DataStickies: USB drives as sticky notes

http://datastickies.com/

by JeanSebTr • 13 years ago

132 98 13 years ago

datastickies.com

lazzlazzlazz• 13 years ago

Great, all the value of a USB drive with all the disposability of a Post-It note.

This is a waste of time.

Mithaldu3• 13 years ago

I don't get it. How the hell do i put this in my computer? The second image block implies not the usb port. And even if it were to be put there, i wouldn't want to put glue in there, and have no idea how a thin sheet of material is supposed to maintain contact. Maybe i need a special drive for it?

Note, i don't actually care for the answers at this point, just wanted to lay out for the guys who made the page how its very confusing and useful for getting me to want it.

Edit: So as it turns out that this is in fact a fake advertisement for a non-extant product i feel compelled to point out this irony: I assume some ad company or group made this in order to attract customers, likely because they have a hard time getting real customers. Now the ironic part is that my confusion when faced with it demonstrates perfectly why they have such difficulties.

tlarkworthy2• 13 years ago

With graphene + imagination you can do anything ... in your imagination.

Mithaldu3• 13 years ago

Thanks for pointing out the obvious. I have too much faith in people.

bigd• 13 years ago

I've heard someone in Northwestern is trying to do hybrid materials with cement + graphene. Why is way beyond my imagination

pmjordan2• 13 years ago

It seems that they're all stuck on an "optical data transfer surface", whatever that's supposed to be. I'm guessing this is just a visual design study, not an end-to-end product design. (Seems to me a workable solution might involve Bluetooth LE - good luck filling a 32GB drive that way though - I estimate it'll take you about 11 days)

Of course, you could store just some cryptographic keys and unique file IDs on a small, low-throughput drive in a form factor like this, and link it into a cloud storage service. That would at least approach making practical sense.

cherioo• 13 years ago

The second approach sounds almost doable with the NFC technology. I wonder how small/thin a NFC tag can be built today.

toki5• 13 years ago

"Each of the dataSTICKIES can be simply peeled from the stack and stuck anywhere on the ODTS (Optical Data Transfer Surface), which is a panel that can be attached to the front surface of devices like computer screens, televisions, music systems, and so on. The special conductive adhesive that sticks the dataSTICKIES to the ODTS is the medium that transfers the data."

This should be made MUCH MUCH clearer, because it's a really cool idea that takes way too long to find in that page.

roryokane• 13 years ago

It looks like the answer is in the pictures on the right in the How block near the bottom. You stick a strip called the Optical Data Transfer Surface (ODTS) to the edge of your computer screen. It can somehow read any dataSTICKY that has been stuck to it. Presumably that strip is connected to your computer through a USB cable or Bluetooth.

But yeah, it is confusing that the site doesn’t make that clear. They should show how you plug dataSTICKIES in right next to that “not the USB port” image in the Why block.

iamthepieman• 13 years ago

I can see this being really handy in a small size for storing an album (25-50) worth of photos, a CD of music or a paper or presentation.

If they were cheap enough they would be nearly disposable. I can also see them having the same problem as disposable information storage.

Like their namesake, sticky-notes, they might be great for quickly storing an idea but terrible for retrieving them because they end up getting misplaced or lost among a big pile of paper.

salehenrahman• 13 years ago

tl:dr; there is a surface (called ODTS) that you stick the drives to. The surface itself connects to your computer via USB, and its through that the drives' content can be browsed.

Not a bad concept. I just fear that the adhesive might not last very long. Unless, if it uses another form of adhesion, such as magnets.

Brakenshire• 13 years ago

You could use Van Der Waal adhesion, like Gecko feet, we might as well throw it in. Although changing the adhesive will undermine the technology proposal, after all 'The special conductive adhesive that sticks the dataSTICKIES to the ODTS is the medium that transfers the data.'

It's both optical, and conducts data via some plastic adhesive. You can't say they haven't thought things through.

magic5227• 13 years ago

This is just a proof-of-concept, correct?

Well designed, but, don't they know USB sticks are on their way out?

indrax• 13 years ago

It's proof that there is a concept.

glasshouses• 13 years ago

This is bad science self-congratulatory wank.

Graphene organs, stick them to your face and let them compensate for your bad health via sound.

HCIdivision172• 13 years ago

Is there any graphene prototype that suggests this could be sold in the near future (next couple years)?

wmf• 13 years ago

I wasn't previously aware of it, but apparently non-volatile graphene storage is indeed a topic of research: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/nl101902k http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/nn3059136 I would assume it's over a decade out, though.

HCIdivision172• 13 years ago

Thanks, especially for the link to a paper that doesn't need payment. I'm looking forward to reading it over lunch!

cperciva• 13 years ago

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Apparently adverts for products which don't exist and never will exist are also nearly indistinguishable from adverts for advanced technology.

tlarkworthy2• 13 years ago

yeah I had to read it a couple of times before I could confidently decide none of it made any sense.

GuiA• 13 years ago

It's likely some design student's final year project.

It's a designer's reboot of the "portable disk" interaction paradigm we have that started with cassettes and moved to floppies and disks and now portable hard drives/flash drives.

yeaah2• 13 years ago

yeah this is why pakis shouldnt be allowed near computers

jsilence• 13 years ago

This is the first time I am really discontent that I can not downvote yet. you stink.

zem• 13 years ago

i do not understand the negativity in here. literally the very first line of their copy is

dataSTICKIES: A design concept conceptualised as graphene-based flash drives that replace USB data drives.

i see this as an appealing visualisation of "if technology gave us storage materials of this form, how might we design a product based around it?", in much the same way that science fiction extrapolates tech advances and tries to imagine devices using them.

waterlesscloud• 13 years ago

HN has become a site where most of the comments are severely lacking in imagination.

I suppose that's inevitable in the long run.

Stealth-• 13 years ago

Hehe, when I started reading I was very appreciative of the fact I was prewarned by the "DESIGN CONCEPT" lettering.

transitionality• 13 years ago

The site has the format of a product presentation site rather than a designer's portfolio site. Its format is intentionally misleading. And that sort of disingenuousness is grating.

If this were on DeviantArt, etc., clearly framed as a design, the reactions would be more muted and possibly positive.

bjackman2• 13 years ago

I don't think there's anything misleading here, but there's still something irritating about it. These people spend loads of time and money designing futuristic stuff and giving each other awards for it. In the meantime, we mere mortal engineers are wallowing in the pits of reality, solving actual problems like the plebs we were born to be. I know it sounds horribly bitter, but I really do sympathise with the negative responses to things like this.

Mithaldu3• 13 years ago

Now, when i first looked at this i had been awake 24 hours so may have not noticed those things due to sleep deprivation. However i seem to distinctly remember not any of the clarifying language about concepts and envisioning being there 12 hours ago, so i think they saw the negative feedback and updated their website.

alphakappa• 13 years ago

There's nothing to indicate that this is a real product. There's no information about availability, and given how everything is just a bunch of slides, I think this is more of a design exercise than a real product.

Semiapies• 13 years ago

It looks like a particularly good design semester project, yes.

prawn• 13 years ago

Can't say I've ever found a USB stick to be too large physically. Interesting concept, but I wonder if it's solving a problem that doesn't really exist and adding a required transfer surface along the way.

kbar13• 13 years ago

cool! I haven't seen a visitor counter used in a really long time.

ics• 13 years ago

It's just counting requests too. I just added 45 to the count.

miguelrochefort• 13 years ago

That's cute. Too bad it's not 2004 anymore.

yeaah2• 13 years ago

anyone who finds usb sticks cumbersome must have the motor skills of a walrus

shurcooL• 13 years ago

Compared to Dropbox it is (for small relatively files).

pseingatl2• 13 years ago

It's not that they are cumbersome, it's the cost. Currently you would be hard pressed to find USB sticks in bulk for less than $1, $1.50. Retail is much more. They are not disposable yet. It's too bad this product is vaporware. 2 gb (even 512 mb) disposable USB's would be great.

twic• 13 years ago

Great for what?

slovette• 13 years ago

I know the general conception on here is this crap, but I disagree. I think a version of this is exactly where we are heading. It's useful, simple, minimalistic and I could definitely see all of my college colleagues keeping there most recent project on a data-sticky in their notebooks on the page with all the project notes. This concept is most definitely where we are headed. Development needs to be correct and something manufacturers build with congruity (like the USB standard), but a measure of this is most certainly going to happen.

diydsp• 13 years ago

A fantastic example of projecting our fears and anxieties...

(we all wait in fear of how powerful, potent or dense each new material technology can be)

(we all fear that our world is not easy or colorful enough)

(we all fear that we missed out on something profound and sweeping)

(we all fear that we're being lied to)

(we all fear that others will lie to the ones we love ( and that we'll have to fix their windows 8 at christmas ) )

chrisfarms• 13 years ago

Ok so ignoring the fact that this relies on magic...

I think there is something to using physical locations to keep references to files. I can remember the shelf that I stored a notebook and the rough location in the notebook of a sketch for a project from 2005. I can't say the same about my filesystems even with the help of "cloud" services of more recent years.

Our brains are definitely wired to get clues from lots of context, and just sitting at a similarly layed out UI doesn't take advantage of that.

So drop the crazy magic... add rfid tags to the stickys ... replace the optical(??) strip thing with an rfid reader that just maps the stickies to my cloud files, and that might be relatively useful.... pretty sure rfids aren't quite disposable yet though.

proksoup3• 13 years ago

QR code stickers would be disposable.

And can do the same thing, associate data. Generate unique urls that go to a web service that allows "mapping".

AlexanderDhoore• 13 years ago

I'm currently working on a project for uni that does something like this. It let's you "tag" items in the world. So, for example, I can leave a message on the painting on the wall. Next time I take a picture of that wall, it will show me my messages again. You could also use it to send messages to other people. "I left you a virtual message on the fridge." The other person walks up to the fridge, takes a picture, and gets the message. I think it has some interesting potential.

It's on github [1]. Though I haven't created any video or documentation yet.

[1] https://github.com/Alexander-Dhoore/tagTheWorld

cfn• 13 years ago

It is a very good idea. If the tags are visible and pleasing it might take off!

pseingatl2• 13 years ago

There is indeed a correlation between a physical (or three-dimensional virtual) place and information. The ancient Greeks discovered this. The British historian Frances Yates wrote about this in her Art of Memory. What is lacking in computer UI is precisely taking advantage of this ancient insight.

amalag• 13 years ago

I knew someone writing books on this concept. He was trying to extend this into quantum mechanics where the underlying foundations are not inanimate particles but information. Science has been taking information out. It requires a long discussion, but let me know if you are interested and I can forward his paper.

tripzilch• 13 years ago

I think there is something to using physical locations to keep references to files. I can remember the shelf that I stored a notebook and the rough location in the notebook of a sketch for a project from 2005. I can't say the same about my filesystems even with the help of "cloud" services of more recent years.

You have a point.

There has been research on making "File Explorer"-like applications have similar "enriched" context as what you're referring to, but it never took off.

(various interesting ways to approach this idea, but they are irrelevant to the point I want to make here)

I think one reason (though probably not the/foremost reason) might be that, unlike an actual physical storage context, there is no guarantee that whenever you view a particular folder, it will be displayed in this particular manner.

Some applications have their own file-explore/open dialog, sometimes apps or websites will transform your view. Currently, most OS's have at least three different ways to "view" the same folder (list/icons/details).

If your data is on a USB-stick, it's even worse, every device will show you its particular "interpretation" of your filesystem structure. This was less of a problem with the smaller 512MB sticks that might contain just a few files, but nowadays 32GB sticks are not uncommon, holding a user's entire documents library (or a copy thereof).

Contrast with a physical file system, nobody is going to impose their "view" or "interpretation" of your personal (physical) files. In fact, it's considered bad manners to reorder someone's bookshelves without permission ;)

That's (part of) the reason why you can find files so easily in physical systems, because every time you interact with it, your memory of where particular items are located is reinforced, because there is just one representation of that system, regardless of context. This representation might even be sub-optimal qua efficiency, and you can still at least reap the benefit of familiarity.

joepour• 13 years ago

"I think there is something to using physical locations to keep references to files. I can remember the shelf that I stored a notebook and the rough location in the notebook of a sketch for a project from 2005."

I see where you are coming from now and I think this would be true if search was absent from digital note takers. Now, though all you have to remember is where/which project you usually use to store notes and then search.

That is why, in my opinion, physical locations are less relevant when talking about digital content.

flyinglizard• 13 years ago

Quite an elaborate trolling, this.

njloof• 13 years ago

Hey, now they can add "Hacker News" to their "Buzz" page. Well done, everybody!

notjustanymike• 13 years ago

I know it's not real, but really, "finances 2013.xls"? You want to put all that data on a post-it note?!

sp3322• 13 years ago

Would dragging a huge hard drive around make you feel better? What's wrong with a sticky note?

bcguy390• 13 years ago

this is almost as bad as phonebloks

proksoup3• 13 years ago

This is actually totally possible with qr codes.

(1) Print 100 qr code stickers that go to unique urls on a web service (2) web service serves "upload form" on first render (or enter url form, whatever the user wants to "save"). (3) web service redirects to file download (or url) on all subsequent visits, no longer allowing upload.

Sticky data you can put inside a book and retrieve later by scanning (or typing in the url, which was also printed on the sticker cause no one will actually use QR codes).

proksoup3• 13 years ago

I actually built a business trying to sell these --- but couldn't explain the concept to anyone ... and slowly realized that not being able to explain a concept means it might not be such a hot concept.

devsatish• 13 years ago

Cute.. that's about it. Good design execution and a concept idea.

also it would be great if they are chewable.. looks like pack of juicy fruit gum

krasin• 13 years ago

it unclear what these guys have to offer. If it's just the design, they just repeat the idea from 2011 ([1]). If they have a technology to produce these things, why don't they have a video demonstration of a prototype?

[1] http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/flashkus/

vonskippy• 13 years ago

Ummm...hate to break the bad news, but floppy disks (and the rest of the removable storage ilk) was killed off years ago by the Cloud. Better luck next idea.

sp3322• 13 years ago

How are you going to hand a chunk of the cloud to someone? http://xkcd.com/949/

shittyanalogy2• 13 years ago

A quick transfer of data to someone where there are:

    Too many files to be cloud managed
    Business secrets you don't want on the cloud
    Files too big to quickly transfer

sigkill2• 13 years ago

Not to poke holes in the implementation but even one-wire requires two connection, [1]Data/Power [2] Ground. Even with their optical mumbo jumbo how the hell can they actually transfer data?

On one hand they talk about optical things, and then on the other hand they're talking about 'conductive'. Seriously? Regardless, you do not bypass the laws of physics. You need atleast a complete circuit for it to be powered. And if their cop-out is that it's got a super-micro-pico-tiny-high-density-capacitor then I'm not even going to bother poking holes anymore.

Well, there is a way but it's pointlessly slow - inductive power.

The whole concept is quite flawed in my opinion [EDIT - unless their plan is to showcase a theoretical ultrathin USB flash drive.]

bencoder3• 13 years ago

if the surface you stick it on is actually full of (conductive) dots:

  . . . . .
   . . . .
  . . . . .

and your sticky thing has two panels for data/ground with dimensions larger than the width between the dots then wherever you stick it you can be guaranteed of two separate connections

userbinator2• 13 years ago

More like two connections plus a ton of short circuits...

valleyer• 13 years ago

Pretty sure unclean unmount potential just rose immensely. Whoops, the sticky note fell off… just lost data / corrupted my filesystem.

notimetorelax2• 13 years ago

Why not use file system that can handle such misuse? Aren't there transactional file systems?

anon42• 13 years ago

There is no transactional filesystem that works cross-platform. And even if, say, you stick to ntfs, no filesystem in the world can protect against data loss in the event of accidental disconnect.

MrMeker• 13 years ago

Anyone who describes graphene as "paper thin" has no idea what they are talking about.

skadamat• 13 years ago

Obviously this isn't feasible right now (and probably won't ever be), but this is great out-of-the-box thinking.

I think it's super important to have creatives like designers and science fiction writers conjure a wonderful future as it is exciting and inspiring. Not all of it will make sense (flying cars anybody?), but it capture the imagination.

Full disclosure - I'm not a creative (I wish I was more creative), but just think it's important to have perspective

anon42• 13 years ago

Even though the concept as shown is impossible right now, you can make a USB flash drive that's under a mm thick. Then just glue some paper to one side and you're practically done.

keithpeter• 13 years ago

The bit that I liked in the OA was the way you could mount the data sticky by popping it on the bottom bezel of the computer like a fridge magnet. I imagine wifi and some processing capacity in the sticky, perhaps power over radio from the PC?

hardwaresofton2• 13 years ago

Why are so many people naysaying this? We have NFC, we have super slim (and super thin) consumer-accessible memory cards. The magnetism bit might be a little tricky (getting the object to stick to the data reading surface), but why is this so far-fetched? What they say aside (it seems that they are designers, not really engineers) -- saying this could never exist is an over-step

bryans• 13 years ago

I agree. I really don't understand the negativity here, and it reminds me of the immature and close-minded lambasting that the 3Doodler received. It's very disappointing to see the HN community act this way.

The majority of the negativity seems to stem from it not being an existing product, which is a silly thing to be indignant about, especially considering the first two words on the page clearly state "design concept". Even if the optical transfer strip isn't feasible, there are certainly other options to transfer data in a similar fashion. To see such a large group of knowledgeable people completely disregard an idea for no legitimate reason is.. baffling, to say the least.

Kliment• 13 years ago

I believe I had a legitimate complaint about the 3doodler back then: the assholes were trying to patent it even though publically documented and dated prior art from years before they claimed to have started working on it existed. Said prior art had been around on various 3d printing and tech blogs and yet these disgusting people tried to rob the world of this toy by trying to patent it. This is not a matter of "this is a bad idea" it's a matter of them going "we made up this shit, everyone bow to us and there'll be hell to pay if anyone makes it without paying us ransom" even though it's not original.

hardwaresofton2• 13 years ago

I've got half a mind to try and make this thing, if I didn't have what seems like a billion other projects going...

_pmf_• 13 years ago

I ordered some via Amazon Prime Air and am convinced they'll arrive by 2037.

Riesling• 13 years ago

Idea for improvement:

Add an e-ink display and show the contents of the "readme.md" located on the stick.

philliphaydon• 13 years ago

I'm really confused...

sbierwagen• 13 years ago

Bullshit.

userbinator2• 13 years ago

You can already do something like this with smartcards (stick them on a reader/writer), although the data transfer rate and capacity is much lower...

uptown• 13 years ago

And when the stickiness wears out, you're just out of luck?

Ellipsis7533• 13 years ago

Wow, this honestly seems like a terrible idea. Not only do I really not want to get glue everywhere (and also have them loose stickiness over time) but also they look very breakable? I don't understand why I would need that many flash drives either? Generally even now I only use one USB stick for my general stuff. I don't think I could write everything that was on my usb stick on a label like that.

They complain that usb ports are hard to get and instead we should add a sticky surface the transfers data to the bottom of our monitors? Why not just buy a monitor with a few usb ports on it if you really want that? It already exists and is far more useful as it can be used with the wide range of usb products that already exist (phone charger, mouse etc). I can see no advantages that this has over buying a usb stick (unless I'm missing something big?).

Here's my equally pointless take on modern data transfer. We all have phone that store our data. They connect via bluetooth when near to a computer (Much like wifi the first time it pairs with a computer you must enter a pin). It then acts like a usb data storage. And huzzah, never again will you have to reach down and plug something into a usb port! Huzzah, never again will you have all those issues with usb ports wearing out or your usb stick getting knocked out while you were in the middle of a presentation! Never again will you struggle with not knowing which way around a usb stick should go! (This is actually kind of useful I guess?). If they don't have bluetooth then you can just connect your phone with a usb wire (as you will be doing 99% of the time). I'm not sure if it's clear here but my point is that they seem to be solving a problem (and using magic to do so) but no one actually has that problem.

hnha• 13 years ago

phones have seriously limited space. 16 or 32 gigabytes won't even hold one uncompressed movie that you need for work. With everything moving to remote servers, streaming etc, I don't see that changing sadly.

Ellipsis7533• 13 years ago

True but it's still more possible than this. You can actually buy SD cards with much more than 32 gigabytes. They are pretty rare though.

egypturnash• 13 years ago

As someone who tries to keep a clean desk, and actively dislikes having post-it's on her monitor bezel, this design exercise gives me the heebie-jeebies.

I actively leverage my dislike of visual clutter on my desk by putting things I don't want to do, but have to, on a post-it on the edge of my monitor. That photo of a bunch of these things cluttering up a monitor is just one big NOPE.

Personally I feel like the form factor of the USB drive is getting close to the bare minimum size as a physical token to put files on. They're small enough to embed in a wide array of whimsically-shaped objects.

Hell, take this magical "optical data transfer surface" and cover your desk in it; build these in small modules that an end user can put into ANYTHING. Put one in the bottom of that action figure you have on the desk, that cool traditional craft piece an ex sent back from their trip to Foreign Parts, whatever - if you want to replace USB drives, I feel like there's a much wider array of things sitting on your desk to put data into than post-its.

shittyanalogy2• 13 years ago

Interesting concept, take it to the next level:

    Have a stack of "stickies" stuck to your monitor.
    Drag files to the "drive" or "stack of stickies".
    Files automatically go to the top "sticky" on the stack.
    Peel off top sticky and use.
    Drive IT at your office insane with all the frivolous unchecked data transfer. ;)

qdot76367• 13 years ago

We have arrived at the future as predicted by Saturday Night Live.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Q-BH8j06pM

DataStickies: USB drives as sticky notes

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