If you’re dedicated to smoking or camping (or smoking while camping), then there’s a good chance you’ve purchased a nice refillable metal lighter in the past. But the past is the past and sooner or later you’ll need to step into the future (which, coincidentally, will almost immediately become the past). Whatever happens, please take with you the knowledge that there exists a refillable metal lighter that doubles as an 8GB flash drive.
Look at these big-head Star Wars USB flash drives! They’re adorable. Ewoks were always adorable, and C-3PO had a certain lovable charm but now even Darth Vader’s getting in on the fun. He’ll lull you into a false sense of security and then do that thing where he chokes you from across the room without actually touching you.
These little Super Talent drives are truly small – a little longer than a quarter is wide, and about about 75¢ tall. But the buggers have just been expanded to hold 32GB of data, and they won’t get hurt by water to boot! My Corsair Survivor is practically waterproof as well, but these Super Talent ones are smaller and cheaper.
No word on whether they’re velociraptor-resistant.
Please witness an 8GB flash drive in the form of a hamburger. It costs about $28, looks delicious, and is available from Chinavasion. Pretty straightforward so far, no?

Who doesn’t love the Buffalo Thumbkey Flash Drives? They are so small that they fit snuggly into a USB port with only a little stub sticking out. They’re great. Well, the flash drives just got better now that Buffalo is producing these in 16GB sizes. They should be the perfect companion for a netbook, UMPC, or even a standard notebook. We just wish they wouldn’t have a $136 price tag when they launch at the end of the month.
Take your Star Trek fandom to the next level with these custom made Star Trek PEZ…USB drives. You know you want them. Your two friends would be so jealous. 2GB drive for only $25.
Behold a USB flash drive that also doubles as a simple MP3 player. You supply your own microSD card, actually, so maybe think of this as a $16 memory-less MP3 player that doubles as a USB flash drive.
Got a DIY itche like I do? Need some inspiration? You may wanna check out these 35 creative USB flash drives for some creative juice. Some can be constructed with nothing more than a Dremel and super glue.

Transformers! There is more than meets the eye. Flash drives in disguise. Transformers.
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Some geeks are extremely obsessed with LEGO. You know who you are. We’re not showing these homemade LEGO flash drives for you. Oh no, we’re not supporting your addiction. This post is for the rest of us who enjoy a well-built LEGO creation, but don’t lose girlfriends over the damn blocks.

SanDisk announced today that they are creating a USB thumb drive based backup system, where you essentially plug the drive into your computer, and then push the button. The drive will then magically back up your files using their new software. Sounds like a good option for mom and dad… or baby.

USB 2.0 was great a few years ago when flash drives were measured in megabytes but now that they are reaching double-digit gigabytes, the interface can be a tad slow. OCZ understands that and hooked its latest flash drive up with eSATA for the main interface. Thanks to eSATA, the Throttle can read at 90MB per second and write at 30MB. That speed is fast enough to playback HD material, according to OCZ. Just so you know, there is a mini-USB interface for fallback situations. The Throttle will come in 8GB, 16GB, and 32BG sizes for a yet to be announced priced.

The problem with USB flash drives is the damn cover. It’s impossible not to lose and the slider covers seem so janky but this design solves everything. Just look at it. Brilliant! The silicon cover naturally expands and covers the male plug when it’s not in the computer. To bad it’s just a concept so until it hits the market, I’ll stick with my wooden thumb drives.

Over on Etsy.com’s handmade marketplace, you’ll find a USB flash drive of Han Solo frozen in Carbonite. And, yes, it’s sold out. But since everything on Etsy is sold directly by the creators, there’s a good chance that we might see another slow rollout of these handmade drives. When they were in stock, the 1GB Han drives sold for $25.

Han Solo Carbonite USB Flash Drive [Etsy via SlipperyBrick/SlashGear]

The military, in an effort to stop the spread of a destructive worm, has banned the use of flash drives, CDs and other media by its personnel. The ban applies to computers connected two Department of Defense networks, the non-secure NIPRNet and the secure SIPRNet.
The worm, Agent.biz, is spread by the use of flash drives and the like. Once a computer has been infected, the worm fetches code from some Evil location. What concerns the military’s IT guys is that this code could be anything—harmless JPEGs of monkeys in funny hats or the equivalent of “rm -rf.”
Now regular folk in the military, if they want to send a photo to their family, have to go to approved labs to get on with their computing rather than their own laptop, which must be a huge pain in the neck.

Owners of the SanDisk Cruzer line of flash drives might be interested to learn that its now possible to launch the Veoh Web Player directly from the U3 interface that pops up when the drive is inserted into a USB port. You can use the Veoh software to schedule and download various types of web video directly to your Cruzer drive to create and ever-changing, on-the-go content library.
The Veoh feature will be available on new Cruzer flash drives and can also be installed separately onto existing Cruzer drives by going to www.sandisk.com/veoh and downloading an update. Full press release after the jump.
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Here’s the perfect complement to the USB flash drive with built-in bottle opener we told you about a few weeks ago. It’s a Zippo-style lighter with 8GB of storage and a USB connection — because you can never have lighter fluid too close to your computer.
It costs $60, which might seem a bit steep, but if you’re still smoking in this day and age, you’ve no doubt gotten used to paying out the wazoo for cigarettes anyway. What’s another $60, especially when you can impress everyone by lighting a smoke (outdoors) and then pulling the latest episode of Babylon 5 off of your lighter?
USB 8GB Flash Drive Lighter [ThinkGeek via DVICE]

Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve seen a garish, Swarovski crystal-encrusted anything, much less a USB thumb drive, the Transcend JetFlash V85C. Our cup runneth over!
But seriously, there’s really no reason for a self-resecting gadget hound to spend $50 on an 8GB, Swarovski or not.

Hot on the heels of our back to school week comes one of the most seemingly indispensable storage devices to date: The TrekStor USB stick with built-in bottle opener. Let’s face it, there have been a lot of stupid, dumb implementations of flash drives before (keychains, wristbands, necklaces, etc.) and a lot of brilliant implementations of bottle openers before (Reef’s “Fanning” sandals, for one) and it’s about time we got some crossover between the two.
The TrekStore flash drive comes in a solid, brushed aluminum housing and is available in capacities between one and 16 gigabytes. It’ll be available in October (hopefully it’ll make its way here) for between 6.99 and 49.99 Euro, depending on which capacity you choose – that’s about $10 to $70 US.
[via DVICE]

Here’s the 16GB Flash Voyager from Corsair – regular price: $64.99. Then you get a $30 mail-in rebate, bringing the price down to $34.99. Then, according to the fine folks at FatWallet.com, you can use promo code EMCAJCBBB to get another $5 off.
That’s a 16GB thumb drive with 256-bit AES encryption for $30. Good deal, no?
CORSAIR Flash Voyager 16GB Flash Drive [Newegg.com via FatWallet]