Creative uses of USB memory keys?

I recently got a Lexar 512Mb Jump Drive (AKA memory key, etc.) and am

wondering what, besides the obvious, people are doing with these

devices.

 

Our handiest use so far is our daughter transporting HTML files and

photo images back and forth to school where she is taking a Web

design course.

 

What other ways are people using these amazing little things?

They are an improvement to the time honored "sneaker-net" technique. I also use them for transporting the occasional file from work to home & back. And several times I have used them to drag PowerPoint type presentations as well as electronic slide shows to meetings. As long as the destination has the necessary hardware they work quite well.

 

When I first started using them, I ran into quite a few people that had no idea what they were and sometimes the hardware didn't know either. Both situations seem to have all but disappeared.

I'm not sure what /isn't/ obvious. It's to transfer files. Any files. Music, Movies, Images, Web Pages, Presentations, etc etc.

 

Fast, easy, small, reusable, no cords! What's not to love? :)

A bootable operating system - not original or creative, but a bit more technical than only storing files. If you needed to you could borrow someone else's computer and boot up with your own OS if you needed some specific task done.

According to an actor friend, some entertainment industry people are putting resumes, headshots, and their "reel" on them with their contact info imprinted on the case and giving them away at parties and meetings.

 

Given the cost differential between keys and paper, one would have to be fairly selective about who they were given to tho'. Further, if I got one I'd be pretty paranoid about executing any exe from someone else's gadget.

Here my 200Mhz Pentium Pros have USB ports; and are from 1996. The fobs/jumb drives are handy to transfer data; when a few odd old computers are not LANed together yet. The flash drives are handy to load drivers etc. With Win98se many require a driver for the usb flash device to work; and will "blue screen" in the eject sequence is done wrong. With win2000 and Xp; the eject procedure is less of a hassle; more idiot proof. I have about 4 flash USB drives; on XP box tends not to like them; but the win2000 boxes all work fine; pluse all the win98se boxes too. With a long 20 to 40meg exe file; several of my flash drives are abit flakey; like a check sum or error correction problem. For smaller files ; they work perfect; for larger files; they are abit dicey. This "large file" problem still appears after formating the jump drive again. With some gruop 4 type TIFF's; our XP box pukes when it tries to transfer the files; with win98se; all is well. With a CD; floppy; zip drive; or LAN transfer; there is no problem ever.

I have an encrypted disk image on my key and on that encrypted disk image is my

authentication software in an encrypted file (usernames, passwords, etc.). So, all I need to

remember is two passwords to unlock the encrypted disk image and authentication

software, and then the authentication software runs in the background and auto-fills

dialog boxes for me. That way I can have a different password for every single account I

have and never have to worry about forgetting a password again! The encrypted disk

image then gets backed up to DVD during my weekly rotation.

 

Other tidbits on the key are PGP and GPG encryption keys and software, Secure Shell

encryption clients for all operating systems, all my IPTC metadata profiles, often-used

utilities (Photo Mechanic, etc.), and exported Photoshop actions for manipulating images.

Many people are writing up ways to set up thumb drives to store application settings (profile), web browser settings, bookmarks, etc, email and email client settings...

 

That way, people can login somewhere new, connect the thumb drive, and start up a browser or email program with all their settings and email data already in place. Kind of neat.

 

Search around if you are interested. I've seen sites with instructions on how to do this for firefox, thunderbird (email), outlook, etc.