The Apogee Astro Drive Series A101 from Chaintech is apparently the world’s smallest USB 3.0 drive [USB 3.0]

USB 3.0 is finally getting some traction in the market place as more products are announced from more manufacturers. Chaintech just intro’d its first USB 3.0 drive and slapped the notorious “world’s smallest” label on it, which is probably true although a bit disingenuous as there’s only about three USB 3.0 flash drives available right now.

Still, the Astro DRive Series A101 isn’t a slouch. The drive can see read/write speeds of 186MB/s and 130MB/s, respectively. That’s quite a bit faster than the average 30/20 that USB 2.0 generally sees and slightly higher than the speeds I’ve seen on USB 3.0 hard drives.

The series will initially be available in three storage sizes: 32GB, 64GB, and 125GB. No word on when they will be available or how much they’ll sell for, though. Hopefully for the sake of the marketers, the drives will be released soon than later as the World’s Smallest title will likely be stripped away before too long.
[CrunchGear]

China Using Freebie Flash Drives to Spy on Britain [Espionage]

UK security agency MI5 has issued a warning regarding freebie flash drives and cameras. Apparently Chinese spies are handing them out to UK businessmen in hopes of infecting their computers with trojans and gaining access to corporate secrets.

Of course old-fashioned methods—sex and money—are still being used as well, but it seems that few people expect an innocent gadget gift to contain danger in the form of a trojan or malware. After all, why else would a security agency's 14-page report be focusing on this espionage approach more than it did on other tricks?

I guess it's time for me to become a bit more paranoid about the pile of flash drives I picked up at CES.
[Gizmodo via Times Online via IEEE]

Note: Pictured flash drive is not a known spy and belongs to Gadget_Guru

The PQI Cool Drive U366 USB 3.0 flash drive can transfer files at 5Gbps

Get ready for the USB 3.0 flash drive enslaught. PQI has launched its first salvo and it looks mighty strong. The Cool Drive U366 comes equipped with a 64GB capacity and speeds up to 5Gbps. That’s ten times faster than USB 2.0, kiddies. Previously the only way to get that type of speed on a portable drive is to opt for an eSATA flash drive — if you can find one — and even then, most aren’t as fast as this drive from PQI.
Don’t worry if your rig isn’t USB 3.0 friendly yet, the interface is backwards compatible with USB 2.0. The drive will be available in 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB sizes, but the company hasn’t announced the release date or MSRPs just yet. You can bet though that it will cost a tad more than the average Newegg-special flash drive.


Cool Drive U366 specification:

• Interface: USB 3.0 (backwards compatible with USB 2.0)
• Transfer rate: Read up to 97MB/sec
• Capacity: 16GB / 32GB / 64GB
• Dimension: 87 x 22 x12 mm

[CrunchGear]

Lockface: USB drive that uses face recognition to verify users [Face Recognition]

A Japanese company called Futen (they don’t have a website) is selling a USB flash drive that uses face recognition technology to check the identity of users. Needless to say, the so-called Lockface only works with your computer’s web cam.

The first thing to do is to register a number of pictures of your face. After that, the Lockface verifies your face every time you need to access data on it (the verification process takes about a second). The USB drive doesn’t require extra software to be downloaded or installed.

Alternatively, you can also use a password, completely ignoring the face recognition function of the device. It uses 256-bit AES to encrypt the data. Futen says the device has an error rate of about 2% (it verifies the “wrong” person in 1.91% of cases and won’t verify the right person in 1.98% of cases).

The first version will hold 4GB of memory and is sized at 22×4×55mm. The Lockface costs $110 in Japan (where it’s already on the market). Futen is planning to bring models holding more memory in the near future.

I suggest you contact the Japan Trend Shop, Geek Stuff 4 U or Rinkya in case you live outside Japan and you’re interested in getting one.

[CrunchGear via Excite News (JP)]