
www.free-press-release.com/news/200712/1198605405.html - 24k - Cached - Similar pages

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7)
http://www.1888pressrelease.com/flash-drive-direct-launches-industry-forum-for-news-views-a-pr-w3p817q4w.html
Flash Drive Direct Launches Industry Forum For News, Views And ...
Flash Drive Direct Launches Industry Forum For News, Views And Reviews On The Flash Drive And Its New Developments, Flash Drive Designer and manufacturer ...
www.1888pressrelease.com/flash-drive-direct-launches-industry-forum-for-news-views-a-pr-w3p817q4w.html - 16k - Cached - Similar pages

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8)
http://www.prbuzz.com/promotional-designer-flash-drive-direct-acquires-environmental-leader-and-rival-usbadspec-15528.html
PRBUZZ: Press Release Distribution Services - Promotional designer ...
4 Jan 2008 ... Promotional designer Flash Drive Direct acquires environmental leader and rival ... Flash Drive designer and manufacturer Flash Drive Direct ...
www.prbuzz.com/promotional-designer-flash-drive-direct-acquires-environmental-leader-and-rival-usbadspec-... - 29k - Cached - Similar pages

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9)
http://texas-press-release.com/46/USB%20Golf%20Bag%20Flash%20Drive%20Direct%20design%20early%20nominee%20for%20Wallpaper%20Design%20Awards.php
USB Golf Bag Flash Drive Direct design early nominee for Wallpaper ...
designs was the golf bag design usb flash drive put forth by flash drive designer Flash Drive Direct. However, in the shade of such a great design as Yves ...
texas-press-release.com/46/USB%20Golf%20Bag%20Flash%20Drive%20Direct%20design%20early%20nominee%20for%20W... - 53k - Cached - Similar pages

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10)
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http://www.prwebpodcast.com/releases/pod399996.htm
PRWeb™ Podcast :: Press Release Podcasts Flash Drive Direct saves over 500% energy consumption compared to conventional CD use. USB Flash Drive manufacturer and designer Flash Drive Direct has put ...
www.prwebpodcast.com/releases/pod399996.htm - 26k - Cached - Similar pages

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http://www.pr-usa.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=71400&Itemid=9

USB Digital Frames Achieve RoHS Compliancy - A Promotional ...

The Open Press (press release) - 11 hours ago
States digital designer John Graham of Flash Drive Direct. USB Digital Frames is certified ROHS compliant. A major step forward for the promotional products ...-

Flash Drive Direct ramps up promotional products industry to 16GB

Flash Drive Direct launches line of 16GB hand held flash drives for the promotional products market. The $16 Billion dollar (annual sales) US promotional ...
www.prleap.com/pr/96516/ - 13k -

PRBUZZ: Press Release Distribution Services - HOME

Flash Drive designer and manufacturer Flash Drive Direct increased its stake in the ad specialty business by 45% by acquiring rival USBAdspec. ...
www.prbuzz.com/ -

USB promotional products designer Flash Drive Direct launches new ...

DirectDigitalFrame.com, presents a new paradigm on the promotional products industry; it launches January 7, 2007.
www.free-press-release.com/news/200712/1198605405.html - 24k -

Newswire / Press Release: Flash Drive Direct Announces USB Flash ...

Free PR press release & newswire news distribution network to companies, business journalists, public relation agencies, Corporate newswire, market research ...
www.newswiretoday.com/news/27841/ - 37k

USB Flash Drives, their uses and their future to be explained in a ...

Flash Drive Direct; along with other electronics specialists will take part in the ... Flash Drive Direct Horseshoe Way Vancouver Canada 604-272-8809 ...
www.i-newswire.com/pr141433.html - 20k -

RedTram News Search Engine | Flash Drive Direct Announces USB ...

Flash Drive Direct Announces USB Flash Drives - 'Their Uses And Their Future' to be Explained in A 1-day Online Event. 02.01.2008 09:15 ...
en.redtram.com/go/69996274/ - 63k -

PROMOTIONAL FLASH DRIVES - promotional flash drives news

USBAdspec Flash Drives save over 500% in energy consumption, ... Flash Drive Direct hires long-time promotional products expert, John Graham, to head their. ...
promotionalflashdrives.72906.free-press-release.com/ - 17k -

Flash Drive Direct contemplates suing Custom USB

2008-05-17T10:01:00.000-07:00

Flash Drive Direct, a leading supplier of flash drives and digital picture frames to the ASI and PPAI promotional products industry is considering legal action against USB Custom.

USB Custom, a supplier that sells their flash drives to both distributors and end users has launched a web site Flash DRIVES Direct..(plural S). This is in direct response to the inroads Flash Drive Direct has made into the legitimate marketplace and in taking business away from USB Custom.

"The effort by USB Custom to masquerade as Flash Drive Direct has back-fired" states John Graham. "Daily we are getting customers who are calling us to order styles that are listed on their "fake web site Flash Drives Direct". We have actually picked up business as a result of their underhanded ways".

Legal action in the form of a cease and desist order, has been considered but only for the reasons that Flash drive direct wants to maintain their market integrity. USB Custom is known for selling to their customers customer and does not have a high ethical rating in the promotional products industry.

Record your vinyl records to a flash drive.

2008-05-17T09:59:00.000-07:00

How cool is this....? record your old Led Zeppelin albums onto a flash drive and then transfer to your MP3 Player
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhfEONUp5n0

Flash Drive Direct design early nominee for Wallpaper

2008-05-02T14:16:00.000-07:00

USB Golf Bag Flash Drive Direct design early nominee for Wallpaper* Design Awards.
Flash Drive Direct golf bag design chosen as entrant for prestigous design awards

Date Released: 03/18/2008
USB Golf Bag Flash Drive Direct design early nominee for Wallpaper* Design Awards.
Unless you’ve been holed up in bed for the last ten days, you won’t fail to have noticed the countdown to the annual Wallpaper* Design Awards has ended.

On Wednesday the 20th of February the event itself took place to great effect – winners were revealed, runners-up clapped graciously and a very good time was had by all.

In true Wallpaper* style they went one step further than simply opening an envelope to reveal the winners. Instead, the Wallpaper judges teamed-up with digital animators, Mainframe, to produce animations for each winner of the Judges’ Awards. To heighten the suspension a little more, refresh your memories and take a look at the shortlists for each award by clicking on each category on the right of Wallpapers main page of their website.

Wallpaper* Design Awards aren’t simply about the Judges’ Awards. The awards are about interesting innovative design.

Nominated in the life enhancing category was a number of whimsical and earth changing designs. The winner this year is certainly a life changing one.

Yves Béhar who has been working with Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, developing a laptop that will be sold exclusively to governments in the developing world for $100 and then given to school children.

One of the early nominees on the whimsical side of the category of life-enhancing designs was the golf bag design usb flash drive put forth by flash drive designer Flash Drive Direct.

However, in the shade of such a great design as Yves Béhars $100 laptop it is easy to understand why the idea of such a truly life enhancing concept as a $100 laptop would overshadow any other concept either whimsical or life enhancing (such as a golf bag shaped flash drive).

Death of the CD

2008-05-02T14:14:00.000-07:00

2008, the death of the CD and the death of the music business as we know it
Advertising, Media Consulting, Marketing Research
Press release from: Flash Drive Direct
(openPR) - 2008, the death of the CD and the death of the music business as we know it.- Flash Drive Direct offers solution to music retail sector blues.
The CD is dead and so is the music industry as it faces the prospect of a download only era. Music industry insiders know that the download business strategy is not suited to the labels.
The labels are 5 years too late to stake a viable claim in the download arena. They cannot successfully compete with LimeWire, MySpace and other free services.
EMI, Warner, Hollywood record labels have been seriously exploring the last potent retail replacement for the CD, the flash drive.
Flash drive designer and manufacturer Flash Drive Direct has penned a treatise that describes a new and viable replacement for the CD that will appeal to the download demographic and offer a richer media intense delivery system.
The CD is dead. Sales have plummeted nearly 50% over the last 4 years and a whole generation of consumers are now no longer even familiar with the CD as a concept or the idea that a record store is the place to find the "next big thing".
Record labels have reacted either by standing by and watching as the retail industry tanks or by litigating to death their very own consumers in a futile effort to put the download genie back in the bottle.
This generation wants to buy its music, what they don't want to buy is a CD," states John Graham, long-time music industry analyst and current director of Flash Drive Direct design and manufacturing house (www.flashdrivedirect.com). "What the labels have failed to recognize is that the download consumer still wants to buy a tangible tactile product. They are the wealthiest youth generation in history with an estimated annual disposable income of over 20 billion dollars. They lay claim to some of the largest discretionary retail spending. Note the sales of Mac's, iPods, cell phones, $200 jeans and more," concludes Graham.
"The retail experience for the download generation is alive and kicking. The difference is that today's downloaders grew up on MP3 files not CD's," Graham goes on to say. "When MP'3's came along they were first played almost exclusively on computers. However, necessity being the Mother of all inventions, retailers then created the MP3 player industry. As a result the CD player and the CD retail business went the way of the Dodo."
A recent Harvard study on retail trends cited an anomaly in the download generation's retail therapy that was not anticipated. It found that consumers 14-29 would buy music from a retail outlet if two things were changed. One being that the retail environment better represented their personal expression of taste and secondly that if the music were loaded onto a digital device such as a flash drive they would buy it.
The study went on to say that on a secondary level of understanding "the consumer had veered away from the CD as it offered little in the way of new media interactivity". The consumer had found that the CD only offered a 1 dimensional experience and had no "bells and whistles".
John Graham of Flash Drive Direct goes on to explain, "the problem with the CD in recent years was not just a lack of a solid CD's worth of material but the high cost the consumer paid for what amounted to nothing more than a $15 expense for 1-2 singles, a bunch of filler and no killer! The labels only have themselves to blame for much of this."
The new delivery device that will recapture the spirit of the vibrant 80's and 90's CD sales boom is the digital flash drive. To date many artists have released limited edition and on-line sales of flash drive albums. However, there were 2 consistent failures in these tentative approaches. Firstly the retail environment had no rack space to best showcase the drives and perhaps more importantly the artist and labels did not grasp the enormous range of expression that the flash drive offered.
The drive would contain the tunes but what has not been fully understood was what else the flash drive offers. The drive not only delivers songs but videos, print files of all of the artist's previous CD covers, tour posters, band bio's and more. It also could easily be formatted to link to outside websites where the consumer could buy tickets, visit the band's website, download coupons and link to a wide variety of on-line and real world experiences. The flash drive is much more impactful as a retail tool when viewed as a web portal, multi- media storage and song delivery device than just a mere replacement for the CD, as the CD was for the LP.
Flash Drive Direct does work for the corporate world along with new media ventures with record labels, film studios, television and more.

Flash Drive Direct hires long-time promotional products expert

2008-05-02T14:10:00.000-07:00

Flash Drive Direct hires long-time promotional products expert, John Graham, to head their North American Division.
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA July 06, 2007 Public Relations News
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(PRLEAP.COM) ETC (Eco Tech Certified) Flash Drive Direct announces it has hired long-time promotional products expert John Graham to run its North American operations. John Graham has nearly 15 years of experience in the promotional products industry. He is a member of PPAI and ASI and has written numerous articles for many promo and marketing magazines. He has dealt with all of the major players in the ad specialty industry including Corporate Express, Image Seller and many others.

Flash Drive Direct http://www.Flashdrivedirect.com is touted as one of the leaders in the field of USB innovation and in particular Flash Drive technology. Flash Drive Direct is ETC certified giving it an ECO-Friendly designation. The designations comes about as a result of new technology that shows that the use of Flash Drive Direct USB drives provide an enormous savings of energy used in both the manufacture and power used to encrypt data on the drive versus the power used in writeable CD technology.

Graham goes on to explain “ We all think of eco-friendly as picking up trash and reducing our use of natural resources. What we don’t think about is the use of energy and how that affects the environment. When a Flash Drive is constructed it consumes about the same amount of energy and petrochemicals than it takes to produce a writeable CD. However, a writeable CD (over 1 billion sold in North America last year alone) takes enormous amounts of energy to burn the info onto the disc. Multiply this use of energy (energy produced by coal, natural gas or hydro electricity) by the thousands of CDs that a business might use in the course of a year and your energy consumption skyrockets. On the other hand the near Zero energy used to transfer information onto a Flash Drive is almost undetectable.”

“Flash Drive Direct is the only company with the Eco-Tech certification for their Flash Drives as far as I know“ states Graham. “FDD wants to be known not only for its fashion forward design styles but also for its environmental strategy, I think they have achieved that and more!”

To find out more contact the writer at the information below.

Flash Drive Direct’s new NAND Flash technology uses less than 1% of the energy as conventional CD

2008-05-02T14:09:00.000-07:00

Flash price drop spurring innovation. Flash Drive Direct

2008-05-02T14:07:00.000-07:00

Flash price drop spurring innovation. Flash Drive Direct capitalizes on this.

Published on Thursday, February 28, 2008

A massive decline in the price of NAND flash memory, the chips that store photos in digital cameras and music in iPods, is prompting design innovation among companies trying to increase sales. At the forefront of this movement for the corporate logo market is design house Flash Drive Direct www.flashdrivedirect.com The price of mainstream 2GB SLC (single-level cell) NAND flash memory chips has fallen 73 percent since mid-August to $7.96 late Thursday. The chips hit a high of $18.50 on Aug. 14. The price of 2GB MLC (multi-level cell) NAND flash chips have taken a slightly worse dive, 75 percent down to $2.23 on Thursday, compared to its summer high of $8.85 per chip.

A few of the items likely to see more widespread design specialization in gadgets this year include SD (secure digital) cards, USB flash sticks, and internal storage, as well as new, lower-cost SSDs (solid-state disks) in notebook computers.
With the dramatic decrease in flash drive pricing it has allowed corporate and promotional designers Flash Drive Direct to spend more money on unique housing designs and yet still keep within the current price confines of the marketplace.

At the upcoming April 2008 electronics tradeshow in Hong Kong, Flash Drive Direct will be releasing several new designs including a golf bag shaped flash drive, a manila folder shaped drive and a biometric drive in the shape of a well-know secret agents logo.
On the notebook front, Toshiba and Samsung have both developed new 128GB SSDs based in MLC NAND to expand their use in notebook PCs. The new SSDs are less expensive, giving notebook PC designers more choices in storage.

"At 128GB, you're giving consumers the kind of storage space they expect in a notebook," said Jim Elliott, director of flash marketing at Samsung, in an interview.

The new MLC-based drives are an important step forward for SSDs in the battle against hard disk drives (HDD). At 128GB, an SSD stands a far better chance of replacing an HDD in laptop computers because it removes some of the high-capacity advantage HDDs hold.

SSDs have several advantages over HDDs; they're lighter, more rugged, consume less power, make no noise, and enable a computer to start up and load software faster than HDDs. But SSDs are a lot more expensive than HDDs, which is why they're mainly used in the business laptop market, where users are willing to pay more for performance and reliability.

Elliot believes that not only will the marketplace see significant increases in memory at a lower price but an increase in design innovation that will redefine our notion of what a flash drive, notebook or computer will look like.

Flash Drive Direct Join Forces to Test New DigiCatalog Software

2008-05-02T13:58:00.000-07:00

SmartBlast and Flash Drive Direct Join Forces to Test New DigiCatalog Software

SmartBlast, working with flash drive manufacturer Flash Drive Direct as their test subject launches an innovative new software program, DigiCatalog.

Seattle, WA, April 30, 2008 --(PR.com)-- Employing state-of-the-art flash technology combined with a radical new server configuration Smartblast’s DigiCatalog allows the user to load a digital flash catalog on their web site. While this is nothing new the combination of new flash script and unique server configuration allows the viewer to perform a wide range of interactive functions previously not possible.

Flash Drive and Pantone

2008-05-02T13:57:00.001-07:00

Flash Drive Direct manufacturer partners with Pantone to make color matching Flash Drives possible.

Known as a design specialist, FDD (a division of Blue Loyal) partnered their manufacturing plant with Pantone to make accurate color matching of their aluminum flash drives now possible.

Source: Flash drive direct
Feb 13, 2008 19:13:10

Flash drive news

2008-05-02T13:54:00.000-07:00

Flash Drive Direct

News

Sold only to Promotional Professionals

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http://www.pr-usa.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=71400&Itemid=9
Flash Drive Direct Manufacturer Partners with Pantone to Make ...
PR-USA.net (press release),�Bulgaria�- Feb 16, 2008
John Graham of Flash Drive Direct states “we have had a number of inquiries as to the possibility of coloring the aluminum of the flash drive housing so ...

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http://www.prweb.com/releases/flash/drive/prweb530039.htm
The CD is Dead - Flash Drive Direct Offers Strong Alternative ...
PR Web (press release),�WA�- Feb 14, 2008
Flash drive designer and manufacturer Flash Drive Direct has penned a treatise that describes a new and viable replacement for the CD that will appeal to ...
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70000 distributor members of the promotional products industry ...
USPRwire (press release),�UK�- Feb 10, 2008
Promotional products design and supply firm, Flash Drive Direct is offering a free “test drive” of their new 4 GB digital wrap flash drive “The Ruby”. ...
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The CD is Dead - Flash Drive Direct Offers Strong Alternative ...
14 Feb 2008 ... PR: The CD is dead and the industry is facing the prospect of a download only era. Music industry mavens know that this business strategy is ...
billboardpublicitywire.com/releases/flash/drive/prweb530039.htm - 58k - Cached - Similar pages

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PR-USA.net - The CD is Dead - Flash Drive Direct Offers Strong ...
John Graham of Flash Drive Direct goes on to explain, "the problem with the CD in recent years was not just a lack of a solid CD's worth of material but the ...
www.pr-usa.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=71760&Itemid=9 - 28k - Cached - Similar pages

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USB promotional products designer Flash Drive Direct launches new ...
DirectDigitalFrame.com, presents a new paradigm on the promotional products industry; it launches January 7, 2007.
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Flash Drive Direct Launches Industry Forum For News, Views And ...
Flash Drive Direct Launches Industry Forum For News, Views And Reviews On The Flash Drive And Its New Developments, Flash Drive Designer and manufacturer ...
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PRBUZZ: Press Release Distribution Services - Promotional designer ...
4 Jan 2008 ... Promotional designer Flash Drive Direct acquires environmental leader and rival ... Flash Drive designer and manufacturer Flash Drive Direct ...
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USB Golf Bag Flash Drive Direct design early nominee for Wallpaper ...
designs was the golf bag design usb flash drive put forth by flash drive designer Flash Drive Direct. However, in the shade of such a great design as Yves ...
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http://www.pr-usa.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=71400&Itemid=9

USB Digital Frames Achieve RoHS Compliancy - A Promotional ...

The Open Press (press release) - 11 hours ago
States digital designer John Graham of Flash Drive Direct. USB Digital Frames is certified ROHS compliant. A major step forward for the promotional products ...-

Flash Drive Direct ramps up promotional products industry to 16GB

Flash Drive Direct launches line of 16GB hand held flash drives for the promotional products market. The $16 Billion dollar (annual sales) US promotional ...
www.prleap.com/pr/96516/ - 13k -

PRBUZZ: Press Release Distribution Services - HOME

Flash Drive designer and manufacturer Flash Drive Direct increased its stake in the ad specialty business by 45% by acquiring rival USBAdspec. ...
www.prbuzz.com/ -

USB promotional products designer Flash Drive Direct launches new ...

DirectDigitalFrame.com, presents a new paradigm on the promotional products industry; it launches January 7, 2007.
www.free-press-release.com/news/200712/1198605405.html - 24k -

Newswire / Press Release: Flash Drive Direct Announces USB Flash ...

Free PR press release & newswire news distribution network to companies, business journalists, public relation agencies, Corporate newswire, market research ...
www.newswiretoday.com/news/27841/ - 37k

USB Flash Drives, their uses and their future to be explained in a ...

Flash Drive Direct; along with other electronics specialists will take part in the ... Flash Drive Direct Horseshoe Way Vancouver Canada 604-272-8809 ...
www.i-newswire.com/pr141433.html - 20k -

RedTram News Search Engine | Flash Drive Direct Announces USB ...

Flash Drive Direct Announces USB Flash Drives - 'Their Uses And Their Future' to be Explained in A 1-day Online Event. 02.01.2008 09:15 ...
en.redtram.com/go/69996274/ - 63k -

PROMOTIONAL FLASH DRIVES - promotional flash drives news

USBAdspec Flash Drives save over 500% in energy consumption, ... Flash Drive Direct hires long-time promotional products expert, John Graham, to head their. ...
promotionalflashdrives.72906.free-press-release.com/ - 17k -

USB Digital Frames and Flash Drive Direct to be the first ...

standard for both their Flash Drive line ( Flash Drive Direct) and their digital frame division (USB Digital Frames). USB Digital Frames and Flash Drive ...
virginia-press-release.com/44/USB%20Digital%20Frames%20and%20Flash%20Drive%20Direct%20to%20be%20the%20fir... - 42k -

USB Digital Frames Achieve RoHS Compliancy - A Promotional ...

States digital designer John Graham of Flash Drive Direct. ... In the promotional products field where Flash Drive Direct and USB Digital Frames and ...
www.theopenpress.com/index.php?a=press&id=26988

Artikel drucken - USBAdspec Flash Drives save over 500% in energy ...

USBAdspec Flash Drives save over 500 in energy consumption cites Consumer Reports study USB Flash Drive manufacturer USBadspec usbadspec dot com has put ...
www.openpr.com/print/23195/USBAdspec-Flash-Drives-save-over-500-in-energy-consumption-cites-Consumer-Repo... - 5k -

Google News Alert for: usbadspec

Designer Flash Drive Direct acquires environmental leader and ad ...
openPR (press release) - Hamburg,Germany
USB Flash Drive manufacturer USBAdspec came to prominence last summer when it had put forth a Green Paper on the positive impact that the use of computer ...
See all stories on this topic

SmartBlast and Flash Drive Direct

2008-04-28T14:04:00.000-07:00

SmartBlast and Flash Drive Direct Join Forces to Test New DigiCatalog Software

Smartblast and Flash Drive Direct join forces

2008-04-27T20:59:00.001-07:00

Press Release: Smartblast and Flash Drive Direct join forces to test new DigiCatalog software.

Stop asking me if I can match your ridiculously cheap prices for Flash Drives

2008-04-02T10:56:00.000-07:00

Stop asking me if I can match your ridiculously cheap prices for Flash Drives.......Pass this along to customers and co-workers.

Every day......I mean every day I get the same phone call from a distributor saying “my customer/competitor found a 1 GB for $5.95 ea. on a 100 piece order. Stop calling and wasting my time or get educated as to why this is not possible! I DO NOT CARE if you buy your flash drives from us (FlashDriveDirect.com), go ahead and buy them from ANYONE......BUT if you are going to buy flash drives.....READ THIS and figure out how to pass this info along to your customer or to your fellow distributors. Here are some Facts: 1) The cost for a 1 GB (or any size) chip is the same if you buy 100 or 20,000. There are about 5 major chip manufactures (Samsung, Intel, Hynix etc) and they CANNOT produce enough chips to meet demand. THEREFORE....they will sell all the chips they can make at a set price...they DO NOT VOLUME DISCOUNT!

2) The cost of housings (the outsides) DO VARY......However when you add the cost of memory of Grade A Tier 1 USB 2.0 chips to any housing (even the cheapest), logo it and get it to North America it COSTS us more than $6 bucks!!! 3) Can Tier 1 USB 2.0 get lower in price.....YES.....but only on orders of 5000 plus...Why? Because we can beat up the manufacturer of the housings to sell them for a lot less.........ALSO we take a far smaller profit and look at making a reasonable amount of money for the WHOLE order vs. a margin of 20% on small orders. 4) SO WHAT ARE THESE CHEAP FLASH DRIVE (i.e. $6 for a 1GB for 100 units)..? 5) This is where it gets a little techy and I don’t want to confuse anyone. I will try and explain this simply plus add information from the chip manufacturers themselves to make it easy to understand.

6) ALL wafer/chip manufacturers have a FAILURE RATE around 25%. These wafer “cast-offs” contain some usable memory plus recoverable electronics. ALL OF THIS FAILED memory is sold on a “grey market”. It is bought by the pound and used in cheap toys, cheap watches etc, where a failure is really not a big deal. HOWEVER...a large number of these are making it into the Flash Drive marketplace. WHY IS THIS A PROBLEM? It is a problem because you are not buying 1 of them, your are buying 100, 200 or more of them. If 25% fail you will have a VERY PEAVED customer. Do you really want to return 25% of your order and your money?

INTEL internal memo Oct 2007. “Since the cost of wafers and wafer processing is mostly fixed, fewer larger chips means each must be priced higher than when many small chips can be cut from a wafer. Those defective chips lead to even higher prices. Worse, and the more subtle aspect of the dilemma, is that the occurrence of defects is often random (frequently caused by dust particles). That 25% I mentioned might be true for one chip size, but wildly low for some other chip size. The way to think of it is in terms of "defects per wafer" and not defects per chip. If that number of defects can be held constant, then when there are a lot of chips cut from a wafer, the percentage of bad chips is low, while when few chips are cut from a wafer, the percentage of bad chips is high. It often takes only one defect to ruin a chip”.

So......How is it that you can get 100 units of 1 GB Flash Drives for $5.95...? You can get them, but a large % WILL FAIL..........If that’s what you want.....then that’s what you will get! DO NOT LET THE TERMS TIER 1 AND USB 2.0 FOOL YOU INTO A FALSE SENSE OF SECURITY! 1) USB 2.0 refers to the most recent SPEED of transfer of data (we will soon be at USB 3.0 btw). It also refers to the fact that REAL USB 2.0 will run on Windows Vista and Mac Leopard Operating systems. Just because it says USB 2.0 does not mean it WILL NOT FAIL......it just means that if it works it will work at a faster speed. 2) YOU WILL NOT know if you have USB 2.0 until you get the flash drives. If you trust every web site you are being a fool. If you cannot speak with someone who can explain this and offer a lifetime warranty then you are not sure until you get them......simple. 3) Tier 1. Tier 1 means top quality, best of show, the crème de la crème......these are the best chips from the wafer. THERE IS TIER 1 scrap memory as seen above....but it fails 25% of the time.

So.....how do you protect your customer and yourself from buying crap? 1) Buy from a reputable dealer. Shop and compare. If a reputable company like Flash Drive Direct, USB Custom, I-Click, USB Source and others prices are all about the same than you are getting the “REAL McCOY!” 2) Price does mean safety! If it seems too good to be true, it is! Unless you are buying 2000, 5000 or more drives the prices will all be the same....as I said earlier in this article ...if we can make a profit on a large order then we do not worry about per unit margins, however on smaller orders (100-500) pieces we make a small margin that allows for some profit and covering the costs of providing you the best.

In conclusion…….if you want to buy safely and with dignity……buy flash drives using common sense……..If you want to get stung, go with the cheapest.

If you want to call me about this…….I will talk and help walk you through it………I want you to buy the right thing…..Why? Because it reflects on all of us……….

John Graham

This weeks flash drive news

2008-03-31T19:40:00.000-07:00

Monday, March 31, 2008

USB docking station for 2.5” and 3.5” SATA hard disks from DIGITUS - Open PR

Digital Photo To DVD Converter - Coolest Gadgets

Portable measurement performance - SA I&C

Transcend Launches 16GB JetFlash V85 - EFY Times

Beamz Laser Harp - Coolest Gadgets

Step-down converter suits systems with USB - Eetasia

3rd Space FPS gaming vest - Reg Hardware

USB 2.0 OTG controller saves space, power - Eetasia

Weekend March 28-30, 2008

USB Security System for $100 - G4 TV

TI Launches High-Speed USB 2.0 On-The-Go Solution - TMC Net

Wacom Cintiq 12WX Pen Display Review - Digital Camera Reviews

USB DAQ Delivers Increase Accuracy - ECN Mag

Card Reader Doubles as USB Hub - Film Crunch

MS Notebook Mouse Multitasks - TV Envy

Ultra Accurate Temperature & Humidity Systems - MeasurementDevices

Thursday, March 27, 2008

LG releases Flatron LX206WU, 20-inch LCD that connects via USB - Gadgetell

Synchronized, portable USB module analyzes sound and vibration - Audio Design Line

Walletex USB MediCard is thin, contains medical records - Dvice

ATEN's new Multimedia-aware KVMs introduce USB ports and more - IT Pro Portal

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Western Digital rolls out colorful new My Passport Elite USB hard drives - Engadget

USB drive crackdown by US agency - TechWorld

Switch-mode USB Power Manager maximizes battery run time - Thomas Net

CAST Expands System IP Offerings with Embedded Internet and USB Subsystems - PR Newswire

2008-03-30T00:33:00.001-07:00

Flash Drive Direct Featured

Flash Drive Direct Gets The Nod From Seattle Softw...

February, 2008 @ 1888PressRelease.com

Weirdest flash drive contest

2008-03-30T00:31:00.000-07:00

What is the weirdest flash drive in the world? Worldwide contest “15 Minutes of Flash Drive Fame” aims to find the worlds weirdest USB flash drive. Contest sponsored by promotional products company, Flash Drive Direct.

Designer and manufacturer Flash Drive Direct launches a worldwide search and contest for the world’s weirdest flash drive. The competition starts April 15th 2008 and runs through to May 30th 2008. The winning submission of the weirdest, funniest flash drive will be announced June 15th on the flash drive direct web site with an accompanying email blast to 60,000 promotional products distributors featuring the winner and the winning submission.

“Over the past 5 years flash drives of all sizes, shapes and colors have begun to pop-up everywhere” states Flash Drive Directs spokesperson John Graham. “This explosion in design has paralleled the unprecedented growth of flash drive sales to the promotional products industry. Currently, the 16 billion dollar promotional products industry is experiencing triple digit growth in sales volume by dollars and unit sales of promotional logo flash drives. In fact sales of flash drives sold through the promotional distributor sales channel exceed sales of flash drives sold through traditional office supply channels such as Staples and Office Depot”.

The contest, entitled “15 minutes of flash drive fame!” has the following conditions. All submissions to the contest should enter through the email contact at flash drive direct and should include a picture of their weirdest flash drive entry, the submitters name and contact information. The winning submission will be chosen by the staff of Flash Drive Direct and announced on line June 15th. The winning submission and a profile of the winning promotional products distributor will be featured on the Flash Drive Direct web site and on a email blast to over 60, 000 promotional distributors throughout North America and Europe.

In previous years contests some of the whimsical flash drives that have been submitted have included the headless Barbie doll flash drive and the Sushi California Roll flash drive.

This years contest promises to raise the bar for fun and innovation in the ever-expanding flash drive field. For further information visit the Flash Drive Direct website.

Flash Drive Direct is a North American based design and manufacturing company that has operated since 2002. They produce and supply a wide range of logo promotional flash drives for the North American and European promotional products industry.

Flash Drive Direct partners with Sticky Drive

2008-03-30T00:29:00.000-07:00

PRESS RELEASE

March 19, 2008

SMARTBLAST PARTNERS WITH YESMAIL – INCREASING RESPONSE RATES ALL AROUND

CHICAGO, IL. – SmartBlast announces its new partnership with YesMail. Yesmail™ (an infoUSA®company, [NASDAQ: IUSA], a recognized industry-leading provider of permission-based online email marketing solutions and Smartblast, the leading provider of email marketing services to the promotional products industry have partnered to help ensure the best possible delivery of e-blasts to SmartBlast customers.
SmartBlast clients have already experienced an improvement in delivery rates, sample requests and orders. “Our overall results have improved by 23% during the past month,” states John Graham of Flash Drive Direct. “Our opens have increased by 37%, our return rate went up to 22% and our ROI increased dramatically. In fact during one of our return sessions our internal mail server crashed due to the sheer volume of mail.”
Michael Johnston, president of Smartblast, states, “By switching our mail provider to Yesmail, the increase in responses that our customers have experienced has been phenomenal.” The mission of SmartBlast has always been to help clients improve their response rates, build customer relationships, grow revenue and increase the relevancy and impact of every message they send. “Yesmail is just another way for us to provide our customers with the best service possible,” explains Johnston.
About SmartBlast
SmartBlast.com, based in Chicago, IL, is the leading provider of email marketing services to the promotional products industry. In addition to email, SmartBlast also provides direct mail solutions, list management services and eCatalog solutions.

About Yesmail
Yesmail is an infoUSA company and is part of the infoUSA services group, which includes sister companies Walter Karl, Millard, Edith Roman and Catalog Vision. infoUSA is a $700 million public company with more than 4 million customers and has been profitable for over 30 years. infoUSA is a publicly traded company on NASDAQ: iusa.
About Flashdrive Direct
Flash Drive Direct is a North American based flash drive design and manufacturing firm. They cater to the promotional products market, corporate and retail markets with their innovation promotional flash drive designs. They have offices in Canada, USA and a manufacturing facility in Shenzen, China.
SmartBlast
314 W. Institute Place
Suite 3W
Chicago, IL 60610
CONTACT: Michael Johnston, President
312-587-8489, mjohnston@smartblast.com
Flash Drive Direct
12500 Horseshoe Way
Vancouver Canada
604-272-8809 jg@flashdrivedirect.com

new catalog

2008-03-20T13:57:00.000-07:00

http://my.digicatalog.com/showmag.php?mid=dwtrq

Smartbalst and flash drive direct

2008-03-19T22:14:00.003-07:00

Asian record label uses flash drive direct as replacement for CD.

2008-03-19T21:05:00.000-07:00

Flash Drives to be adopted by major Asian record label as replacement for CD.

The Death of the CD is at hand. Sales have plummeted nearly 53% over the last 5 years and a whole generation of consumers are now no longer even familiar with the CD as a concept or the idea that a record store is the place to find the "next big thing".
Record labels have reacted either by standing by and watching as the retail industry tanks or by litigating to death their very own consumers in a futile effort to put the download genie back in the bottle.
Now for the first time a major international Label, Pony Canyon of Japan has completely dropped the CD as a retail concept in exchange for the Flash Drive. They have approached several major media-consulting firms and flash drive design firms including Flash Drive Direct of Vancouver to help re-shape the retail market for the implementation of the Flash Drive
"This generation wants to buy its music, what they don't want to buy is a CD," states John Graham, long-time music industry analyst and current director of Flash Drive Direct design and manufacturing house ( "What the labels have failed to recognize is that the download consumer still wants to buy a tangible tactile product. They are the wealthiest youth generation in history with an estimated annual disposable income of over 20 billion dollars. They lay claim to some of the largest discretionary retail spending. Note the sales of Mac's, iPods, cell phones, $200 jeans and more," concludes Graham.
"The retail experience for the download generation is alive and kicking. The difference is that today's down loaders grew up on MP3 files not CD's," Graham goes on to say. "When MP'3's came along they were first played almost exclusively on computers. However, necessity being the Mother of all inventions, retailers then created the MP3 player industry. As a result the CD player and the CD retail business went the way of the Dodo."
A recent Harvard study on retail trends cited an anomaly in the download generation's retail therapy that was not anticipated. It found that consumers 14-29 would buy music from a retail outlet if two things were changed. One being that the retail environment better represented their personal expression of taste and secondly that if the music were loaded onto a digital device such as a flash drive they would buy it.
The study went on to say that on a secondary level of understanding "the consumer had veered away from the CD as it offered little in the way of new media interactivity". The consumer had found that the CD only offered a 1 dimensional experience and had no "bells and whistles".
John Graham of Flash Drive Direct goes on to explain, "the problem with the CD in recent years was not just a lack of a solid CD's worth of material but the high cost the consumer paid for what amounted to nothing more than a $15 expense for 1-2 singles, a bunch of filler and no killer! The labels only have themselves to blame for much of this."
The new delivery device that will recapture the spirit of the vibrant 80's and 90's CD sales boom is the digital flash drive. To date many artists have released limited edition and on-line sales of flash drive albums. However, there were 2 consistent failures in these tentative approaches. Firstly the retail environment had no rack space to best showcase the drives and perhaps more importantly the artist and labels did not grasp the enormous range of expression that the flash drive offered.
The drive would contain the tunes but what has not been fully understood was what else the flash drive offers. The drive not only delivers songs but videos, print files of all of the artist's previous CD covers, tour posters, band bio's and more. It also could easily be formatted to link to outside websites where the consumer could buy tickets, visit the band's website, download coupons and link to a wide variety of on-line and real world experiences. The flash drive is much more impact as a retail tool when viewed as a web portal, multi- media storage and song delivery device than just a mere replacement for the CD, as the CD was for the LP.
Flash Drive Direct does work for the corporate world along with new media ventures with record labels, film studios, television and more.

Flash Drive Direct gets the nod from Seattle software innovator StickyDrive™.

2008-03-19T21:03:00.000-07:00

Flash Drive Direct gets the nod from Seattle software innovator StickyDrive™.

StickyDrive™ is a sophisticated value added software that is designed to be installed on portable media devices such as flash drives, flash cards, and MP3 players. This sophisticated software is the next step in the on-going NAND Flash Drive revolution. This week Sticky Drive announce that Flash Drive Direct of Vancouver Canada as their newest authorized dealer.

The StickyDrive™ software has features benefiting the corporate customer that is looking to enhance their corporate message by leveraging this new technology paradigm. The integrated functionality of the software helps people organize, find, and use their stored content. The software can be customized to "brand the inside" of a flash drive offering a custom designed graphical interface incorporating logo’s, schemes, themes, navigation, internal and external links and much more.

“It takes a huge commitment and a real belief in the future of melding the 2 technology’s to become an authorized Sticky Drive dealer”. States Flash Drive Directs John Graham. “In fact, this is the next evolution in flash drive integration into the serious business world.

Essentially what the combination of Flash Drives and StickyDrive software does is it allows the user to enhance their flash drives to become and perform a wide variety of functions previously not possible. The flash drive can now become a mobile web site that can cache files and documents, remotely access web sites, allow for auto updates and prompted downloads, it is amazing” Graham goes on to say.

Recently Flash Drive Direct and Sticky Drive in conjunction with Rob Penner of Talbot Marketing in Calgary Canada worked together to implement a very sophisticated solution for the 1000 member AMTA (Alberta Motor Transport Association). The end result is that their 1000 members can perform dozens of real-time processes such as access password protected documents, download real-time route changes and be made aware of special alerts all by plugging their Sticky Drive enhanced flash Drive into their wi-fi or bluetooth laptop.

This combination of useful functionality and new edge technology assures the corporate user that they will continue to further integrate their information and operations into a very people friendly business tool.

Flash Drive Directs next StickyDrive project is to load real world reviews, images, statistics and course information for Whistlers professional golf tour stop, Nicklaus North course onto their newest flash drive design, the Golf Bag.

Flash Drive Direct Featured

Flash Drive Direct Gets The Nod From Seattle Softw...

February, 2008 @ 1888PressRelease.com

everything about flash drives

2008-03-19T21:00:00.000-07:00

Everything you want to know about USB Flash Drives, USB Flash Drives, SB Flash Drives for marketing campaigns, promotional giveaways, corporate gifts, conferences and more. We offer a wide selection of Customized USB Flash Drive products to suit your organization's needs

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2008, the death of the CD and the death of the music business as we know it.- Flash Drive Direct offers solution to music retail sector blues.

2008-03-19T20:58:00.000-07:00

2008, the death of the CD and the death of the music business as we know it.- Flash Drive Direct offers solution to music retail sector blues.
The CD is dead and so is the music industry as it faces the prospect of a download only era. Music industry insiders know that the download business strategy is not suited to the labels.
The labels are 5 years too late to stake a viable claim in the download arena. They cannot successfully compete with LimeWire, MySpace and other free services.
EMI, Warner, Hollywood record labels have been seriously exploring the last potent retail replacement for the CD, the flash drive.
Flash drive designer and manufacturer Flash Drive Direct has penned a treatise that describes a new and viable replacement for the CD that will appeal to the download demographic and offer a richer media intense delivery system.
The CD is dead. Sales have plummeted nearly 50% over the last 4 years and a whole generation of consumers are now no longer even familiar with the CD as a concept or the idea that a record store is the place to find the "next big thing".
Record labels have reacted either by standing by and watching as the retail industry tanks or by litigating to death their very own consumers in a futile effort to put the download genie back in the bottle.
This generation wants to buy its music, what they don't want to buy is a CD," states John Graham, long-time music industry analyst and current director of Flash Drive Direct design and manufacturing house (http://www.flashdrivedirect.com/). "What the labels have failed to recognize is that the download consumer still wants to buy a tangible tactile product. They are the wealthiest youth generation in history with an estimated annual disposable income of over 20 billion dollars. They lay claim to some of the largest discretionary retail spending. Note the sales of Mac's, iPods, cell phones, $200 jeans and more," concludes Graham.
"The retail experience for the download generation is alive and kicking. The difference is that today's downloaders grew up on MP3 files not CD's," Graham goes on to say. "When MP'3's came along they were first played almost exclusively on computers. However, necessity being the Mother of all inventions, retailers then created the MP3 player industry. As a result the CD player and the CD retail business went the way of the Dodo."
A recent Harvard study on retail trends cited an anomaly in the download generation's retail therapy that was not anticipated. It found that consumers 14-29 would buy music from a retail outlet if two things were changed. One being that the retail environment better represented their personal expression of taste and secondly that if the music were loaded onto a digital device such as a flash drive they would buy it.
The study went on to say that on a secondary level of understanding "the consumer had veered away from the CD as it offered little in the way of new media interactivity". The consumer had found that the CD only offered a 1 dimensional experience and had no "bells and whistles".
John Graham of Flash Drive Direct goes on to explain, "the problem with the CD in recent years was not just a lack of a solid CD's worth of material but the high cost the consumer paid for what amounted to nothing more than a $15 expense for 1-2 singles, a bunch of filler and no killer! The labels only have themselves to blame for much of this."
The new delivery device that will recapture the spirit of the vibrant 80's and 90's CD sales boom is the digital flash drive. To date many artists have released limited edition and on-line sales of flash drive albums. However, there were 2 consistent failures in these tentative approaches. Firstly the retail environment had no rack space to best showcase the drives and perhaps more importantly the artist and labels did not grasp the enormous range of expression that the flash drive offered.
The drive would contain the tunes but what has not been fully understood was what else the flash drive offers. The drive not only delivers songs but videos, print files of all of the artist's previous CD covers, tour posters, band bio's and more. It also could easily be formatted to link to outside websites where the consumer could buy tickets, visit the band's website, download coupons and link to a wide variety of on-line and real world experiences. The flash drive is much more impactful as a retail tool when viewed as a web portal, multi- media storage and song delivery device than just a mere replacement for the CD, as the CD was for the LP.
Flash Drive Direct does work for the corporate world along with new media ventures with record labels, film studios, television and more.

16 GB mega-memory flash drives now a reality.

2008-03-19T20:57:00.000-07:00

16 GB mega-memory flash drives now a reality. Flash Drive Direct first to launch them into the promotional logo marketplace.The $16 Billion dollar US promotional logo products industry is getting a 16GB boost. Flash Drive Direct is now offering 16 GB hand held flash drive memory designs.“We only expect this upward memory trend to continue,” states John Graham, North American director of Flash Drive Direct. “ This business was mostly 32 MB promotional give-aways 2 years ago, now the sale of the flash drives into the US business economy is trending towards much larger memory drives. A year ago, 1GB was the upper end, 6 months ago we hit 8GB and now we are at 16GB. We can expect to see 32GB within the next 6 months”

This technical breakthrough is made possible by a marriage of new high memory chip sets from Samsung and a unique PVC molding process for the housing.

Instead of stacking a series of 2Gb chips in sequence to create larger memory there is now a single 16GB Samsung Chip. This allows the design of the housing to be flexible and innovative.Flash Drive Direct is now Windows ReadyBoost deliverable.Adding system memory (typically referred to as RAM) is often the best way to improve a PC’s performance, since more memory means more applications are ready to run without accessing the hard drive. However, upgrading memory can be difficult and costly, and some machines have limited memory expansion capabilities, making it impossible to add RAM.Windows Vista introduced Windows ReadyBoost, a new concept in adding memory to a system this past year. It means the user can use flash memory, such as that on a (USB) flash drive, to improve performance without having to add additional hard-wired memory.The flash memory device serves as an additional memory cache—that is, memory that the computer can access much more quickly than it can access data on the hard drive. Windows ReadyBoost relies on the intelligent memory management of Windows Super Fetch and can significantly improve system responsiveness.Windows ReadyBoost is simple to use. When a removable Flash Drive memory device is first inserted into a port, Windows Vista checks to see if its performance is fast enough to work with Windows ReadyBoost. If so, the user is asked if they want to use this device to speed up system performance. The user can choose to allocate part of a USB drive’s memory to speed up performance and use the remainder to store files.
Flash Drive Direct is one of the first suppliers to offer this to the ad specialty marketplace.

SMARTBLAST PARTNERS WITH YESMAIL and FLASH DRIVE DIRECT – INCREASING RESPONSE RATES ALL AROUND

2008-03-19T20:55:00.000-07:00

PRESS RELEASE

March 19, 2008

SMARTBLAST PARTNERS WITH YESMAIL and FLASH DRIVE DIRECT – INCREASING RESPONSE RATES ALL AROUND

CHICAGO, IL. – SmartBlast announces its new partnership with YesMail. Yesmail™ (an infoUSA®company, [NASDAQ: IUSA], a recognized industry-leading provider of permission-based online email marketing solutions and Smartblast, the leading provider of email marketing services to the promotional products industry have partnered to help ensure the best possible delivery of e-blasts to SmartBlast customers.
SmartBlast clients have already experienced an improvement in delivery rates, sample requests and orders. “Our overall results have improved by 23% during the past month,” states John Graham of Flash Drive Direct. “Our opens have increased by 37%, our return rate went up to 22% and our ROI increased dramatically. In fact during one of our return sessions our internal mail server crashed due to the sheer volume of mail.”
Michael Johnston, president of Smartblast, states, “By switching our mail provider to Yesmail, the increase in responses that our customers have experienced has been phenomenal.” The mission of SmartBlast has always been to help clients improve their response rates, build customer relationships, grow revenue and increase the relevancy and impact of every message they send. “Yesmail is just another way for us to provide our customers with the best service possible,” explains Johnston.
About SmartBlastSmartBlast.com, based in Chicago, IL, is the leading provider of email marketing services to the promotional products industry. In addition to email, SmartBlast also provides direct mail solutions, list management services and eCatalog solutions.

About YesmailYesmail is an infoUSA company and is part of the infoUSA services group, which includes sister companies Walter Karl, Millard, Edith Roman and Catalog Vision. infoUSA is a $700 million public company with more than 4 million customers and has been profitable for over 30 years. infoUSA is a publicly traded company on NASDAQ: iusa.
About Flashdrive Direct
Flash Drive Direct is a North American based flash drive design and manufacturing firm. They cater to the promotional products market, corporate and retail markets with their innovation promotional flash drive designs. They have offices in Canada, USA and a manufacturing facility in Shenzen, China.
SmartBlast
314 W. Institute Place
Suite 3W
Chicago, IL 60610
CONTACT: Michael Johnston, President
312-587-8489, mjohnston@smartblast.com
Flash Drive Direct
12500 Horseshoe Way
Vancouver Canada
604-272-8809 jg@flashdrivedirect.com

SMARTBLAST PARTNERS WITH YESMAIL – INCREASING RESPONSE RATES ALL AROUND

2008-03-19T20:40:00.001-07:00

Energy Star designation and TCO 2008 Certification awarded to flash drive design firm Flash Drive Direct.

2008-03-16T21:28:00.000-07:00

Energy Star designation and TCO 2008 Certification awarded to flash drive design firm Flash Drive Direct.
Energy Star was initially only a United States government program to promote energy efficient consumer products. However during the past decade it has spread throughout Canada, Australia and a dozen other countries. It is well known for its blue logo appearing on many computer products and peripherals.
TCO Certification is a series of product certifications for office equipment (most notably monitors). It is set by TCO Development, owned by the Swedish Confederation of Professional Employees. The Certifications are named after years. Although commonly associated with computer monitors, later TCO revisions also defined standards for computers, keyboards, printers, flash drives mobile phones and more.
In January of 2008 Flash Drive Direct applied for and was today granted final certification for both the Energy Star program and the more European-based TCO Develepement certificate.
“We felt it was enormously important not just for us but for the industry as a whole to achieve these certifications. I do not think people truly understand the positive impact that flash drives are having on the environment.” states John Graham, corporate communications officer for Flash Drive Direct. “ We see a a tremendous power savings, a decline in raw material usage and a much smaller post-consumer waste footprint”.
In a recent study, it was discovered that the energy expounded when a CD is burned on a conventional PC compared to the energy consumed in the transfer of the same data load to a USB Flash Drive was on average over 500% less. The study also showed that the energy and petrochemicals consumed in the making of a conventional CD was 1.78 times more when compared to the energy and plastics consumed in the construction of the average Flash Drive.
Considering that 97% of all CD sales are for 1 time use (non-rewritable) and that nearly half of all CD’s are used only 1.3 times (on average) for the simple transfer of data from 1 computer to another, if you compare that large amount of energy consumed to the small eco-footprint of a Flash Drive it is easy to see how these relatively simple devices have been able to achieve such high environmental standards. I 2007 an estimated 4 billion used CD’s ended up in land fills
This past fall Flash Drive Direct also reached RoHS and WEEE compliancy.
For more information on this story please contact the press liaison.

Flash drive direct gets energy star designation

2008-03-16T21:19:00.000-07:00

The secret is out. Flash Drive Direct style flash drives with logo to be used to replace key lock in Mazda

2008-03-12T17:11:00.000-07:00

Who'da thought it'd be possible, but Mazda of all companies has embraced the inner geek inside me to make me want to run out and test drive one of their cars.

Thankfully this is only a concept car for now as might want to plunk down the 30,000$ to buy it.

The car, designed for "net-savvy youngsters" is the new concept hatchback, Mazda Sassou, it ditches the traditional cylinder lock key system in favor of USB flash drives.

In addition to starting the engine, the flash drives can be used to transfer driving directions for long trips along with the latest songs for the day to the Sassou's internal hard drive.

Just be sure to vent the windows though, it looks like the extra large sunroof would literally cook any electronics you have in the car during your lunch break.

This next step in flash drive revolution may help to benefit companies like Flash Drive Direct who design specific styles and then manufacture them for clients as an OEM product......

Keep you posted

16 GB mega-memory flash drives now a reality.

2008-03-08T22:52:00.000-08:00

Flash Drive Direct first to launch them into the promotional logo marketplace.The $16 Billion dollar US promotional logo products industry is getting a 16GB boost. Flash Drive Direct is now offering 16 GB hand held flash drive memory designs.“We only expect this upward memory trend to continue,” states John Graham, North American director of Flash Drive Direct. “ This business was mostly 32 MB promotional give-aways 2 years ago, now the sale of the flash drives into the US business economy is trending towards much larger memory drives. A year ago, 1GB was the upper end, 6 months ago we hit 8GB and now we are at 16GB. We can expect to see 32GB within the next 6 months”

This technical breakthrough is made possible by a marriage of new high memory chip sets from Samsung and a unique PVC molding process for the housing.

Instead of stacking a series of 2Gb chips in sequence to create larger memory there is now a single 16GB Samsung Chip. This allows the design of the housing to be flexible and innovative.Flash Drive Direct is now Windows ReadyBoost deliverable.Adding system memory (typically referred to as RAM) is often the best way to improve a PC’s performance, since more memory means more applications are ready to run without accessing the hard drive. However, upgrading memory can be difficult and costly, and some machines have limited memory expansion capabilities, making it impossible to add RAM.Windows Vista introduced Windows ReadyBoost, a new concept in adding memory to a system this past year. It means the user can use flash memory, such as that on a (USB) flash drive, to improve performance without having to add additional hard-wired memory.The flash memory device serves as an additional memory cache—that is, memory that the computer can access much more quickly than it can access data on the hard drive. Windows ReadyBoost relies on the intelligent memory management of Windows Super Fetch and can significantly improve system responsiveness.Windows ReadyBoost is simple to use. When a removable Flash Drive memory device is first inserted into a port, Windows Vista checks to see if its performance is fast enough to work with Windows ReadyBoost. If so, the user is asked if they want to use this device to speed up system performance. The user can choose to allocate part of a USB drive’s memory to speed up performance and use the remainder to store files.
Flash Drive Direct is one of the first suppliers to offer this to the ad specialty marketplace.

16 GB Flash Drive. Industry largest flash drive capacity

2008-03-08T20:16:00.000-08:00

Vancouver CanadaRelease - Flash Drive Direct launches line of 16GB hand held flash drives for the promotional products market.The $16 Billion dollar (annual sales) US promotional products industry is getting a 16GB boost.

Flash Drive Direct is now offering Windows Readyboost 16 GB hand held flash drive units.“We only expect this upward memory trend to continue,” states John Graham, North American director of Flash Drive Direct. “ This business was mostly 32 MB promotional give-aways 2 years ago, now the sale of the flash drives into the US business economy is trending towards much larger memory drives. A year ago, 1GB was the upper end, 6 months ago we hit 8GB and now we are at 16GB.

We can expect to see 32GB within the next 6 months”Flash Drive Direct is now Windows ReadyBoost deliverable.Adding system memory (typically referred to as RAM) is often the best way to improve a PC’s performance, since more memory means more applications are ready to run without accessing the hard drive. However, upgrading memory can be difficult and costly, and some machines have limited memory expansion capabilities, making it impossible to add RAM.

Windows Vista introduced Windows ReadyBoost, a new concept in adding memory to a system this past year. It means the user can use flash memory, such as that on a (USB) flash drive, to improve performance without having to add additional hard-wired memory.The flash memory device serves as an additional memory cache—that is, memory that the computer can access much more quickly than it can access data on the hard drive. Windows ReadyBoost relies on the intelligent memory management of Windows Super Fetch and can significantly improve system responsiveness.

Windows ReadyBoost is simple to use. When a removable Flash Drive memory device is first inserted into a port, Windows Vista checks to see if its performance is fast enough to work with Windows ReadyBoost. If so, the user is asked if they want to use this device to speed up system performance. The user can choose to allocate part of a USB drive’s memory to speed up performance and use the remainder to store files.Flash Drive Direct is one of the first suppliers to offer this to the ad specialty marketplace.

2008, the death of the CD and the death of the music business as we know it.- Flash Drive Direct offers solution to music retail sector blues.

2008-03-02T01:52:00.000-08:00

The CD is dead and so is the music industry as it faces the prospect of a download only era. Music industry insiders know that the download business strategy is not suited to the labels.
The labels are 5 years too late to stake a viable claim in the download arena. They cannot successfully compete with LimeWire, MySpace and other free services.
EMI, Warner, Hollywood record labels have been seriously exploring the last potent retail replacement for the CD, the flash drive.
Flash drive designer and manufacturer Flash Drive Direct has penned a treatise that describes a new and viable replacement for the CD that will appeal to the download demographic and offer a richer media intense delivery system.
The CD is dead. Sales have plummeted nearly 50% over the last 4 years and a whole generation of consumers are now no longer even familiar with the CD as a concept or the idea that a record store is the place to find the "next big thing".
Record labels have reacted either by standing by and watching as the retail industry tanks or by litigating to death their very own consumers in a futile effort to put the download genie back in the bottle.
This generation wants to buy its music, what they don't want to buy is a CD," states John Graham, long-time music industry analyst and current director of Flash Drive Direct design and manufacturing house (http://www.flashdrivedirect.com). "What the labels have failed to recognize is that the download consumer still wants to buy a tangible tactile product. They are the wealthiest youth generation in history with an estimated annual disposable income of over 20 billion dollars. They lay claim to some of the largest discretionary retail spending. Note the sales of Mac's, iPods, cell phones, $200 jeans and more," concludes Graham.
"The retail experience for the download generation is alive and kicking. The difference is that today's downloaders grew up on MP3 files not CD's," Graham goes on to say. "When MP'3's came along they were first played almost exclusively on computers. However, necessity being the Mother of all inventions, retailers then created the MP3 player industry. As a result the CD player and the CD retail business went the way of the Dodo."
A recent Harvard study on retail trends cited an anomaly in the download generation's retail therapy that was not anticipated. It found that consumers 14-29 would buy music from a retail outlet if two things were changed. One being that the retail environment better represented their personal expression of taste and secondly that if the music were loaded onto a digital device such as a flash drive they would buy it.
The study went on to say that on a secondary level of understanding "the consumer had veered away from the CD as it offered little in the way of new media interactivity". The consumer had found that the CD only offered a 1 dimensional experience and had no "bells and whistles".
John Graham of Flash Drive Direct goes on to explain, "the problem with the CD in recent years was not just a lack of a solid CD's worth of material but the high cost the consumer paid for what amounted to nothing more than a $15 expense for 1-2 singles, a bunch of filler and no killer! The labels only have themselves to blame for much of this."
The new delivery device that will recapture the spirit of the vibrant 80's and 90's CD sales boom is the digital flash drive. To date many artists have released limited edition and on-line sales of flash drive albums. However, there were 2 consistent failures in these tentative approaches. Firstly the retail environment had no rack space to best showcase the drives and perhaps more importantly the artist and labels did not grasp the enormous range of expression that the flash drive offered.
The drive would contain the tunes but what has not been fully understood was what else the flash drive offers. The drive not only delivers songs but videos, print files of all of the artist's previous CD covers, tour posters, band bio's and more. It also could easily be formatted to link to outside websites where the consumer could buy tickets, visit the band's website, download coupons and link to a wide variety of on-line and real world experiences. The flash drive is much more impactful as a retail tool when viewed as a web portal, multi- media storage and song delivery device than just a mere replacement for the CD, as the CD was for the LP.
Flash Drive Direct does work for the corporate world along with new media ventures with record labels, film studios, television and more.

USB Digital Frames acquired by Flash Drive Direct

2008-02-29T06:50:00.000-08:00

Flash Drive Direct of Vancouver Canada has acquired digital picture frame designer USB Digital Frames. A major makeover and product re-launch is planned.USB Digital Frames is a leading designer and programmer in the very fast paced digital picture frame industry.

It was launched a year ago and has agreements in place with Panasonic to supply the hard to find Hi-resolution LCD panels. It currently offers 15 models ranging in size from 1.1 inch screens to 22 inch screens.

Flash Drive Direct plans changes to the line, designs and the scope of the offering.“ We took over USB Digital Frames as it complimented our current business with Flash Drives”, says John Graham, Director of Vancouver based Flash Drive Direct. “We also recognized that some of the problems that USB Digital Frames faced were the same things we had already conquered when launching Flash Drive Direct. Simple yet important points such as easy to understand and execute user-manuals to set-up and launch the digital picture frame. On one of the current designs the first line in the Chinese translated manual instructed the user …Do not ram hard things into the drive! We realized that this was leaving far too much open for interpretation”

The USB digital picture frame is best described as the perfect gadget for sharing photos, movies, video files and mp3’s in a picture frame format. The frames range in size from 1 inch to 36 inches. They contain an LCD screen, which displays multiple file formats. It uploads files from SD cards, Flash drives, USB cable or via BlueTooth.Flash Drive Direct intends to keep the name USB Digital Frames and to keep its domain separate. There will be joint marketing initiatives as it is felt that neither of the product sets will cannibalize the other and will in fact enhance each others offering.“Our first goal is to meet with the manufacturer and with Panasonic, this is slated for next week in China.

Our goal is to streamline production, clarify operating and packaging issues and to re-launch the brand by Mid March, it is a tall order” Graham states.Both Flash Drive Direct and USB Digital Frames sell to both the retail market throughout North America and Europe and into the 16 billion dollar a year promotional products industry in North America. Last year digital picture frames and flash drives represented over $300,000,000.00 in corporate logo sales. The product re-launch is expected to set new standards for value in the marketplace, Flash Drive Direct expects sales of USB Digital Frames to triple in 2008.

2008-02-27T20:56:00.001-08:00

Flash Drive Direct Featured

Flash Drive Direct Gets The Nod From Seattle Softw...

February, 2008 @ 1888PressRelease.com

Flash drive price drop spurring design innovation.

2008-02-27T20:49:00.000-08:00

Flash price drop spurring innovation. Flash Drive Direct uses price decline to expand design innovation.
A massive decline in the price of NAND flash memory, the chips that store photos in digital cameras and music in iPods, is prompting design innovation among companies trying to increase sales. At the forefront of this movement for the corporate logo market is design house Flash Drive Direct.
The price of mainstream 2GB SLC (single-level cell) NAND flash memory chips has fallen 73 percent since mid-August to $7.96 late Thursday. The chips hit a high of $18.50 on Aug. 14. The price of 2GB MLC (multi-level cell) NAND flash chips have taken a slightly worse dive, 75 percent down to $2.23 on Thursday, compared to its summer high of $8.85 per chip.
A few of the items likely to see more widespread design specialization in gadgets this year include SD (secure digital) cards, USB flash sticks, and internal storage, as well as new, lower-cost SSDs (solid-state disks) in notebook computers.
With the dramatic decrease in flash drive pricing it has allowed corporate and promotional designers Flash Drive Direct to spend more money on unique housing designs and yet still keep within the current price confines of the marketplace.
At the upcoming April 2008 electronics tradeshow in Hong Kong, Flash Drive Direct will be releasing several new designs including a golf bag shaped flash drive, a manila folder shaped drive and a biometric drive in the shape of a well-know secret agents logo.
On the notebook front, Toshiba and Samsung have both developed new 128GB SSDs based in MLC NAND to expand their use in notebook PCs. The new SSDs are less expensive, giving notebook PC designers more choices in storage.
"At 128GB, you're giving consumers the kind of storage space they expect in a notebook," said Jim Elliott, director of flash marketing at Samsung, in an interview.
The new MLC-based drives are an important step forward for SSDs in the battle against hard disk drives (HDD). At 128GB, an SSD stands a far better chance of replacing an HDD in laptop computers because it removes some of the high-capacity advantage HDDs hold.
SSDs have several advantages over HDDs; they're lighter, more rugged, consume less power, make no noise, and enable a computer to start up and load software faster than HDDs. But SSDs are a lot more expensive than HDDs, which is why they're mainly used in the business laptop market, where users are willing to pay more for performance and reliability.
Elliot believes that not only will the marketplace see significant increases in memory at a lower price but an increase in design innovation that will redefine our notion of what a flash drive, notebook or computer will look like.

Flash Drive Direct gets the nod from Seattle software innovator StickyDrive™.

2008-02-26T19:30:00.000-08:00

Flash Drive Direct gets the nod from Seattle software innovator StickyDrive

StickyDrive™ is a sophisticated value added software that is designed to be installed on portable media devices such as flash drives, flash cards, and MP3 players. This sophisticated software is the next step in the on-going NAND Flash Drive revolution. This week Sticky Drive announce that Flash Drive Direct of Vancouver Canada as their newest authorized dealer.The StickyDriv software has features benefiting the corporate customer that is looking to enhance their corporate message by leveraging this new technology paradigm. The integrated functionality of the software helps people organize, find, and use their stored content. The software can be customized to "brand the inside" of a flash drive offering a custom designed graphical interface incorporating logo’s, schemes, themes, navigation, internal and external links and much more.

“It takes a huge commitment and a real belief in the future of melding the 2 technology’s to become an authorized Sticky Drive dealer”. States Flash Drive Directs John Graham. “In fact, this is the next evolution in flash drive integration into the serious business world.

Essentially what the combination of Flash Drives and StickyDrive software does is it allows the user to enhance their flash drives to become and perform a wide variety of functions previously not possible. The flash drive can now become a mobile web site that can cache files and documents, remotely access web sites, allow for auto updates and prompted downloads, it is amazing” Graham goes on to say.

Recently Flash Drive Direct and Sticky Drive in conjunction with Rob Penner of Talbot Marketing in Calgary Canada worked together to implement a very sophisticated solution for the 1000 member AMTA (Alberta Motor Transport Association). The end result is that their 1000 members can perform dozens of real-time processes such as access password protected documents, download real-time route changes and be made aware of special alerts all by plugging their Sticky Drive enhanced flash Drive into their wi-fi or bluetooth laptop.

This combination of useful functionality and new edge technology assures the corporate user that they will continue to further integrate their information and operations into a very people friendly business tool.

Flash Drive Directs next StickyDrive project is to load real world reviews, images, statistics and course information for Whistlers professional golf tour stop, Nicklaus North course onto their newest flash drive design, the Golf Bag.

USB Golf Bag Flash Drive Direct design early nominee for Design Awards.

2008-02-25T20:25:00.000-08:00

USB Golf Bag Flash Drive Direct design early nominee for Wallpaper* Design Awards.

Unless you’ve been holed up in bed for the last ten days, you won’t fail to have noticed the countdown to the annual Wallpaper* Design Awards has ended.

On Wednesday the 20th of February the event itself took place to great effect – winners were revealed, runners-up clapped graciously and a very good time was had by all.

In true Wallpaper* style they went one step further than simply opening an envelope to reveal the winners. Instead, the Wallpaper judges teamed-up with digital animators, Mainframe, to produce animations for each winner of the Judges’ Awards. To heighten the suspension a little more, refresh your memories and take a look at the shortlists for each award by clicking on each category on the right of Wallpapers main page of their website.

Wallpaper* Design Awards aren’t simply about the Judges’ Awards. The awards are about interesting innovative design.

Nominated in the life enhancing category was a number of whimsical and earth changing designs. The winner this year is certainly a life changing one.

Yves Béhar who has been working with Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, developing a laptop that will be sold exclusively to governments in the developing world for $100 and then given to school children.

One of the early nominees on the whimsical side of the category of life-enhancing designs was the golf bag design usb flash drive put forth by flash drive designer Flash Drive Direct.

However, in the shade of such a great design as Yves Béhars $100 laptop it is easy to understand why the idea of such a truly life enhancing concept as a $100 laptop would overshadow any other concept either whimsical or life enhancing (such as a golf bag shaped flash drive).

For further information
JG@flashdrivedirect.com
12500 Horseshoe way
Vancouver Canada

The secrets of flash drive marketing to the corporate world revealed.

2008-02-24T11:28:00.000-08:00

How to Sell Flash Drives to the Promotional Marketplace.
Please don’t take this as an insult to your sales skills or a reflection of my ability to be right 98% of the time. :) Its just that I have worked both sides of the business and with so many things to sell, it always took me while to learn how to sell something new. I remember when Pima cotton first came out, I described it as a fabrication designed by Puma and this was the wicking version. Doh!
So I figured a sharing a few basics bits of knowledge about selling any Flash Drive (especially our Flash Drive Direct drives) wouldn’t hurt.......
1) What is a flash drive: A flash drive is a memory device for storing data. This includes, files, word docs, pictures, video. ANYTHING that can go on a computer can go on a flash drive.
2) It has NO MOVING parts: Beauty eh? No moving parts means no break downs.....no blue screen of death. Your PC and Mac has a Hard Drive which spins around at about a jillion revolutions per minute and has an arm (just like a turntable arm) that retrieves the data. Compare the 2....1) never breaks down......The other) will break down...it just depends on when.
3) A flash drive has NAND Flash memory? Who cares! To sell it you don’t need to know this....what you need to know is that there are 2 chips in each drive.....a)the memory chip and b) controller chip. What is important to know is that the chips are THE BEST. The only reliable mass produced chips are made by SAMSUNG and HYNIX. All of our drives are made from these chips. If you buy a drive that is not made with Samsung or Hynix you are buying crap. Simple!
4) Tier 1, USB 2.0, recycled memory, Tier 1, Windows Vista and MAC ready....what does this mean and why you should care?Simply put....a reliable quality flash drive MUST have USB 2.0 (this is a faster speedier chip) Tier 1 (means it is professional grade) Windows Vista and Mac ready...(This means the drive will run with these operating systems.....if it doesn’t have this designation you may have problems)
Recycled/re-used/Tier 2 Memory: Personally I don’t know ( or want to know) any supplier who will tell you they sell this. Why? Because it is crap.....It will fail and no one will tell you....”Buy mine...its junk”. So why do you need to worry about this? Call it what you will.... recycled memory, whatever.... it is basically “factory seconds” that didn’t make the Quality Control standards. They are often sold on a “Gray Market”.
So how do you know? 1) Ask...2) The Price....Chip prices are commodity driven and prices go up and down....all reputable flash drive makers (such as us) price the wholesale according to the chip prices that day. If you are buying a 100 pieces of a 1GB for $10-12 dollars (as I write this) then it is likely you have Tier 1 USB 2.0 Samsung/Hynix chips......If someone says you can have it for $7 ......walk away, it is probably junk.
The emotional sell, the reasons why your clients should buy Flash Drives?
Now that we have all of the geeky techy junk out of the way...trust me I could have gone on and on...and on.......you don’t sell on technical issues do you...(its just a good thing to know)?.....you sell on emotion...you must present a good reason for someone to buy what you have to sell.........fortunately Flash Drives actually have some great legit reasons for corporations to buy them.....here are just a few.
1) They can be reused up to a million times: (yes someone actually counted it) this means that their logo will be seen forever! You can’t say that about Bang Sticks.
2) They are VERY USEFUL: They can hold 1000’s of files so they can be transferred to another computer, act as a back-up for safety, put their powerpoints and other presentations on it, put pictures, music files and just about anything else from your computer on it.
3) They are an EXCELLENT business tool: Not only can they do what’s descrived above, they can do a number of other things. PRELOADS, this is when files, presentations and more can be loaded onto the drive by the supplier. This way when the drives are given away/sold the recipient will have a fully loaded presentation. These are perfect for tradeshows, corporate identity building, fund raising, team building and more....MANUALS, BUSINESS REPORTS and more........forget about the expense, time and ecological bad karma when a corporation prints a 100 page report on business. Face facts:......With a business report, the summary gets skimmed over and then....into the circular file it goes. Flash drives help save the ecology.........when their initial use is no longer valid the user just erases the files and uses it to store their Captain and Tenille MP 3’s. Simple.
4) Bigger is Better: DO NOT SELL 64 MB, 128 MB or 256 MB Flash drives.....they are too small. They are not proportionately cheaper by a long shot and the people who recieve them have no use for them. They will chuck them in a drawer. If you want to give your client something they will be happy with and that you can be proud to sell......sell them a 1 GB or higher.....they are a great deal....big enough to hold lots of information and most importantly....people will use them.
That’s the basics......there are always lots of new twists and turns with this technology....new uses and new venues for sales....but I hope the above gives you a small bit of knowledge to help you feel more comfortable about selling flash drives.

Things to know when Selling a Flash Drive Direct Flash Drive...! We make it simple.1) Minimums: Minimum orders of any memory or style is 100 pieces.2) What do you get: With each order the price includes your logo (up to 3 colors), lanyard and gift box. We can add keyrings etc, just ask.3) Pricing: Each level of memory on the Dynamic line is the same price...it doesn’t matter what the thing looks like. So every 1 GB is the same wholesale price.....there are price breaks at 500 and 1000....anything over that amount call for a quote. The Premiere Line is slightly more expensive (about 10%) but even there every 1 GB is the same price as all other Premiere styles.4) Payment: Credit Card, MC or Visa unless terms or other arrangements have been made. 5) Delivery: On average is 14 days from APPROVAL OF ARTWORK...(ie SIGNOFF).6) Artwork: EPS or AI is acceptable saved for PC.7) Artwork Charges: We screenprint or laser engrave (we do not pad print, pad printing rubs off!) On orders under 500 there is a $150 (a) artwork charge. After 500. No Charge. This will pay for up to 3 colors. All at the same price. The only variations to this charge are on a ) THE RUBY...it is a full digital photo process and the set up can and will vary. Call for a quote. b) Our new 4 color screen process. This duplicates an exact printing process with bleeds, fades etc. This is $200 (a).8) Shipping from us to you: A 2 day air-freight from Seattle or Vancouver all the way across the country is about 30 cents per drive. Use tha as a good place to estimate from.9) Other charges: None.......simple!

Thanks

Samsung and Flash Drive Direct Connect. The secret revealed

2008-02-24T11:22:00.000-08:00

Samsung is touting the reliability of solid-state drives, while citing an explosive market for the devices in server computers.
SSDs are based on flash memory chip technology and have no moving parts. They are currently used in Flash Drive Direct memory sticks for the promotional and corporate marketplace. Hard-disk drives (HDDs), in contrast, use read-write heads that hover over spinning platters to access and record data. With no moving parts, SSDs avoid both the risk of mechanical failure and the mechanical delays of HDDs. Therefore, SSDs are generally faster and more reliable. The catch is the cost: SSDs are currently much more expensive than HDDs.

Samsung 1.8-inch SSD(Credit: Samsung)
There are also concerns about wear. That is, flash has the potential to wear out after tens (or hundreds) of thousands of write cycles.
This characterization, however, is too simplistic, according to Michael Yang, flash marketing manager at Samsung. A flash device that is rated at 100,000 write cycles, for example, can write 100,000 times "to every single (memory) cell within the device," Yang said. In other words, the device doesn't write to the same cell over and over again but spreads out the writes over many different cells. This is achieved through "wear leveling," which is carried out by the SSD's controller, he said.
This would make it virtually impossible to wear out a flash chip. Yang said a pattern could be perpetually repeated in which a 64GB SSD is completely filled with data, erased, filled again, then erased again every hour of every day for years, and the user still wouldn't reach the theoretical write limit. He added that if a failure ever does occur, it will not occur in the flash chip itself but in the controller.
On another topic, Yang cited explosive demand in the enterprise server market that caught his company by surprise. "At first it just sounded like an interesting idea," he said. But then demand took off. As Yang explained, companies like Citibank and American Express peg server performance on IOPS or input/output operations per second. "HDDs do 120 to 150 IOPS. SSDs 10,000 to 30,000 IOPS." Because of this overwhelming speed advantage many large corporate customers are opting for SSDs, despite the significant price premium SSDs command compared with HDDs.
Regarding cost, Yang expects to see a 35 percent to 45 percent year-to-year drop in SSD prices. This will be a welcome relief since 64GB SSDs currently can add as much as $900 to the price of a notebook PC.
In the third quarter, Samsung is slated to bring out a 128GB SSD based on MLC (multi-level cell) technology--which uses multiple levels per cell to allow more bits to be stored. But the company sees even larger-capacity SSDs, ranging all the way up to 250GB, possibly before the end of the year.
The company is also working with notebook PC makers to design ultrathin notebooks with SSDs that can fit into potentially even thinner designs than the 0.76-inch thick MacBook Air, which uses SSD.

Flash drive shaped golf bag. Available only from Flash drive direct.

2008-02-23T13:29:00.000-08:00

It is just too unique to not comment on this. The perfect promotional item for this years golf tournament season is Flash Drive Direct's flash drive in the shape of a golf bag.

It has Samsung and Hynix components and is available in up to 8 GB in memory. However the housing is this very golf golf bag. The sample has US Tour Golf on it and comes in 2 colors with more to come.

It is a proprietary model made by designer Flash Drive Direct and has its first shipment March 30th. This is a limited edition collectors promotion for 2008 so quanties will be scarce. To find out more call 604-272-8809 or sales@flashdrivedirect.com

Flash Drive shaped like a Golf Bag.

2008-02-21T12:31:00.000-08:00

How cool is this...?

Flash drive shaped like a tourney golf bag. Flash drive design house Flash Drive Direct goes crazy with the promotional products very first golf shaped flash drive.

Protein from bugs to make 50,000 GB flash drive

2008-02-20T21:51:00.000-08:00

As bizzarre as it may seem nanotechnology has found a new use for bug protein (bug doodoo to you and I)....As the proteins from bugs are the same building blocks as found in all matter Harvard has found it possible to produce a working 50 Terabyte flash drive (50,000 GB's) ...here's the picture...and the story

A prototype USB drive using bug protein to store data in the neighborhood of around 50 terabytes worth of data could be here in less then 18 months. This idea first started out by coating DVDs with a layer of protein so that one day solid state memory could hold so much information that storing data on your computer hard drive will be obsolete, says Professor V Renugopalakrishnan of the Harvard Medical School in Boston while reporting on his findings at the International Conference on Nanoscience and Nanotechnology in Brisbane this week.

“What this will do eventually is eliminate the need for hard drive memory completely,” he says. Renugopalakrishnan says high-capacity storage devices like the new protein-based DVDs will be essential to the defense, medical and entertainment industries. These trade in terabytes of information with the transfer of information such as satellite images, imaging scans and movies. “You have a compelling need that is not going to be met with the existing magnetic storage technology,” he says.

Renugopalakrishnan says the new protein-based DVD will have advantages over current optical storage devices (such as the Blue-ray). It will be able to store at least 20 times more than the Blue-ray and eventually even up to 50,000 gigabytes (about 50 terabytes) of information, he says. Membrane proteins These membrane proteins are being used to generate the first protein-based information storage system to store terabytes of information The star at the centre of the high-capacity DVD is a light-activated protein found in the membrane of a salt marsh microbe Halobacterium salinarum. The protein, called bacteriorhodopsin (bR), captures and stores sunlight to convert it to chemical energy.

When light shines on bR, it is converted to a series of intermediate molecules each with a unique shape and color before returning to its ‘ground state’. The intermediates generally only last for hours or days. But Renugopalakrishnan and colleagues modified the DNA that produces bR protein to produce an intermediate that lasts for more than several years, which paves the way for a binary system to store data. “The ground state could be the zero and any of the intermediates could be the one,” he says. The scientists also engineered the bR protein to make its intermediates more stable at the high temperatures generated by storing terabytes of data.
The flip side Renugopalakrishnan says making large amounts of information so portable on high-capacity removable storage devices will make it easier for information to fall into the wrong hands. “Unfortunately science can be used and abused. Information can be stolen very quickly,” he says. “One has to have some safeguards there.” In conjunction with NEC in Japan, Renugopalakrishnan’s team has produced a prototype device and estimate a USB flash drive will be commercialized in 12 months and a DVD in 18 to 24 months. The work has been funded by a range of US military, government, academic institutions and commercial companies, as well as the European Union.

64GB solid state drives available in Dell laptops.

2008-02-20T21:35:00.000-08:00

Samsung Ships SATA II Flash Drives to Dell
The 64GB solid state drives will be available in Dell and Alienware laptops soon.

Samsung Electronics has begun shipping a flash memory-based solid state disk drive (SSD) that offers better performance than many of the flash drives currently available, the company said.
The 64GB drive has a SATA II interface that can support data reading at speeds of 100M Bps (bytes per second) and writing at 80M Bps. That makes it 60 percent faster than SATA I drives of the same type and two to five times faster than conventional hard-disk drives, according to Samsung.
SSDsuse flash memoryrather than magnetic storage, which means faster reading and writing of data, lower power consumption and zero noise. They've been around for several years although it is only recently, after flash memory chip prices fell, that they have become practical for use in laptop computers.
The drives were announced back in the fall, when Samsung started supplying samples of the drives to PC makers. Commercial versions of the drive are now available and will be offered as options on some Dell and Alienware laptops in the coming weeks, said Samsung. Prices were not announced.
Samsung is also planning to target the enterprise server market and other applications that demand high-speed data transfer.
Despite their advantages over hard disk drives, SSDs are only taking off slowly because they are much more expensive. To get around this problem Samsung showed a 128GB SSD based onMLC (multi-level cell) NAND flash, at the recent International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. It's a cheaper but not as powerful or efficient version of flash chip than the SLC (single level cell) used in most SSDs drives until now. The SLC-type memory chips last about 10 times as long as MLC chips

Samsung has also been supplying flash chips to flash drive designer flash drive direct.

Toshiba plan may boosts flash drive direct memory market long term

2008-02-20T21:32:00.000-08:00

Toshiba Corp's ambition to become the world's biggest maker of flash memory chips, mainly used in small gadgets, may herald a showdown in the chip industry, as flash enters a PC market dominated by hard disk drives.
Toshiba, which lost the home movie DVD war to rival Sony Corp, plans to invest almost $16 billion to boost its flash memory business, betting the market for NAND chips in laptops could be huge in a just few years time.
"NAND demand from PCs will account for less than 5 percent of total demand this year, but the number should grow quickly to reach 10-15 percent in 2009 and some 25 percent in 2010 onwards," said Park Hyun, an analyst at Prudential Investment and Securities. "I think Toshiba made a reasonable decision to bet on this."
In the meantime, Toshiba will likely face a tough battle against rival and world No.1 flash chip maker Samsung Electronics South Korea's Samsung overtook Toshiba as the world's top maker of memory chips in 2002.
"Toshiba has been very vocal about reclaiming the lead in the memory business," said Kim Young-June, an analyst at Kyobo Securities.
In a industry marked by cycles of booms and busts, Toshiba's plans could flood the market with too many flash chips, further driving down prices.
Yet it is this very price fall that could make flash memory drives more attractive to PC makers in the medium term.
Toshiba, at the same time as bowing out of a technology standard war in home movies, said earlier on Tuesday it was investing 1.7 trillion yen to boost output capacity for the chips.
The Japanese company, together with its U.S. partner SanDisk Corp, will build a new flash memory plant and have plans for building another one.
From March, Toshiba will have the capacity to make the equivalent of 240,000 wafers a month, which could rise to 410,000 wafers in the middle of 2009 if a recently build plant hits full capacity.
Toshiba expects capacity at the new plants of about 150,000 to 200,000 a month -- which means its total output could more than triple to up to 810,000 wafers a month.
MORE PRICE DROPS
Makers of flash memory are struggling under the weight of massive oversupply, caused in part by the effects of a year-long market share war between the makers of DRAM chips, used mainly in PCs.
In order to defend their prices, which in some cases have dropped more than 90 percent, DRAM makers diverted production capacity to NAND flash production, flooding the flash market with stock.
The average price of flash chips is expected to drop by 35 to 40 percent in the first quarter 2008 alone.
Flash memory is increasingly seen as the next preferred technology in laptops, as PCs powered by flash drives are faster and lighter.
But cost has been an issue since they are still up to ten times pricier than the traditional, rotating hard drives.
"If NAND prices fall sufficiently, the price differential between a traditional hard drive and a flash drive could go from 10 times to 4 or even 3.5 by mid-to-end 2009," said Kyobo's Kim.
The growth potential of the so-called solid-state drive (SSD) could be staggering, analysts said.
"In the short term, there is going to be an excess production and supply of NAND," said Tetsuro Miyachi, senior portfolio manager, Franklin Templeton Investments Japan. "But in the long term, there is no doubt that NAND demands are going to expand. I think this was the right decision."

And the Geek shall inherit the earth.....Flash Drives dead? MEMS and Nanoprobes next?

2008-02-19T20:03:00.001-08:00

This is for the trully geeky........new technology will replace flash drives in the next few years.......Nano probes which can produce 100 GB's to 1000 Gb (known a terabyte for the geek in all of us) ..which will be the size or smaller than current flash drives....strap in Buck Rogers.

Will MEMS + nanoprobes succeed flash memory scaling?
Feb. 5, 2008 - With flash process technology scaling approaching its limits, along comes Nanochip, a developer of MEMS silicon data storage chips, with a technology that does not use lithography in its manufacture. The company recently completed (Jan. 22) a $14M financing round supported in part by Intel Capital and JK&B Capital, and aims to complete development of its first prototypes later this year, start design verification testing and limited customer sampling in 2009, and begin production in 2010, CEO Gordon Knight told WaferNEWS.
The company's first products are expected to exceed 100GB/chipset, reaching terabytes in the future. Because Nanochip's MEMS-based probe storage technology is mechanical in nature, i.e., with moving parts, its access times are in the millisecond range -- too slow for programmed storage. Instead, the company is targeting NAND and disk drives. "We're going after large database storage, i.e., servers, laptops, USB drives, and eventually, cell phones, when we get our costs down," explained Knight.

Currently, Nanochip has four fabs around the world working on the prototype project (two partners in the MEMS sector and two in storage media), and talks are ongoing with potential production partners. While not able to identify partners, Knight did note that the MEMS-based storage chip must be produced on 200mm wafers.

The MEMS chip itself is an ~150mm2 die based on a 3-wafer construction (see figure): a CMOS substrate containing all the electronics to control the chip and provide error correction, a substrate that contains the suspended media moving platform; and a sealing cap wafer. Each die has ~8000 cantilevers and AFM probe tips, with a single AFM probe tip on the end of each cantilever. The probe tips are grown on top of the CMOS substrate and can be raised and lowered onto the media platform, which moves in raster fashion in the X-Y directions. The media layer (i.e., recording layer) is continuous, and not patterned.

Structure of Nanochip's MEMS-based advanced memory device.
Because the media moves under suspension, there is no contact, and hence no wearout of the media, according to Knight. The probe tips, however, do contact the media. A servo controller moves the tips down into contact with the media as necessary to complete read/write operations, typically, only several hundred tips are moved at a time. Knight maintains that proper engineering of the tip material and the media surface chemistry has enabled tip life to be extended to allow very high operational usage over many years. "The media does cycle more than 10 million times and we are still testing its ultimate lifetime," he said. "The read/write/erase rate is similar to that of a disk drive in that direct overwrite is used, thus eliminating block erase issues that flash has."

The weirdest looking flash drives

2008-02-18T19:34:00.000-08:00

These are weird.....but fun........

Ok......we sell 150 disfferent flash drives here at flash drive direct but these top 10 are the weirdest (I like the Barbie, is that wrong?) flash drives I have ever seen

There is the tiki god, the sushi, the thumb and of course the Barbie.........let me know which you find most unusual...:)

Windows Ready boost..what is it?

2008-02-18T18:00:00.000-08:00

When a compatible device is plugged in, the Windows AutoPlay dialog offers an additional option to use the flash drive to speed up the system; an additional "ReadyBoost" tab is added to the drive's properties dialog where the amount of space to be used can be configured 250 MB to 4 GB of flash memory can be assigned. ReadyBoost encrypts, with AES-128, and compresses all data that is placed on the flash device; Microsoft has stated that a 2:1 compression ratio is typical, so that a 4 GB cache could contain upwards of 8 GB of data

According to Jim Allchin, for future releases of Windows, ReadyBoost will be able to use spare RAM on other networked Windows Vista PCs

For a device to be compatible and useful it must conform to the following requirements:
The capacity of the removable media must be at least 256 MB (250 after formatting)
Devices larger than 4 GB will have only 4 GB used for ReadyBoost
The device should have an access time of 1ms or less
The device must be capable of 2.5 MB/s read speeds for 4 KB random reads spread uniformly across the entire device and 1.75 MB/s write speeds for 512 KB random writes spread uniformly across the device

The device must have at least 235 MB of free space
NTFS, FAT16 and FAT32 are supported
The initial release of ReadyBoost supports one device
The recommended amount of memory to use for Windows ReadyBoost acceleration is one to three times the amount of random access memory (RAM) installed in your computer

Performance
A system with 512 MB of RAM (the minimum for Windows Vista) can see significant gains from ReadyBoost. In one test case speeding up an operation from 11.7 seconds to 2 seconds (increasing physical memory from 512 MB to 1GB reduced it to 0.8 seconds). Systems with 1 GB or more do not show a significant effect on tests to date.
The core idea of ReadyBoost is that a flash drive has a much faster seek time (less than 1 millisecond), allowing it to satisfy the requests fairly quickly compared to a hard drive when booting or reading certain system files. It also leverages the inherent advantage of having two parallel sources from which to read data. Unfortunately, low-cost flash drives are slow in terms of sequential reads and writes, compared to modern desktop hard drives -- 7200 rpm hard drives can sustain 60-80 MB/s, which is 6 to 8 times faster than the 10 MB/s sustained by the fastest low-cost flash drivesThe only advantages these flash drives have are a seek time of around 1ms, compared to the 8-12ms typical on modern SATA drives.High-cost ($1,000-$50,000) solid state memories currently have random sustained external throughput up to 3 GB/s (TMS RamSan) and latency as low as 0.003 ms (Violin 1010)

On laptop computers the performance shifts more in the favor of flash memory, laptop memory being priced relatively higher than that for desktop systems, and with many laptops using relatively slow 4200 rpm and 5400 rpm hard drives. Additionally, on a laptop, the ReadyBoost caching can reduce hard drive access, allowing the hard drive to spin down for increased battery life Additionally, because of the nature of the power management typically enabled during mobile use of a laptop it is a more power efficient way of increasing equipment productivity.
The performance of NAND flash caching (in the form of Intel's Turbo Memory technology) has also been called into question by some computer manufacturers

Wikipedia on a Flash Drive

2008-02-18T10:02:00.000-08:00

Wikipedia on a flash drive
Access the web from any offline PC
PC Advisor staff
Webaroo has teamed up with U3, the creator of smart flash drive direct software, to enable people to access the web from any PC without the need for a web connection.

Webaroo – the self-proclaimed world leader of 'Web to Go' – allows people to download and carry portions of the web on an offline laptop or mobile device, and the partnership with U3 means users will be able to store that content on a USB flash drive.

U3-enabled flash drives allow people to take their Windows applications and desktop preferences with them, so they can plug the device into any PC and fire up their settings.
The group has been working with a variety of software developers to allow people to launch software directly from the drive, and the deal with Webaroo could mean smart flash drive owners could one day take Wikipedia with them too. The online encyclopedia is believed to be too large to fit onto today's biggest flash drives however.

The partners said Webaroo users can access the selected web content wherever they are, without having to install any software or transfer any files. Consumers download Webaroo and selected web content onto their laptop, mobile device or USB flash drive for free, or purchase a device with Webaroo bundled on it.

The company added Wikipedia to its collection of nearly 300 downloadable web packs earlier this year.
Webaroo Wikipedia is available for free, without the need for the 5GB download, on November's PC Advisor cover disc.

Color perfect Pantone certified anadized aluminum flash drives

2008-02-16T19:49:00.000-08:00

http://www.pr-usa.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=71400&Itemid=9

Flash Drive Direct now works with a certified Pantone manufacturer to produce color perfect anadized aluminum housings for Flash Drives.

John Graham

Flash Drives to replace Laptop and PC Hard drives. San Disk leads the way.

2008-02-15T16:46:00.001-08:00

SanDisk wants to replace the hard drive in notebooks with flash memory, a swap that it says will make thin laptops faster and more reliable.
The switch, however, will cost you a few hundred dollars more.

SanDisk on Thursday released a 32GB drive for commercial notebooks that stores information on flash memory chips rather than the magnetic platters that make up a traditional hard drive. The drive is available only to manufacturers, and the company declined to give out pricing or identify any notebook makers that will adopt it, but SanDisk said notebooks sporting the drive could come out in the first half of 2007.
For the past year or so, flash memory makers have promised to come out with products that will challenge hard drives in notebooks.
The debate between flash makers and hard drive manufacturers will be one of the big topics at the Consumer Electronics Show and Storage Visions, which both take place next week in Las Vegas. While SanDisk shows off its flash drive there, drive makers will be touting hybrid hard drives.
Unlike traditional hard drives, flash memory drives do not contain moving parts. As a result, flash devices are less prone to breaking down--flash cards can survive drops from great heights--and consume less energy. SanDisk's flash drive can increase battery life by about 10 percent, said Doreet Oren, director of product marketing for SanDisk.

Flash also can retrieve data faster. In its own tests, Sandisk says its flash drive can boot-up Windows Vista--the next version of the Windows operating system--in 35 seconds, a half-minute faster than the 55-second boot-up time required with a conventional drive.
Military and aerospace customers have been buying so-called solid-state flash drives for about a decade. Some of the drives have capacities of 256GB and are quite sophisticated.
"They are in data recorders in airplanes," Oren said. "Breakage sometimes happens with military targets."
SanDisk got the bulk of its expertise in these drives when it acquired Msystems, an Israeli outfit that was an early pioneer in USB flash keys.
"A few years ago, some of the people at Msystems told me their most expensive drives cost $70,000," said Jim Handy, chief analyst at Objective Analysis. "They are very tightly connected to the military in Israel."
The commercial drive from SanDisk contains a controller and other electronics that reduce power consumption and the overall cost of the drive that make it possible to slip it into high-end corporate notebooks, Oren said.
SanDisk packaged the drive into a 1.8-inch package, mostly to make it easier for notebook makers to adopt it. The package can be shrunk (to reduce the overall size of the notebook) or increased so that a flash drive could fit into a notebook with a 2.5-inch drive chassis.
"We can and will do other form factors," Oren said.
The flash drive isn't for everyone. At 32GB, it is far smaller than the conventional drives found in current notebooks, desktops or even MP3 players. Many business users, however, never max out the capacity on their drives.
The drive will also add about $600 to the cost of a notebook. Those prices will crimp sales, Handy said.
"There are certain applications where it can be used, but I just don't see it for business where the most violent thing they (users) will encounter is a cab ride in New York," said Handy.
Still, the capacity and price gaps will begin to erode over time, Oren said. NAND flash memory makers (NAND is the kind SanDisk makes) have managed to double the storage capacity of its chips nearly every year for the past few years.
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The NAND flash in the SanDisk drive, in fact, contains one only bit of data per memory cell. SanDisk makes NAND flash that can hold two bits of data per cell and, through Msystems, has technology for expanding that to 4 bits of memory in a cell. Increasing the capacity can thus be accomplished without massive technological breakthroughs.
NAND pricing has also been dropping rapidly.
Meanwhile, drive makers point out that hard drives also continue to increase in data density and are far less expensive. Hitachi executives have said drives that can hold a terabyte of data are on the horizon.
Internet video will choke flash. An hour of standard video gobbles up about 1GB, while an hour of high-definition video will take up 4GB, according to various estimates.
"Right now, the average notebook shipment drive we're shipping is 80GB, and it's growing about 7 or 8GB a quarter," Seagate Technology CEO Bill Watkins said in an interview in November. "If you talk to an Apple or Dell or HP or someone like that, they're going to tell you in 2010, 2011 they're looking for the average notebook to be more like 250GB, because there is going to be a lot of content. How is flash going to get there?"

Falling chip prices may keep flash drive prices low. Hynix faces 4th quarter loss.

2008-02-14T22:55:00.000-08:00

Hynix Semiconductor Inc. posted its worst quarterly performance in four years Friday due to falling chip prices in an oversaturated market.
Hynix, the world's second-largest memory chip maker by sales, said it lost 467 billion won ($496 million) in the three months ended Dec. 31, compared with 1.02 trillion won during the same period last year.
It was the company's worst quarterly net loss since the fourth quarter of 2003, and far worse than the 53.5 billion won ($56.8 million) analysts polled by Thomson Financial had expected.
"The industry will remain challenging in the first quarter of this year as weak pricing may persist," O.C. Kwon, Hynix's senior for strategic planning, said during a conference call.
Sales during the quarter at the Icheon, South Korea-based company fell 35 percent to 1.73 trillion won ($1.84 billion) from 2.66 trillion won in the last quarter of 2006.
Reflecting the gloomy industry outlook, Hynix cut its capital spending plan for this year by 25 percent to 3.6 trillion won ($3.8 billion), down from 2007's 4.8 trillion won.
For full-year 2007, net profit plunged 84 percent to 329 billion won ($348.7 million), while sales rose 11 percent to 8.43 trillion won ($8.95 billion).
Prices of memory chips _ such as DRAM, or dynamic random access memory, used in personal computers and NAND flash used in MP3 players and digital cameras _ have fallen steeply, leading most chip makers to post losses for the October-December quarter.
Analysts say those losses may extend through the first and second quarter of 2008, adding that profitability could improve in the second half on stronger seasonal demand.
"In terms of both earnings and chip prices, the first quarter should be the bottom for the industry and Hynix," said C.W. Chung, a Seoul-based analyst at Lehman Brothers.
"Losses at Hynix are expected to widen in the current quarter, but will be narrowed in the second quarter and then the company will possibly return to a profit in the third quarter," Chung said.
Hynix's DRAM sales prices fell 35 percent sequentially in the fourth quarter from the third, with 7 percent on-quarter growth in shipments. NAND flash chip prices declined 34 percent, although shipments grew 47 percent on strong demand for MP3 players and mobile phones.
DRAM shipments accounted for 60 percent of total sales in the fourth quarter, down from 67 percent in the third and 75 percent in the fourth quarter of 2006.

Flash Drive Direct goes on to Billboard

2008-02-13T22:06:00.001-08:00

The CD is dead. Flash Drive Direct offers strong alternative paradigm to revive limp retail music sales.

The CD is dead and the industry is facing the prospect of a download only era. Music industry mavens know that this business strategy is not suited to the labels. The free file sharing Peer to Peer genie is out of the bottle and already in the hands of the public. The ability for the labels to stake their claim in the download arena and successfully compete with LimeWire, MySpace and other free services is doomed. Flash drive designer and manufacturer Flash Drive Direct has penned a treatise that describes a new and viable replacement for the CD that will appeal to the download demographic and offer a richer media intense delivery system.
Vancouver, Canada (Billboard Publicity Wire/PRWEB ) February 14, 2008 -- The CD is dead. Sales have plummeted nearly 50% over the last 4 years and a whole generation of consumers are now no longer even familiar with the CD as a concept or the idea that a record store is the place to find the "next big thing".
Record labels have reacted either by standing by and watching as the retail industry tanks or by litigating to death their very own consumers in a futile effort to put the download genie back in the bottle.
Helvetica, sans-serif; TEXT-DECORATION: none" href="http://www.flashdrivedirect.com/" alt="Link to website">This generation wants to buy its music, what they don't want to buy is a CD "This generation wants to buy its music, what they don't want to buy is a CD," states John Graham, long-time music industry analyst and current director of Flash Drive Direct design and manufacturing house (http://www.flashdrivedirect.com/). "What the labels have failed to recognize is that the download consumer still wants to buy a tangible tactile product. They are the wealthiest youth generation in history with an estimated annual disposable income of over 20 billion dollars. They lay claim to some of the largest discretionary retail spending. Note the sales of Mac's, iPods, cell phones, $200 jeans and more," concludes Graham.
"The retail experience for the download generation is alive and kicking. The difference is that today's downloaders grew up on MP3 files not CD's," Graham goes on to say. "When MP'3's came along they were first played almost exclusively on computers. However, necessity being the Mother of all inventions, retailers then created the MP3 player industry. As a result the CD player and the CD retail business went the way of the Dodo."
A recent Harvard study on retail trends cited an anomaly in the download generation's retail therapy that was not anticipated. It found that consumers 14-29 would buy music from a retail outlet if two things were changed. One being that the retail environment better represented their personal expression of taste and secondly that if the music were loaded onto a digital device such as a flash drive they would buy it.
The study went on to say that on a secondary level of understanding "the consumer had veered away from the CD as it offered little in the way of new media interactivity". The consumer had found that the CD only offered a 1 dimensional experience and had no "bells and whistles".
John Graham of Flash Drive Direct goes on to explain, "the problem with the CD in recent years was not just a lack of a solid CD's worth of material but the high cost the consumer paid for what amounted to nothing more than a $15 expense for 1-2 singles, a bunch of filler and no killer! The labels only have themselves to blame for much of this."
The new delivery device that will recapture the spirit of the vibrant 80's and 90's CD sales boom is the digital flash drive. To date many artists have released limited edition and on-line sales of flash drive albums. However, there were 2 consistent failures in these tentative approaches. Firstly the retail environment had no rack space to best showcase the drives and perhaps more importantly the artist and labels did not grasp the enormous range of expression that the flash drive offered.
The drive would contain the tunes but what has not been fully understood was what else the flash drive offers. The drive not only delivers songs but videos, print files of all of the artist's previous CD covers, tour posters, band bio's and more. It also could easily be formatted to link to outside websites where the consumer could buy tickets, visit the band's website, download coupons and link to a wide variety of on-line and real world experiences. The flash drive is much more impactful as a retail tool when viewed as a web portal, multi- media storage and song delivery device than just a mere replacement for the CD, as the CD was for the LP.
Flash Drive Direct does work for the corporate world along with new media ventures with record labels, film studios, television and more.

Custom Pantone Color your promotional Flash Drive

2008-02-13T15:15:00.000-08:00

Flash Drive Direct can now custom color (anodize) nearly 20 of their aluminium flash drive housings.

This gives the customer even more customization, even more choice. In fact the color can be matched to ANY Pantone color.

Pretty cool.

Why Use a USB Flash Drive? Flash Drive Direct

2008-02-12T21:50:00.000-08:00

Why Use a USB Flash Drive?

Practical applications of USB flash drives (also called jump drives, pen drives and thumb drives):
Synchronize Computers – Applications allow you to sync computers. Whether you’re a student, business personal, someone who enjoys traveling or anyone who uses multiple computers. Syncing computers save time and allow you to take your work with you.
Virtual Applications Platforms – You can enjoy your preferences, favorites, email and more Homeon any computer. None of your personal information is stored on the computer so when you’re done, you won’t leave a trace.
Carry Your Media – You can take your photos, music and videos with you. Many photo labs accept USB drives for easy development.
Security – USB flash drives can be password protected and the information encrypted. You can also use the drive as a key to your computer. In this site, you'll find articles on thumb drives, news stories and comprehensive reviews on USB flash drives that will help you make an informed decision on which jump drive is right for you. At TopTenREVIEWS – We do the research so you don’t have to.™
What to Look for in a USB Flash Drive
USB flash drives come in all shapes, sizes, storage capacities and prices. Before you purchase a thumb drive, assess your needs and wants. Then choose the drive that best fits your criteria. Below are the criteria TopTenREVIEWS used to evaluate USB Flash Drives.
Product Features – USB flash drives should have practical features such as retractable USB connectors or swivel caps. The drive may also come with a lanyard or keychain or be water resistant.
Included Software – Some jump drives come with preinstalled applications. Common software includes security programs, sync tools and virtual application platforms.
Value – Flash drives vary a lot in price. The best drives for your money offer more storage for less money.
Support/Warranty – Manufacturers should provide first-class customer service through online documentation like FAQs or a knowledgebase, and customers should be able to reach customer

4gb flash drives for free

2008-02-12T21:26:00.001-08:00

Promotional products design and supply firm, Flash Drive Direct is offering a free “test drive” of their new 4 GB digital wrap flash drive “The Ruby”.As part of their ongoing sales and educational efforts to bring to light the many uses and technology variances of the modern day flash drive, FDD is giving away 2 free 4GB flash drives enabled with Windows Vista O/S compatibility to be added to every customers order during the month of February 2008.“Our goal is to continue to provide the 70,000 members of the promotional products industry not only great products and service but to help raise their (the promotional distributor) expertise to a higher level so that they may offer a more educated presentation to their customers regarding the new flash drive technology” states industry expert John Graham. Flash drives are a new technology to the 16 Billion dollar promotional products industry. Despite the fact that this technology is already well ensconced in the tech world the corporate world is just now catching on. Last year alone sales to the corporate sector of flash drives reached an estimated 20 million drives. Most of these drives were sold not through traditional retail channels but through the 70,000 promotional products distributors. Flash Drive Directs unprecedented offer allows the distributor to not only experience the leading edge of flash drive technology but to also gives their customers a free drive in order to help ratchet up both parties familiarity and expertise. The offer continues on to February 29th, 2008.

Flash Drive get big hit from Ready Boost

2008-02-12T21:26:00.000-08:00

Flash Drive Direct launches line of 16GB hand held flash drives for the promotional products market.The $16 Billion dollar (annual sales) US promotional products industry is getting a 16GB boost. Flash Drive Direct is now offering Windows Readyboost 16 GB hand held flash drive units.“We only expect this upward memory trend to continue,” states John Graham, North American director of Flash Drive Direct. “ This business was mostly 32 MB promotional give-aways 2 years ago, now the sale of the flash drives into the US business economy is trending towards much larger memory drives. A year ago, 1GB was the upper end, 6 months ago we hit 8GB and now we are at 16GB. We can expect to see 32GB within the next 6 months”Flash Drive Direct is now Windows ReadyBoost deliverable.Adding system memory (typically referred to as RAM) is often the best way to improve a PC's performance, since more memory means more applications are ready to run without accessing the hard drive. However, upgrading memory can be difficult and costly, and some machines have limited memory expansion capabilities, making it impossible to add RAM.Windows Vista introduced Windows ReadyBoost, a new concept in adding memory to a system this past year. It means the user can use flash memory, such as that on a (USB) flash drive, to improve performance without having to add additional hard-wired memory.The flash memory device serves as an additional memory cache—that is, memory that the computer can access much more quickly than it can access data on the hard drive. Windows ReadyBoost relies on the intelligent memory management of Windows Super Fetch and can significantly improve system responsiveness.Windows ReadyBoost is simple to use. When a removable Flash Drive memory device is first inserted into a port, Windows Vista checks to see if its performance is fast enough to work with Windows ReadyBoost. If so, the user is asked if they want to use this device to speed up system performance. The user can choose to allocate part of a USB drive's memory to speed up performance and use the remainder to store files.Flash Drive Direct is one of the first suppliers to offer this to the ad specialty marketplace.CONTACT INFORMATION604-272-8809.Vancouver Canada/Blaine Washingtoninfo (at) flashdrivedirect (dot) com

How to Use a USB Flash Drive. Step by Step

2008-02-08T21:34:00.000-08:00

As odd as it may sound, not everyone knows how to use a Flash Drive. Therefore I have taken the step by step instructions from Wellesley College computer labs and from various Google articles.

A Flash Drive is a small self-powered drive that connects to a computer directly through a USB port. It's both Mac and PC compatible, so you can transfer files between both Macs and PCs. They are supported on all public machines, although some flash drives require a user to install drivers before use.

Flash drives can hold any type of data, including excel, jpeg, video, and text files. Flash drives are also commonly referred to as key drive, thumb drives, jump drives, USB drives and pen drives.

Introduction:
Flash drives are meant as a way to get files to and from multiple computers. They are perfect for file transfer and backup. Please note that not all flash drives are the same. Some may require extra drivers to be installed on a computer in order for them to function properly.Flash drives come with varying amounts of memory. You may purchase in sizes from 128MB to 16 GB. Some of the most popular retail brand name drives, are Lexar, Sandisk, Kingston, PNY, and Iomega. Best known corporate brands are Flash Drive Direct.

Copying files to a flash drive on a PC:

Open My Computer and see which drives are shown. Most computers, for example, have a hard disk such as a C: drive and a few removable storage devices such as a floppy drive, a CD-ROM drive, and perhaps a zip drive.

Insert the flash drive into the USB port and watch to see where the USB flash drive appears. Most will appear as removable storage, but some will instead appear as hard drives. Note the name Windows is using to refer to the flash drive ("Removable Disk (G:)," for example).

Open My Documents or the location from which you want to transfer files to the flash drive. Select the files or folders you want to save to the flash drive by left-clicking on them. To select more than one, hold down the CTRL key while you click and select all of the files you wish to save.

Right-click on the file(s) or folder(s) you selected, then select Send to, then select the name you saw appearing in My Computer for the flash drive ("Removable Disk (G:)," for example).

When the copying is finished, do not immediately remove the flash drive from the USB port. Instead, left-click on the Remove Hardware icon located in the System Tray. A window containing a list of the USB devices will appear. Left-click on the Safely Remove Mass Storage Device line that matches your flash drive (for example, Safely Remove Mass Storage Device - Drive(G:)).

When you see the following message appear in the bottom left toolbar, it is, as it says, safe to remove the flash drive from the USB port; you may close the message or ignore it, as it will close itself automatically:

Copying files from a flash drive on a PC:
Open My Computer and see which drives are shown. Most computers, for example, have a hard disk such as a C: drive and a few removable storage devices such as a floppy drive, a CD-ROM drive, and perhaps a zip drive.

Double-click on the flash drive to locate the file(s) or folder(s) you want to copy to this computer. Select the files or folders you want to copy by left-clicking on them. To select more than one, hold down the CTRL key while you click and select all of the files or folders you wish to copy.
Right-click on the files or folders you have selected and choose Copy.

Open My Documents or the location to which you want to transfer files from the flash drive.
Click on the Edit menu, then select Paste.

When you see the message appear in the bottom left toolbar, it is, as it says, safe to remove the flash drive from the USB port; you may close the message or ignore it, as it will close itself automatically:

I hope this helps.....

2 FREE 4 GB Flash Drives, Windows Vista Ready from Flash Drive Direct

2008-02-08T17:19:00.000-08:00

We really want you to experience the power of our new 4 GB Window Vista Ready Boost Flash Drives. Therefore, we are prepared to give the distributor 2 free 4 GB versions free of charge (with min order) just so you can see the Power of Windows Vista Ready Boost.

Increase your computers RAM by 4 GB just by plugging in one of these babies to your laptop or desktop.

To find out more about this go to Flash Drive Direct or call us at 604-272-8809 or email sales@flashdrivedirect.com

Flash Drive Direct attain RoHS and WEEE Compliancy

2008-02-07T17:28:00.000-08:00

Flash Drive Direct to be the first Flash manufacturer to the promotional products industry to completely meet or exceed ROHS compliancy.

“ The corporate and promotional products industry is awash in poisonous junk” states John Graham of Flash Drive Direct.

“ It is a very large (16 billion dollars USD) almost unseen and totally unregulated industry that sells the corporate world everything from soup to nuts with a corporate branding (logo) on it.

Until very recently there were few companies willing to spend the extra money to ensure that their products were not harming the environment. We decided to do something about it.”That something was to bring their standards up to both ROHS compliancy and to WEEE standard for Flash Drive Direct.

Flash Drive Direct is now fully compliant with their products and vertically integrated only with WEEE certified plants.

What is ROHS and WEEE?

ROHS is the Directive on the Restriction of the Use of Certain Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment 2002/95/EC (commonly referred to as the Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive or RoHS) which was adopted in February 2003 by the EU (European Union).The RoHS directive took effect on 1 July 2006, and is required to be enforced and become law throughout the EU.

This directive restricts the use of six hazardous materials in the manufacture of various types of electronic and electrical equipment. It is closely linked with the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive (WEEE) 2002/96/EC which sets collection, recycling and recovery targets for electrical goods and is part of a legislative initiative to solve the problem of huge amounts of toxic e-waste.

“As usual, the Europeans, Japanese and Canadians are well ahead of the US when it comes to environmental issues.RoHS was an off shoot of the Kyoto Accord set forth in 1997 and signed by some 120 countries (The USA being a signatory hold-out). “ states Graham. “We watched the European business model burst forth as they adopted stricter environmental standards while the lower US environmental standards actually retarded business growth and development. We quickly saw that by offering ROHS and WEEE compliant products we not only were helping the environment but were encouraging growth in our business. The positive results are obvious”.

John

Usb wi-fi flash drive connector really works. Impressive

2008-02-05T10:44:00.000-08:00

Well.....

to all who care...here I am in Maui on Super Tuesday....heading home in 2 days.........I have not thought about work a lot but I did come across a great new USB tool. Netgears USB 2.0 wifi connector WG111........we did not have a line into our Hawaii hotel room so we went to Radio Shack and they had this very cool device.....plug it in and voila...!! a wireless connection from my laptop. As is sip very strong Kona coffee and wonder if I tan or snorkel today...I find I can surf the net and check mail easily with this device.......When I get back to the office I am going to research this as an additon to our Flash Drive Direct collection.........really great stuff.....

John

Free 4 GB Flash Drive. A promotional industry first.

2008-01-26T14:21:00.000-08:00

This month at Flash Drive Direct, everyone who orders a 100 piece minimum order of at least 1 Gb or more gets a FREE 4 GB Windows Vista Flash Drive.

There will be a skill testing question like....."4 plus 2 ='s" but for the most part if you call in and order you will get the free 4 GB.

Why are we doing this...? Just because we can......plus I went to Geico and saved a ton on my auto insurance ........also I lost weight at Jenny Craig......so basically we are in a really generous mood...

As well we want you to discover the wonders of a Large Drive.......yes bigger is better.......(what are you thinking...tsk, tsk....)

Aloha.....still packing

Windows Vista Ready Boost explained to a normal human

2008-01-26T10:20:00.000-08:00

Dear All,

Not quite yet on the plane and thought I'd tell you about our line of Vista Ready Boost Flash Drives...

Point 1 is the simple explanation of what is is and what it does.......Point 2 is for the technogeek who really wants to know about this stuff and is often seen lurking in the memory and hardware section of your local Web Geek store and works on the weekend for The Geek squad...pick your poison.

1) Windows ready boost simplified....There are certain flash drives that have the ability to increase your computers Memory (RAM Random Access Memory) by the size of their memory. Ie if you have a ready boost flash drive such as those pictured here, simply by plugging them into a PC (not Mac) that has Vista as an O/S (operating system) it will increase your computers speed allowing for complex memory hungry tasks (photoshop, spamming, surfing porn and wiping your tracks so the boss doesn't catch you) by the amount of the memory of your flash drive.

Really simple: If you have 2 GB of RAM (memory used to perform immediate tasks) on your laptop and it has Windows Vista on it, if you plug in your 4 GB ready boost Flash Drive then you will have 6 GB of RAM (memory)......simple...and how cool is that...?

Well I am off for one last Fabutan before I go to Hawaii..........I wonder if its too late to get liposuction...?

PS.....This month get a FREE 4 GB windows ready boost flash drive just for selling some Flash Drive Direct drives.

anyways...what follows is the Geek explanation......go for it..

Using ReadyBoost-capable flash memory (NAND memory devices) for caching allows Windows Vista to service random disk reads with performance that is typically 80-100 times faster than random reads from traditional hard drives. This caching is applied to all disk content, not just the page file or system DLLs. Flash devices are typically slower than the hard drive for sequential I/O, so to maximize performance, ReadyBoost includes logic to recognize large, sequential read requests and then allows these requests to be serviced by the hard drive.[2]
When a compatible device is plugged in, the Windows AutoPlay dialog offers an additional option to use the flash drive to speed up the system; an additional "ReadyBoost" tab is added to the drive's properties dialog where the amount of space to be used can be configured.[3] 250 MB to 4 GB of flash memory can be assigned. ReadyBoost encrypts, with AES-128, and compresses all data that is placed on the flash device; Microsoft has stated that a 2:1 compression ratio is typical, so that a 4 GB cache could contain upwards of 8 GB of data.[1]
According to Jim Allchin, for future releases of Windows, ReadyBoost will be able to use spare RAM on other networked Windows Vista PCs.[4]
For a device to be compatible and useful it must conform to the following requirements:
The capacity of the removable media must be at least 256 MB (250 after formatting)
Devices larger than 4 GB will have only 4 GB used for ReadyBoost
The device should have an access time of 1ms or less
The device must be capable of 2.5 MB/s read speeds for 4 KB random reads spread uniformly across the entire device and 1.75 MB/s write speeds for 512 KB random writes spread uniformly across the device
The device must have at least 235 MB of free space
NTFS, FAT16 and FAT32 are supported
The initial release of ReadyBoost supports one device
The recommended amount of memory to use for Windows ReadyBoost acceleration is one to three times the amount of random access memory (RAM) installed in your computer

[edit] Performance
[1]. A system with 512 MB of RAM (the minimum for Windows Vista) can see significant gains from ReadyBoost. In one test case speeding up an operation from 11.7 seconds to 2 seconds (increasing physical memory from 512 MB to 1GB reduced it to 0.8 seconds). [2]. Systems with 1 GB or more do not show a significant effect on tests to date.
The core idea of ReadyBoost is that a flash drive has a much faster seek time (less than 1 millisecond), allowing it to satisfy the requests fairly quickly compared to a hard drive when booting or reading certain system files. It also leverages the inherent parallelism of having two sources from which to read data. Unfortunately, low-cost flash drives are slow in terms of sequential reads and writes, compared to modern desktop hard drives -- 7200 rpm hard drives can sustain 60-80 MB/s, which is 6 to 8 times faster than the 10 MB/s sustained by the fastest low-cost flash drives [3]. The only advantages these flash drives have are a seek time of around 1ms, compared to the 8-12ms typical on modern SATA drives.High-cost ($1,000-$50,000) solid state memories currently have random sustained external throughput up to 3 GB/s (TMS RamSan) and latency as low as 0.003 ms (Violin 1010) [4].
On laptop computers the performance shifts more in the favor of flash memory, laptop memory being priced relatively higher than that for desktop systems, and with many laptops using relatively slow 4200 rpm and 5400 rpm hard drives. Additionally, on a laptop, the ReadyBoost caching can reduce hard drive access, allowing the hard drive to spin down for increased battery life [5]. Additionally, because of the nature of the power management typically enabled during mobile use of a laptop it is a more power efficient way of increasing equipment productivity.
The performance of NAND flash caching (in the form of Intel's Turbo Memory technology) has also been called into question by some computer manufacturers [6].

[edit] Note

Flash drive dojo competes in Hawaii Ironman for 10th time

2008-01-25T20:00:00.000-08:00

Dear All,

I am taking a break from the chores at home and a busy business to participate in the upcoming Hawaii Ironman......as you can see by most recent training pictures I am carbing up and getting plenty of rest before the big event......

I have done this every year for the past 10 but each year have suffered a pulled groin or the heartbreak of psoraisis (if this is the right spelling let me know) ........this year I am really going to try and get off the starting line......

I did come fully equipped with my Flash Drive Direct MP4 and 4 Gb flash drive..........If I don't get off the starting line at least I will have a number of Bob Marley tunes to listen to.........hmmm....did I pack my Jimmy Buffet....?

Anyways ...........I will try and post while I am away.........then again............enjoy

News: SD Card doubles as Flash Drive eliminates card reader

2008-01-22T16:38:00.000-08:00

USB manufacturer Flash Drive Direct has released the first SD card that doubles as a USB flash drive, or vice versa. One end of the card has the connectors of a regular USB 2.0 interface while the other end has the same interface of a regular Secure Digital, making it compatible with many digital cameras and PDAs.

The Double Card is touted as the perfect storage for eliminating the need to bring along a SD card reader. Initially, the 1 GB version will wholesale for around 14$

Samsung unveils 32GB Flash-based 'HDD killer' for Flash Drives

2008-01-21T21:35:00.000-08:00

For those who still don't get the idea that Samsung is THE ONLY flash chip manufacturer to consider for their flash drives....have a gander at this

Samsung unveils 32GB Flash-based 'HDD killer'

Samsung has launched what it reckons its the world's first 32GB NAND Flash-based hard disk drive replacement unit. The company claimed the so-called "solid state disk" can access data three times faster than an HDD can and write files one-and-a-half times more quickly - though we don't know what HDD spec it was comparing its product to.
The SSD is a 2.5in form-factor product that operates at 5V and connects across a 66MHz Ultra DMA parallel ATA bus. Samsung said the unit consumes just five per cent of the energy it takes to run a hard drive.

Samsung launched the product in Taiwan, the better to attract the islands' numerous notebook manufacturers, who produce almost all of the world's mobile computers. Samsung is particularly keen to get its drive into laptops, which it believes will benefit most from the SSD's lower power consumption.

As the world's largest manufacturer of NAND Flash, Samsung wants to broaden the memory technology's appeal beyond MP3 players and memory cards. It has been working with Microsoft on the idea, and Windows Vista will support the use of NAND Flash caches to speed boot times. Intel recently unveiled 'Robson', an add-in card that uses a NAND Flash bank to cache operating system components to reduce start-up times and help cut battery consumption.

Samsung's SSD is seen more as an alternative to an HDD than something that operates alongside one, it seems. Samsung believes the SSD market will be worth $4.5bn by 2010, up from $540m this year.

Flash Drives advantages over other memory devices.

2008-01-21T21:14:00.000-08:00

Advantages of a Flash Drive.....

Flash drives are nearly impervious to the scratches and dust that were problematic for previous forms of portable storage, such as compact discs and floppy disks, and their durable solid-state design means they often survive casual abuse. This makes them ideal for transporting personal data or work files from one location to another, such as from home to school or office or for carrying around personal data that the user typically wants to access in a variety of places. The near-ubiquity of USB support on modern computers means that such a drive will work in most places.

Flash drives are also a relatively dense form of storage, where even the cheapest will store dozens of floppy disks worth of data. Many can hold more data than a CD (703[12] MB). Top of the line flash drives can store more data than a DVD.

The power consumption of a typical flash drive is very low, much lower than that of the common alternative, the portable hard disk, due to there being no moving parts inside a flash drive.

Portable hard disks, on the other hand, require several motors or actuators to rotate the disk platter, and move the read / write head. Consequently, the USB flash drive need not be as big, or heavy, allowing greater portability.

Flash drives implement the USB mass storage device class, meaning that most modern operating systems can read and write to flash drives without any additional device drivers. The flash drives present a simple block-structured logical unit to the host operating system, hiding the individual complex implementation details of the various underlying flash memory devices. The operating system can use whatever type of file system or block addressing scheme it wants. Some computers have the ability to boot up from flash drives.

Flash drives are much more tolerant of abuse than mechanical drives, but can still be damaged or have data corrupted by severe physical impacts. Improperly wired USB ports can also destroy the circuitry of a flash drive, a danger in home-built desktop PCs.

Some flash drives can retain their memory after being submerged in water even through a machine wash. Leaving the flash drive out to dry completely before allowing current to run through it has been known to result in a working drive with no future problems.

So there you have it..........keep on learning.......:)

Samsung introduces tiny 16 GB chip

2008-01-20T16:10:00.000-08:00

Samsungs new solid state drive comes in 2GB, 4GB, 8GB and 16GB sizes

The tiny Samsung chip hits 16GB, it is used by flash drive direct

At this year's CES, Samsung chips are all about mobility. Samsungs CPUs will be fuelling the latest flashdrives, desktops and laptops, while its Ultra Mobile Platform chips will be powering UMPCs, UMDs and MIDs.

Alongside its processor technology, Samsung has also officially announced its new solid state drive (SSD). Here is the first picture of it. As you can see, it's about the size of a US penny and uses NAND flash memory chips for storage.

Samsung says that the chip weighs 0.6g (lighter than the average water droplet, apparently) and is 400 times smaller than a traditional 1.8-inch HDD. And, of course, there are no moving parts.
The Samsung chip is capable of read speeds of 40MB/s and write speeds of 30MB/s.

The chip is Ideal for flash drives, smartphones (and the anticipated flood of mobile internet devices in 2008), NAND chips can be combined into 2GB, 4GB, 8GB or 16GB versions.

Who is Flash Drive Direct?

2008-01-20T16:01:00.000-08:00

Dear promotional products distributors distributors,

I really wish I hadn't chosen http://www.flashdrivedirect.com/ for our name when we chose it last year. At first, lot of people were concerned that we sold direct to the end user etc. http://www.flashdrivedirect.com/ 's mantra is decidely the opposite.

We go out of our way to state loud and clear on our site and literature we DO NOT sell direct. We have been long time members (in other business's) of the PPAI (15 years) and really like what PPAI is all about. We value the supply chain ethics and work hard at what we do.Our offering is a little different from the other flash drive suppliers and is geared to true distributors needs.

1) http://www.flashdrivedirect.com/ sells over 150 styles...each style is the same price at each level of memory.

2) Each price includes eveything...Logo (3 colors 2 placements....this includes laser and screening...we don't pad print as it rubs off), lanyard, giftbox, all shipping, paperwork etc...in fact the ONLY charges other than the stated price is a $75 net art set up on orders under 500 pieces and the courier from LA or Seattle to your door.......ie 30 cents a piece to get 100 units from Seattle to New York City. Simple.......

3) We only use Samsung and Hynix componentsThe other thing is we encourage fun........in fact we like our customers...we talk to them (not just email)...we make connections and we look to be part of your world........We hope you take the time to check us out. Thanks Flash Drive Direct 604-272-8809 PPAI 275584 UPIC LOYAL

Flash Drive Direct gets RoHS and Wee compliancy

2008-01-20T15:54:00.000-08:00

USB Digital Frames and Flash Drive Direct to be the first manufacturer to the promotional products industry to completely meet or exceed ROHS compliancy.

USB Digital Frames and Flash Drive Direct to be the first manufacturer to the promotional products industry to completely meet or exceed ROHS compliancy.“ The corporate and promotional products industry is awash in poisonous junk” states John Graham, head of USB Digital Frames and Flash Drive Direct. “ It is a very large (16 billion dollars USD) almost unseen and totally unregulated industry that sells the corporate world everything from soup to nuts with a corporate branding (logo) on it. Until very recently there were few companies willing to spend the extra money to ensure that their products were not harming the environment.

We decided to do something about it.”That something was to bring their standards up to both ROHS compliancy and to WEEE standard for both their Flash Drive line ( Flash Drive Direct) and their digital frame division (USB Digital Frames). USB Digital Frames and Flash Drive Direct are now fully compliant with their products and vertically integrated only with WEEE certified plants.

What is ROHS and WEEE ROHS is the Directive on the Restriction of the Use of Certain Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment 2002/95/EC (commonly referred to as the Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive or RoHS) which was adopted in February 2003 by the EU (European Union).

The RoHS directive took effect on 1 July 2006, and is required to be enforced and become law throughout the EU. This directive restricts the use of six hazardous materials in the manufacture of various types of electronic and electrical equipment. It is closely linked with the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive (WEEE) 2002/96/EC which sets collection, recycling and recovery targets for electrical goods and is part of a legislative initiative to solve the problem of huge amounts of toxic e-waste.

How to Sell Flash Drives to the Promotional Marketplace.

2008-01-20T15:43:00.000-08:00

How to Sell Flash Drives to the Promotional Marketplace.

Please don’t take this as an insult to your sales skills or a reflection of my ability to be right 98% of the time. Its just that I have worked both sides of the business and with so many things to sell, it always took me while to learn how to sell something new.

I remember when Pima cotton first came out, I described it as a fabrication designed by Puma and this was the wicking version. Doh!So I figured a sharing a few basics bits of knowledge about selling any Flash Drive (especially our Flash Drive Direct drives) wouldn’t hurt.......

1) What is a flash drive: A flash drive is a memory device for storing data. This includes, files, word docs, pictures, video. ANYTHING that can go on a computer can go on a flash drive.

2) It has NO MOVING parts: Beauty eh? No moving parts means no break downs.....no blue screen of death. Your PC and Mac has a Hard Drive which spins around at about a jillion revolutions per minute and has an arm (just like a turntable arm) that retrieves the data. Compare the 2....1) never breaks down......The other) will break down...it just depends on when.

3) A flash drive has NAND Flash memory? Who cares! To sell it you don’t need to know this....what you need to know is that there are 2 chips in each drive.....a)the memory chip and b) controller chip. What is important to know is that the chips are THE BEST. The only reliable mass produced chips are made by SAMSUNG and HYNIX. All of our drives are made from these chips. If you buy a drive that is not made with Samsung or Hynix you are buying crap. Simple!

4) Tier 1, USB 2.0, recycled memory, Tier 1, Windows Vista and MAC ready....what does this mean and why you should care?Simply put....a reliable quality flash drive MUST have USB 2.0 (this is a faster speedier chip) Tier 1 (means it is professional grade) Windows Vista and Mac ready...(This means the drive will run with these operating systems.....if it doesn’t have this designation you may have problems) Recycled/re-used/Tier 2 Memory: Personally I don’t know ( or want to know) any supplier who will tell you they sell this. Why? Because it is crap.....It will fail and no one will tell you....”Buy mine...its junk”.

So why do you need to worry about this? Call it what you will.... recycled memory, whatever.... it is basically “factory seconds” that didn’t make the Quality Control standards. They are often sold on a “Gray Market”. So how do you know? 1) Ask...2) The Price....Chip prices are commodity driven and prices go up and down....all reputable flash drive makers (such as us) price the wholesale according to the chip prices that day. If you are buying a 100 pieces of a 1GB for $10-12 dollars (as I write this) then it is likely you have Tier 1 USB 2.0 Samsung/Hynix chips......If someone says you can have it for $5 ......walk away, it is probably junk.

The emotional sell, the reasons why your clients should buy Flash Drives?

Now that we have all of the geeky techy junk out of the way...trust me I could have gone on and on...and on.......you don’t sell on technical issues do you...(its just a good thing to know)?.....you sell on emotion...you must present a good reason for someone to buy what you have to sell.........fortunately Flash Drives actually have some great legit reasons for corporations to buy them.....here are just a few

.1) They can be reused up to a million times: (yes someone actually counted it) this means that their logo will be seen forever! You can’t say that about Bang Sticks.

2) They are VERY USEFUL: They can hold 1000’s of files so they can be transferred to another computer, act as a back-up for safety, put their powerpoints and other presentations on it, put pictures, music files and just about anything else from your computer on it.

3) They are an EXCELLENT business tool: Not only can they do what’s descrived above, they can do a number of other things. PRELOADS, this is when files, presentations and more can be loaded onto the drive by the supplier. This way when the drives are given away/sold the recipient will have a fully loaded presentation. These are perfect for tradeshows, corporate identity building, fund raising, team building and more....MANUALS, BUSINESS REPORTS and more........forget about the expense, time and ecological bad karma when a corporation prints a 100 page report on business. Face facts:......With a business report, the summary gets skimmed over and then....into the circular file it goes. Flash drives help save the ecology.........when their initial use is no longer valid the user just erases the files and uses it to store their Captain and Tenille MP 3’s. Simple.

4) Bigger is Better: DO NOT SELL 64 MB, 128 MB or 256 MB Flash drives.....they are too small. They are not proportionately cheaper by a long shot and the people who recieve them have no use for them. They will chuck them in a drawer. If you want to give your client something they will be happy with and that you can be proud to sell......sell them a 1 GB or higher.....they are a great deal....big enough to hold lots of information and most importantly....people will use them. That’s the basics......there are always lots of new twists and turns with this technology....new uses and new venues for sales....but I hope the above gives you a small bit of knowledge to help you feel more comfortable about selling flash drives.ThanksIf we can be of help in any way...visit us at http://www.flashdrivedirect.com/ or email me at jg@flashdrivedirect.com

We have a new division of digital picture frames

2008-01-20T15:39:00.000-08:00

Dear All,

I hope you had are having a good time in Vegas....this is the first year I have not been in a long time.....I am also not sleep deprived...so maybe its a good thing.....

We have just launched a new company USB Digital Frames We are taking a decidely simple approach to what is a confusing market place. We are doing this by offering the following

1) Only Panasonic LCD panels.......these are the best panels offering a clear, strong high resolution.

2) Simple pricing....the price includes up to a 3 color logo, in most suppliers models the buyer is required to buy extra memory.......we include it..! A 512 MB SD card comes included in the price with every frame that requires it.

3) These are the same frames and components that the top retail brands use. Yet the price is very competitive for the corporate marketplace.4) We will help you to learn about how frames work and how to sell them and what markets are the best "Slow Fat Rabbits"I hope you take a chance to check it out and drop by to see us....Thanks

John Graham