What Will They Think Of Next?: Bring Back the Mix Tape

Anyone who grew up in the '80s or early '90s will have given a girlfriend/boyfriend, potential love interest, friend, or family member that popular gift of a "mixed tape". Yes, before the CD, and then the downloadable MP3 format became popular, the cassette tape was king. People popped them into this cool device called a Walkman, listened to tunes blasting from a square-shaped player hoisted atop their shoulder, and flipped them from side A to side B to get a whole new listing of songs (accessed only by a tedious manual fast forward/rewind process: no song skip with these babies!) Today, about two decades later, a company called fi-hi aims to bring this format back, but with a modern twist.

Called the usB-Side Mix'D Tape, the device is designed to look exactly like a cassette tape. But there's a secret: it's actually a USB flash drive, with a connector that flip-outs from its side. Then, just connect it to your PC and load up all your digital files, including music, as well as documents, videos, or images onto the gadget's 512 MB of internal memory. Now you have a nostalgic "mixed tape" for your love; and you can even add your own personal touch via the two included labels.

Aside from the mixed tape, the device can obviously also be used for sharing other data, or for transferring files back and forth. The inconspicious tapes are also great for storing or backing up sensitive data. A thief might grab USB drives, CDs, and your PC, but whose going to swipe your old tapes and 8-tracks?

Business persons might also find good use for these stand-out flash drives. They can contain promotional materials for distribution (in the same way many companies already use standard-designed USB keys); press kits, or flyers.

The "tapes" work with either PC or Mac, and come with their own little gift box for US$15 ea. at http://www.fi-hi.com/. I must say it's a pretty cool idea, and will certainly be a conversation-starter for anyone who receives them. But buyer beware: in case you didn't realize, they won't actually play in old cassette players!

USB Standard Speeds Ahead

If you thought the USB 2.0 standard was pretty fast, hold on to your horses. USB 3.0 is in the works, promising to offer ten-times the bandwidth throughput of the current USB 2.0 standard. This means that if it now takes five-minutes to transfer tunes from your PC to your MP3 player, you'd be able to perform that same task in just about half-a-minute!

We likely won't see a wealth of new products that are compatible with USB 3.0 for another few years, but it's interesting to note how quickly (literally) technology is advancing.

Speeds are getting faster, hard drives getting larger, and devices are performing more functions than ever; not to mention that digital content is truly in abundance these days. I know people who have separate notebooks or hard drives just to house their digital tunes. I'm no exception: my photo storage Website has hundreds and hundreds of digital photos spanning the past several years, from vacations, to milestone events with family and friends.

The average person is liable to want to transfer these massive amounts of content back and forth amongst various devices: a new MP3 player, a back-up copy for a friend, and so on. Quick speeds are certainly important now, but being able to speed up the transfer process will become increasingly important as hard drive capacity and digital content availability continues on its path of consistent and rapid growth.