Weirdest flash drive contest

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.

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

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 price drop spurring design innovation.

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™.

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.

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

Protein from bugs to make 50,000 GB flash drive

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.

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

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."

The weirdest looking flash drives

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...:)