thumb drives
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DIY Indestructible Thumb Drive
3:00AM Adam Pash | We love carrying handy little thumb drives everywhere we go, but at times they can be delicate little fellows. Blogger Dmitry Brant—having lost too many thumb drives to his washing machine—set out to make his thumb drive impervious to harm. More »
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VLC Portable 1.0 Puts Multi-Format Playing On Thumb Drives
1:00AM Kevin Purdy | Windows: If you’re eager to try out VLC 1.0’s new features, or find yourself at a lack for decent media players at others’ computers, PortableApps has bundled VLC’s latest release in USB-drive-friendly form. More »
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CodySafe Manages Your Thumb Drive’s Apps And Data
10:30AM Azadeh Ensha | Windows only: If you’re a fan of portable thumb drive applications like previously mentioned PortableApps.com Suite, free application CodySafe brings similar portable computing to your thumb drive. More »
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OpenOffice.org Portable 3.0 Ready For Your Thumb Drive
10:00PM Kevin Purdy | Windows only: OpenOffice.org 3, the latest version of the free, open-source office suite, has gotten a full thumb drive packaging by the PortableApps.com team. That’s great news for anyone working while travelling, or who wants to test out the features and improvements of the 3.0 release without a full installation on their system. This OpenOffice version has also been rolled into the full PortableApp suite, a customizable, menu-launched package of nifty tools for your USB drive. OpenOffice.org Portable 3.0 is a free downoad for any thumb drive, but requires a Windows system (or Linux system with WINE) to run. It doesn’t appear to require Java on the host machine. OpenOffice.org Portable 3.0 [PortableApps.com] More »
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Flash Drive Reminder Prevents Leaving Your Thumb Drive Behind
10:00PM Kevin Purdy | USB Drives (for Windows systems): If you’re the type who brings their USB flash-memory drive everywhere you go, yet often has to backtrack all the places you’ve been to find it, Flash Drive Reminder is definitely worth the download. The tiny app, and its auto-starting accompanying file, sit on your drive and activate whenever you’ve plugged it into a Windows system. You’ll get a pop-up screen asking you to keep the Reminder app running during your session, and it takes up very little memory. When you go to log off or shut down your session, the reminder pops back up, reminding you to yank out your drive. That’s about it, though there is a “quiet” version that doesn’t present the pop-up window when you first plug in. Flash Drive Reminder is a free download, works on any USB drive (but only activates on Windows systems). If you’ve got a better system for remembering your drive, software or physical, let’s hear it in the comments. Flash Drive Reminder [via Windows Guides] More »
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Eraser Portable Securely Wipes Data From Your Thumb Drive
7:00AM Adam Pash | Windows only: Free application Eraser Portable puts Eraser —the popular open-source secure file deletion tool—on your thumb drive for secure file deletion on the go. Like the original, Eraser Portable can wipe any hard drive, optical media, files, folders, encrypted data, the Recycle Bin, and pretty much any other data you want to kill. It may not be an app you use every day, but it’s a great utility to throw on your thumb drive, iPod, or other portable device for those times you do need a quick, secure delete. Eraser Portable [PortableApps.com via MakeUseOf] More »
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Battle Of The Thumb Drive Linux Systems
9:00PM Kevin Purdy | These days, it only takes an increasingly-cheap USB thumb drive and a program like UNetbootin to create a portable Linux desktop you can run on any computer that can boot from a USB port. But check out the list of distributions UNetbootin can download and install—it’s huge, and the names don’t tell you much about which distro is best for on-the-go computing. Today we’re detailing four no-install distributions—Damn Small Linux, Puppy Linux, Xubuntu, and Fedora—and helping you decide which might work for that spare thumb drive you’ve got lying around, or as just a part of your multi-gig monster stick. Read on for a four-way faceoff of bootable Linux systems. More »
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Create A Secret Data Stash With A Fake Phonejack
1:00AM Lifehacker US Edition | While not as grandiose as having your own secret bookshelf door, constructing a hidden USB data stash won’t take a whole weekend and involve a table saw. At the DIY website Instructables there is a step by step tutorial on hiding your data behind a phone jack plate. By wiring a USB cord to the phone plate and making a USB cord with a phone jack terminal at one end, you’ll be able to access your secret data stash. Hidden USB Storage [Instructables] More »
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