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Stop Poking Your Finger at the Screen, Use the Stylus USB Flash Drive

Perfect Tool for a Tablet

The world of personal computing has turned to tablets. It’s easy to see the reason why; they are powerful, portable, and ready to compute as fast as you can push the button to turn it on.

When the first highly usable tablet was introduced (i.e. the iPad), there has been wide skepticism about its usefulness and capability. Now, the tablets are being adopted by schools as a replacement for books and paper assignments.

In the old wold of books and paper, it has been a common practice to use a pen or a pencil to mark paper in a quest of making a mark on the world. The introduction of higher level of technology, surprisingly, has devolved us to using fingers to smear the screen with sweat and pixels. Even though a civilized hand held device exists, known as a stylus, most of us opt for using the finger. It’s simply easier to use one of our appendages rather than finding a small-single-function tool in the crevices of a purse, pocket, or some other obscure opening.

The mystery behind disappearance of small objects such as USB flash drives, Styli, microfilm, and other less interesting items may never be known; however making a device more useful is another matter. Maybe if you use it more often, you’ll remember where you last left it.

Behold. The USB flash drive and a Stylus in one!

Stylus USB Flash Drive Opened Front Viewe
Stylus with Flash Drive build in. It’s 2.75 inches in length.

The Stylus is very compact at only 2.75 inches in length. The soft rubberized point is at about 0.25 inches in width. It’s easy to slide the USB flash drive connector out for a fast connection to the Surface tablet or any other USB compatible device.

Capacitive Technology at Your Fingertips

This particular stylus is designed to be used on capacitive screens found in iPads, Surface tablets, Smartphones, and other gadgets with modern screens. While it may work with resistive (older screen technology) screens, it would not be recommended due to the soft rubberized tip.

The previous photo shows an all plastic case. The large plastic surface area allows for durable silk-screen printing of logos and text. However, If you are not familiar with the capacitive technology, all plastic case presents a problem. In order for the Stylus to work without any batteries, a conductor, such as your finger, must be utilized so that the screen recognizes it as input. The problem is easily solved with stylish conductive ridges on the back side of the Stylus.

Conductive metallic ridges enable the capacitive Stylus to work on your touch screen device
Conductive metallic ridges enable the capacitive Stylus to work on your touch screen device

When your finger is placed over the ridges on the Stylus, it’s enabled to work on your touch screen device. It’s light, ergonomic, and precise due to the 0.25 inch tip. Also, the area above the ridges can be silk-screened with your logo or text in addition to the larger area on the front of the Stylus.

Make the Stylus Yours

I typically prefer and tend to recommend multifunction USB flash drives. Such items as USB Lanyards, Wristbands, Pens, and other multifunction drives are a much better value from the promotional as well as practical point of view. The more functionality the device has, the more chance it has to be used, and therefore seen with your brand or company logo.

The Stylus is a perfect blend of modern functionality. It’s a writing tool for modern tablets, and compact storage for up to 16GB worth of data. It’s beautifully designed and has plenty of space for branding on the front as well as the back.

Make the Stylus yours by choosing your color, capacity, and packaging options (if needed). We’ll take care of silk-screening your brand name or company logo on the Stylus as well as pre-loading the USB flash drive for you.

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USB Flash Drive For Your Wallet

A Credit Card or a Business Card?

There is no lack of imagination in the creative circles of the flash drive designers. The shapes of the drives range from the simple rectangles, keys, pens, and bracelets to animals, bottles, severed thumbs and sex toys. Thus, it is a surprise that the simple looking card shape is difficult to categorize.

Due to the obvious limitation of not possessing a magnetic strip or any other identifying information regularly found on a typical credit card, we initially named it a business card. Logically, one can imprint the company information on the card and add data that may be helpful in communicating the company’s products and services. It’s a common sense replacement for the business card.

We don’t always use logic in the same way; some see a plastic rectangle resembling the shape and feel of the credit card, and call it as such – a credit card drive.

It’s all about the design

Call it what you like, a credit card or a business card; it all boils down to several simple designs.

I tend to prefer the flip type design above others. The card on the photos has a flip connector. It’s easy to connect into a USB port due to a sufficiently long USB plug that is hinged closely to the edge. It’s also easy to store in the wallet due to the extra slim profile.

There are generally 3 different types of the USB card drive designs. The rotating connector, the sliding connector, and the flip connector type.

  • The Rotating connector is our Card V2 drive made of plastic. The USB connector rotates out for plug-in and rotates back in for storage.
  • The Sliding connector is our Metal Card drive. The USB connector slides out for plug-in and slides back in for storage. It’s our only card that is available in aluminum or stainless steel.
  • The Flip connector is our Card V1 drive made of plastic. The USB connector flips out for plug-in and inserted into the cavity into the card for storage.
Long USB connector of the Card V1

Comparison against other card styles

The flip connector style has certain advantages over the other connector types.

Advantages of the Flip style connector card

  1. The card is slightly thinner. The reason it can be thinner is the small cavity within the card that stores the USB connector. The card is thin with the exception of a slightly thicker connector storage area. This is an advantage when you want to store the card in the trifold wallet. It fits just as easily as a credit card.
  2. As already mentioned, the USB connector is longer than on the other styles, thus is an advantage when it needs to be plugged into the USB port.

Disadvantages of the Flip style connector card

  1. Since the USB connector on the card is stored in the cavity, it is slightly harder to detach it from the card. There is only about a half of an inch of leverage on the back of the card to flip the connector out.
The ridged piece of the connector is visible on the back. About one half of an inch; it’s the minimum needed to flip the connector out of the card.

Conclusion

It really does not matter what you call it – a USB credit card flash drive or a USB business card flash drive. What is important is the high portability of the drive due to its slim shape, the ease of use with slim USB connectors, and very large imprint area for your logos and text.

I’m leaning towards the flip style card because of its longer connector and slimmer profile. One point gets deducted for the difficulty in flipping the USB connector from the card. Highly recommended: 4/5 points.

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Slap me! These USB Wristbands are Impressive!

Slap and Snap

It’s only natural to call these new USB Wristbands – Slap and Snap! Even though it sounds cheesy, and possibly risque, these wristbands borrow on the invention of the slap wristbands all the way from the 80s and the 90s.

So What?

These bands are practical, functional, hold a ton of data (yes a ton – that’s the technical term for data capacity), and are incredibly easy to put on. Unlike the slap wristbands of the 80’s, it does not come in the leopard print. These are soft and durable silicone rubber, and they have USB flash storage for up to 16GBs. You could only dream of owning one of these in the 90’s.

The Slap Wristband colapses into a single dimension spiral; however can be formed relatively easily into a spring
These 2 Slap Wristbands have been formed to resemble springs. Naturally, they form a tight 2D spiral once released. Notice the buckle that hides the USB drive. The small cap protects the USB connector.

How do they work, again?

The idea behind the slap wristbands is quite simple. A thin piece of curved metal strip is the core of the wristband. When the wristband is in its open state, it is similar to holding shape as does the metal tape measure. However, unlike the tape measure, when the metal piece snaps, the wristband starts to curl (i.e. form into a spiral). So if you decide to slap the wristband on your wrist or ankle, it will snap and then curl around to contour your shape.

Slap USB Wristband snaps and countours your hand
This band has been snapped around an imaginary wrist. In reality, a small piece of double-sided tape is barely holding the wristband in the present shape, before it compresses into a tight spiral

The Super Band

Your common USB wristband needs to be manually closed by pressing the USB connector against the female connector on the other side. Dexterity is required to some degree. Even with the leather wristband that has a magnetic closure to help with connecting the ends; it is still not incredibly easy.

With the slap USB wristband, it’s as easy as Slap and Snap! (Sounds like infomercial talk, ouch!) Infomercial or not; the ease of use of this wristband is truly simple. We’ve wrote about usability and adaptation of the promotional products in previous posts; the simplicity of putting this wristband on and its large imprint area makes this a superior promotional/personalized product.

Charged with potential energy, this Slap USB Wristband is ready for action
In this state, the wristband is straight, and it holds its shape before releasing its potential energy, similarly to a compressed spring

Kids and Adult Sizes

Occasionally, we are asked for different sizes of the USB Wristbands. While it is possible to make them in any size, most kids or youth sizes have to be custom made. With the slap wristband, there is obviously no need to worry about the sizing issue. The wristband will contour to any size wrist or ankle.

Conclusion

It’s easy to see that I’m impressed with these wristbands. Interestingly, I’ve been waiting for sometime before the slap wristbands became available with the USB flash drive. It’s only a natural extension for already a great product.

The wristband material is soft silicone and is comfortable on the wrist; it fits any size with ease, there is a great surface area for logos and/or text, and it’s a flash drive! The Slap USB Wristband is a fantastic product; I recommend it – 5/5 stars.