INNOVATION Flash discs shrink the multimedia world

They're tiny, reusable, reprogrammable -- and they're changing the way Americans communicate.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
When the Toyota carmaker recently promoted its 2004 Lexus RX 330 sport utility vehicle in a U.S. mass mailing, it didn't print glossy brochures and cram them into bulky envelopes.
Instead, it sent 21,000 digital devices smaller than cigarette lighters.
While some recipients may have been confused at first, they surely caught on when they pulled off a plastic cap and found a familiar Universal Serial Bus plug.
Sticking the plug into a computer USB port, they gained access to the device and its contents: RX 330 pictures, video clips, interactive demos and more.
Lexus isn't the only company that is handing out such gizmos -- which go by such names as thumb drive, pen drive, pocket hard drive and USB flash drive -- like candy.
The storage devices, which keep digital data in non-mechanical "flash" memory, have recently displaced the venerable floppy diskette as a convenient means for transporting and distributing computer files.
As a result, the flash drives have become popular among companies that distribute promotional materials by mail, at industry gatherings or in private meetings to clinch deals. The drives have, in effect, become the newest kind of business card.
Packing lighter
Computer disks in the shapes of cards became popular in the 1990s once PCs with the necessary CD-ROM drives became commonplace.
The practice of "beaming" electronic cards between handheld organizers took off when Palm devices began sporting infrared ports.
And many e-mail users like to attach vCards -- a kind of electronic card -- to messages so recipients can update address books.
Now flash drives are becoming the new darlings of conventions and trade shows, largely because of their increasing ubiquity and affordability.
About 30 million were sold worldwide last year, including about 5 million in the United States, and 32-megabyte models can be found for as little as $17 apiece.
When Frank Beeck of Brooklyn Park, Minn.-based Siemens Transportation Systems prepares for one of his industry's exhibits, he no longer needs to weigh himself down with printed materials.
Increasingly, he puts his information on 64-megabyte flash drives because these can be quickly reloaded with updated information if necessary.
An alternative he considered, the CD-ROM, can't be updated once recorded and must be replaced with a newly burned disc. This takes too long, Beeck said.
Beeck's flash drives proved so popular at one recent transportation show that he ran out even though he had tried dipping into his stash of several dozen devices selectively. No matter: He dashed to a local Radio Shack store and bought a fresh batch.
Other benefits
Marlene Nelson of the St. Paul-based Sight Creative and Interactive multimedia-design company creates a variety of promotional materials for corporate customers such as Medtronic. She is increasingly putting the materials on flash drives.
Their key advantage, said Nelson, is that they can be reused. Once recipients have perused the devices' contents, they're free to delete them and use the drives for their own files. "With a CD," she said, "you're done."
Chris Johnston, a California-based Microsoft technology consultant to businesses, likes to hand out a kind of flash drive that can be upgraded. The drive, a SimpleTech Bonzai model, stores its data on a 32-megabyte Secure Digital card that is easily removed and replaced with a higher-capacity SD card.
Even after recipients have discarded Johnston's vCard, white papers, PowerPoint presentations and the like, they won't easily forget the drive's origin -- Microsoft's logo is imprinted on the device.
Flash drives are such handy digital-data repositories that some software companies are eyeing them as software-distribution alternatives to standard optical discs.
Flash drives are so ubiquitous that they've even spawned their own trade group, the USB Flash Drive Alliance (www.usbflashdrive.org).
The "killer application" for such drives remains portable storage, said Steffen Hellmold, the group's president, but he says they have other uses -- as authentication devices for locked rooms, cars or computers, for instance.
Many consumers remain unaware of the devices, Hellmold said, "but they've proven themselves. They're here to stay."