Split Stick double-sided USB drive keeps personal / private matters separate
By Darren Murph 
posted July 24th 2009 5:12AM
posted July 24th 2009 5:12AM
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Split Stick, Double-Sided USB Drive, Hits quirky's Online Store
collaboratively developed in one week by quirky's community
New York, NY, July 23, 2009 -- Today marks the official release of the Split Stick - a community designed double-sided USB drive. Everyone always tells you to keep your work and your personal life separate. Now you can maintain that divide with your files too.
With the Split Stick, you can enforce the digital divide between office and personal, home and away, yours and hers, g rated and x rated, or whatever else you choose to separate.
Split Stick is the sixth product designed and developed by the quirky community since quirky's launch on June 2nd. quirky gives everyone the chance to get product ideas out of their heads and onto shelves. Each week quirky's community collaborates to select and produce one new product idea. This week ends the development of the Split Stick and it is now available for sale at quirky's online store for $19.99. Accompanying the Split Stick are 4 other quirky developed products: the Sling Back, a universal wire retractor; the Ouch Pouch, a funkier version of the traditional blue and white arm sling; the Pressto, a tofu press, and a kid's Sudoku set; the Sudokid
Designed and developed by the quirky community, Split Stick is two, two-gigabyte retractable USB drives that are built into one slim (four gigabyte) stick. The Split Stick is made of an anodized aluminum body and encased in a protective rubber membrane. The Split Stick comes in a range of colors: orange, blue, pink, red, black, violet, grey, or green. This plastic button allows one to easily navigate between the two different sides of the drive.
DOWNLOAD PRESS KIT
Customers can select how they want to divide their Split Stick by selecting their own text or choosing icons from quirky's icon gallery. These will be laser etched during the ordering process.
quirky engages participants to collaborate in every aspect of product creation - from ideation, design, naming, manufacturing, marketing, right on through to sales. Anyone can participate on quirky.com either by submitting their own product idea for $99, or by voting, rating, and influencing other people's product ideas. Cooler still, 30¢ of every dollar generated from the sale of a quirky product goes back to these influencers.
Every week users post ideas on quirky to be rated by the quirky community. The community surveys the submissions during the 7-day evaluation period and selects one product to move forward to product development. quirky's community then begins weighing in on everything from naming to logo selection to packaging through to prototype.
The final product becomes available for pre-sale at the quirky online store (quirky.com/products). Once the product hits its pre-sale threshold, credit cards are charged, and the product goes into production and delivery. At this point, 30¢ of every dollar made from the sale of these products goes back to the community. "Community" in this case covers both the ideator as well as all people who voted, commented, and rated the project idea along the way.
collaboratively developed in one week by quirky's community
New York, NY, July 23, 2009 -- Today marks the official release of the Split Stick - a community designed double-sided USB drive. Everyone always tells you to keep your work and your personal life separate. Now you can maintain that divide with your files too.
With the Split Stick, you can enforce the digital divide between office and personal, home and away, yours and hers, g rated and x rated, or whatever else you choose to separate.
Split Stick is the sixth product designed and developed by the quirky community since quirky's launch on June 2nd. quirky gives everyone the chance to get product ideas out of their heads and onto shelves. Each week quirky's community collaborates to select and produce one new product idea. This week ends the development of the Split Stick and it is now available for sale at quirky's online store for $19.99. Accompanying the Split Stick are 4 other quirky developed products: the Sling Back, a universal wire retractor; the Ouch Pouch, a funkier version of the traditional blue and white arm sling; the Pressto, a tofu press, and a kid's Sudoku set; the Sudokid
Designed and developed by the quirky community, Split Stick is two, two-gigabyte retractable USB drives that are built into one slim (four gigabyte) stick. The Split Stick is made of an anodized aluminum body and encased in a protective rubber membrane. The Split Stick comes in a range of colors: orange, blue, pink, red, black, violet, grey, or green. This plastic button allows one to easily navigate between the two different sides of the drive.
DOWNLOAD PRESS KIT
Customers can select how they want to divide their Split Stick by selecting their own text or choosing icons from quirky's icon gallery. These will be laser etched during the ordering process.
quirky engages participants to collaborate in every aspect of product creation - from ideation, design, naming, manufacturing, marketing, right on through to sales. Anyone can participate on quirky.com either by submitting their own product idea for $99, or by voting, rating, and influencing other people's product ideas. Cooler still, 30¢ of every dollar generated from the sale of a quirky product goes back to these influencers.
Every week users post ideas on quirky to be rated by the quirky community. The community surveys the submissions during the 7-day evaluation period and selects one product to move forward to product development. quirky's community then begins weighing in on everything from naming to logo selection to packaging through to prototype.
The final product becomes available for pre-sale at the quirky online store (quirky.com/products). Once the product hits its pre-sale threshold, credit cards are charged, and the product goes into production and delivery. At this point, 30¢ of every dollar made from the sale of these products goes back to the community. "Community" in this case covers both the ideator as well as all people who voted, commented, and rated the project idea along the way.
Umm...okay.
I felt that what I said accurately expressed my feeling for this...device.
why would anyone carry "personal data" to work? so they can get in trouble for having porn on-hand at work? and why would i ever be willing to share a flash drive with my wife? are you insane? if she ever catches me with some of the crap i have, i'd be a bachelor. :P
Plus the personal stuff is the stuff you can't carry on a plane because the security idiots will take it and peruse it for 6 to 9 months, so how do you break off that part and leave it at home?
If you want to scan a photo, select "PS." If you want to shred paper, select..."PS".
Or...you could just partition any usb drive to the same effect - heck even folders would do the job.
This is for the average consumer, not Engadget-reading nerds. Just try to keep that in mind.
I often use a few liveCDs on usb for fixing OS or hard drive problems. This would be perfect to switch between the two concidering they -cannot- be installed on one partition and two would be an insane hassle with a bootloader needed if it even works at all. (never tried)
So right now I carry around 3 usb drives, 2 boot and 1 other stuff.
some people think every article is about them. :)
I have a 1 gig stick from Imation that I bought about 6 years ago (very expensive back then!). When you plug it in it comes up as two separate drives. You can partition them into any size and can set a password on one of the drives which gives you private/public functions. More secure than the ones in the article and it looks good too!
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Imation-USB-Swivel-Flash-Drive/dp/B00076WEJM/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1248537092&sr=8-12
Neat concept, some may find it useful for home and work use. Though I'd rather just use 2 folders so I could better allocate space depending on needs.
Nice idea, but disappointing capacity.
Making a couple folders shouldn't be beyond the abilities for non-engadget nerds I hope.
Folders/Partitions would be more flexible as well...I don't get why engadget's gushing so much about this...
Ok I fail at replying.
Well it's a neat idea and i guess my mom would like it. I appreciate that they are offered in different colors.
It's only $20 and it's obviously aimed at the computer illiterate, why are you people bashing this? Granted I would never have a use for this, I still think it's a "neat" idea, and I'm sure my parents wouldn't mind something like this.
Seeing that I have a large grammar stick up my ass, it pains me to see "separate" misspelled in the headline.
I'm sure I have no sticks up my ass. I think it's only natural to expect a so called "journalist" of one of the most followed blogs on the net to be able to use the spell check function of his WP (or whatever it is), especially on the FRIGGING title.
also, saying personal / private matters is redundant. personal / public makes more sense
What does spelling have to do with grammar?
Excuse me while I remove the pedant stick from my own ass.
The concept seems coming from a double headed snake.
Cue up the bad dude's music from Conan the Barbarian...
OMG I had to Google Mighty Mendit and this is what I found: https://www.mightymendit.com/flare/next
The guy selling it is screaming his ass off LOL
Do you seriously not know that guy screaming his ass off?
WE MISS YOU BILLY MAYS!
Well, I'm European, sooo... no.
...because USB sticks are so big and bulky and heavy that carrying two would be prohibitive? You could comfortably buy two brandname 2GB sticks for this price, or two 4GB sticks for barely more.
i can just imagine the user having to plug/unplug/plug in having discovered he/she accessed the unintended side of the usb
I bought one. FREE! sign up, go to the front page, and answer a quick survey and you'll get a $20 credit to your account.
Your welcome.
They should have a sticker like a floppy to write what data at which side or you have 50-50 probability to insert it right.
If you look at the pictures, they do have pictures on each end to help determine that.. Briefcase on one side, home on another, His and Hers, etc. Wouldn't be too hard to remember which side you saved things on depending on what you get.
Ok, so Ill end up with two thumbdrives rather than four. Still pretty good.
Utilities (UBCD, some must have programs)/Work
Home Stuff (CAD layouts of my house, projects Im working on, etc)/School stuff
Beats having four (er, six because I still carry a couple 64mb ones around)
What's preventing you from making four folders (or partitions if you want to keep them that separate) on one large usb stick?
I like it. I have a Windows Vista Setup Boot Stick, and a Windows Home Server Restore Boot Stick. Now I can have only one for both.
But it should be 4gb each, yes it should.
Still, nice thing. Because I'm too less of a geek to know how to make multiple Boot disks possible on a single stick with multiple partitions or so. If one knows, I'd be happy. (can i do it with grup from linux, or so? I have no clue).
still, it would be a nice stick, as one can physically chose what one wants.
4 + 4 would be useful. One Win 7 install side and one Linux install/live boot side.
Porn on one side, family photos on the other?
That site looks like a friggin pyramid scheme. And not too happy the reviewer is throwin the heavy endorsement at us. Supposedly you add comments and then you get a share of the sales from the purchases thereafter. Nice product but wouldn't buy from such a BS site
Yeah the site smells fishy, but if you take the survey you only have to give them your name and email address and you get the usb stick for free.
Though their confirmation email lets you know that they haven't even been manufactured yet, so I can only imagine how long it will take before you receive one, if ever.
um... No Mac/PC icons?
I would think that would be the obvious choice. This would prevent those annoying dot (.) files and folders. It would also work for unrecognizable characters in file names from one OS to another.
You could also use NTFS on one side and HFS+ on the other, so both platforms could use files greater than 4GB (FAT32 does not support this).
It's like a mullet! Business on one side, party on the other.
This isn't that silly. I carry around 2 seperate usb sticks with me all the time because I have a car stereo that reads USB, and if I so much as stick a JPEG on it, it fails reading from it. Therefore, I keep data on one, and music on the other.
You know...
If you sandwich 49 of these 'double-sided' drives in between a pair of these 49 port USB hubs mentioned yesterday... you could make yourself a literal "RAID capable, 3D storage cube" ! :-)
Disclaimer: If anyone makes and sells that design, I want royalties!
http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/23/cambrionix-49-port-usb-hub-for-professionals-nerds/
Until you take it to work, and put the WRONG side in and those lovely twins come up during a presentation
I'm sorry, but if you don't know how to make a folder, you shouldn't be using a computer.
It's a neat idea...
but I still can't see the usefulness of this. So I'll try to think of some:
-Carry two flash drives as one.
-For music devices that accept USB as input. One side could be peaceful music, the other would be hype up.
uhhh that's it... i mean, why the need to restrict access to two flash drives?
How is it no one has yet mentioned the hassle of not being able to access files from one side without having to yank out and plug back in? If you hardly use these things, it's fine, but I suspect most people leave theirs plugged in for extended periods of time, have files open, then actually want to put files on the other side.
Instead of the switch, which is a moving part and will eventually die, they should just put usb leads on both sides of the plug, so you plug it in one way -> personal, flip the drive -> work.
I'd buy something like that.
I actually like the idea, there have been times I've needed something like this. Just wish they had an 8gb/8gb one =(
Here is a gold brick flash drive http://simenibiz.com/703-creative-golden-usb-flash-drive-2-4-8gb.html, 1kg weight, so funny, don't mistake, it's small and light weight , metal housing is plated with gold. Eye-catching.