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Hands on: Lexar total security thumbdrive

Thumbdrives offer arguably one of the most convenient ways to carry data around. However, because they are so small, they have been frequent culprits of data breaches. Enter the JumpDrive from Lexar.

The company announced Thursday its new JumpDrive Safe S3000 FIPS, which it claims is the world's first smart-card-based FITS 140-2 Level 3 validated flash drive.

Lengthy name aside, this is the most secure and easy-to-use thumbdrive I've ever gotten my hands on.

(FIPS 140-2, by the way, stands for Federal Information Processing Standard and is a U.S. government computer security standard used to accredit cryptographic modules. Level 3 of this standard is the second highest level of data security, which prevents the intruder from gaining access and requires a physical security mechanism to protect the data inside.)

Physically, the new JumpDrive looks very much like most standard thumbdrives on the market with a detachable lid that reveals the USB head. However, it is noticeably heavier due to its thick metal housing and a presumably sophisticated mix of high-security components inside. Its lid also has a thick layer of rubber insulation to keep the moisture out. According to Lexar, the drive exceeds military waterproof standards.

Lexar said the JumpDrive Safe S3000 FIPS is certified by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and features hardware encryption and is the first of its kind to have atemper-resistant smart card to manage all security critical computations. The drive uses the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) 256-bit technology and utilizes an onboard hardware cryptographic controller to encrypt and decrypt data.

From the user's perspective, however, the drive is almost as easy to use as any thumbdrive. I tried it with a few computers and it worked very well. … Read more

Draw your way to safety

iDork Lite is a free, 15-level preview for iDork, a path-tracing game similar to other arcade/puzzle games for the iPhone and iPod Touch in which you use your touch screen to draw a path to help a stick figure avoid various obstacles--in this case, animated pencils, protractors, erasers, and other deadly school supplies, since your "iDork" is "lost in a world of school paperwork."

Once you trace a line for your iDork to walk on, you move him by placing a virtual thumbtack where you want him to go, and pressing a jump button for … Read more

The Great American Redneck Truck Jump

This week, my blog has been dedicated to redneck vehicles, drivers and racing. For my final installment in this series, I found this hilarious web video featuring a group of hilljacks racing their pickup truck over railroad tracks at increasingly accelerated speeds. After realizing the truck was thrashed after numerous jumps (and probably after several beers), the redneck buddies gang up on the truck and tip it over into a ditch. Check it out at 3:00 mark. Totally ridiculous.

LongJump to foster private clouds for corporate IT

As cloud computing edges forward in fits and starts, one recurring question is whether more companies will opt to put their IT services on so-called public clouds or private ones.

The former are available to any individual or business, which essentially rent out a menu of scalable resources. That's a popular option for startups and fledgling outfits, which can't afford to sink much money into paying for an extensive hardware infrastructure. Private clouds, on the other hand, typically offer stronger security and reliability and are thought to have special appeal to IT managers keen on keeping their use … Read more

Racing on the waves

Aqua Moto Racing is an attractive, addictive, and highly replayable 3D Jet Ski racing game--and one of the best games of its kind available on the iPhone and iPod Touch. You control your Jet Ski with simple, intuitive controls: you tilt your device right or left to turn (the farther you tilt, the tighter the turn), and you touch the left side of the screen to brake and the right side to "boost." This temporary speed increase uses the "boost" meter, which you recharge by passing buoys closely and performing stunts off of ramps. Performing tricks … Read more

They're not thumbdrives, they're handdrives (or something)

I'm really not sure who these hand-gesture thumbdrives are supposed to impress, but I kind of want one. But only kind of. I, being a rocker, would take the devil horns first. The other one's got a weird Dan Brown thing going on, and it kind of creeps me out.

The main reservation I have is how these would feel in my pocket. The drive I carry in my back pocket now is fairly small and unobtrusive. Something like this would definitely be noticed were I to have a seat on a hard surface. At least it would … Read more

JumpBox service to deploy apps on Amazon EC2

Installing an open-source enterprise application has never been easier. No hardware? No sophisticated IT department? No problem. At least, not if you use one of 38 JumpBox-enabled open-source applications, as it announced recently.

A rising number of companies offer virtualized instances of popular open-source applications, but JumpBox takes it a step further, deploying to the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service, almost completely obviating hardware and setup quandaries.

JumpBox offers small to midsize organizations a library of open-source applications packaged as pre-built, pre-configured virtual appliances through JumpBox Open, its annual subscription service. Public Amazon Machine Images (AMI) for 12 JumpBox … Read more