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

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

Print article
Refer to a friend
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

complete upto date flash drive news

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)
¼/DIV>
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 ...
¼/DIV>
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”. ...
¼/strong>
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

¼/DIV>
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

¼/DIV>
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

¼/DIV>
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

¼/DIV>
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

¼/DIV>
¼/DIV>
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

¼/DIV>
10)
¼/DIV>
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

¼/DIV>


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

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.

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

Flash Drive Direct’s new NAND Flash technology uses less than 1% of the energy as conventional CD
Home | Release Features | Success Stories | Release Tips | Journal | FAQ | Search | Submit Release | Members' Area
News Archive > 2008 > Feb > 24

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?

SmartBlast and Flash Drive Direct

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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 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

Samsung and Flash Drive Direct Connect. The secret revealed

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.

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.

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...:)

Windows Ready boost..what is 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

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

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

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.
Now on News.com
Week in review: Yahoo snubs Microsoft Newsmaker: Rockets, sports cars, and solar power Crave: It's the gear you've gotta see Extra: Nanoscanning: We can see atoms now
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.

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.