Okay, this has to be the most bizarre corporate competition we’ve seen. Memory manufacturer Kingston is putting out a call for “both amateur and professional character designers to create the prefect spokesperson for HyperX memory modules”. That’s right, they’re asking people to draw, paint or computer-generate the perfect woman to sell memory modules. The top prize is US$5000 in cash and US$300 worth of Kingston products. [Kingston]
USB thumb drives stopped being cool about 10 years ago, but what happens when you stick a microSD card reader on board? It gets cool again, that’s what. Kingston’s DataTraveler Micro does just that, and even holds up to 4GB of onboard memory inside the thumbdrive itself. The reader can read not only microSD cards, but microSDHC and Memory Stick Micro (M2). Prices are approx. $21, $US31 and $46 for the 1, 2 and 4GB models respectively. [Kingston]
The Gadget: Kingston’s 19-in-1 card reader that not only handles the standard SD, CF, MS and MMC cards, there’s a native slot for microSD and MMCmicro as well. What this means is you won’t need a separate > adaptor to fit your microSD cards into before docking—fantastic, since lots of phones now use these tiny arse cards in order to save physical space (but sacrifice storage space).
The Price: $US17
The Verdict: It works.
[Kingston]
It seems almost all the new cellphones we see have switched over to using the tiny microSD cards for external storage, which means in order to transfer up some data you’re going to have to carry around both a microSD to SD adapter and a standard card reader. What a pain. With Kingston’s microSD Card Reader bundles, all you have to carry is the tiny microSD USB adapter. What could be easier?
The main problem we’ve had with card readers over the years isn’t their performance—although the really cheap ones are quite lousy—but their size. Kingston’s solved that problem by making their MobileLite in the shape of a USB stick, which gives lets you easily take the thing around in your pocket or on your keychain.
The thing ships by itself for $8.99 or with 1GB SD, 2GB SD, or a 1GB microSD card for $22.99, $34.99 and $23.99 respectively. So when you’re not using this as memory for your camera, you can use this as a standard USB flash drive. Too bad being small and convenient is only good for these things, or else our Midget Butler business venture would have taken off like hotcakes. – Jason Chen
