Space Bar

Space Bar on Quirky.com

Space Bar - More Space, More Ports, Less Clutter

The Space Bar is a simple, elegantly-designed desk accessory that minimizes clutter while providing additional USB ports for your computer. After a long day of work, simply slide your keyboard into the designated space below the shelf and store your office miscellany — keys, digital camera, etc. — up top.

Features:
- Constructed of brushed aluminum with white plastic accents.
- Can stow a keyboard up to 18" long by 1.5" high and supports up to 30.5 pounds weight (the weight of a 27" Apple iMac).
- Six USB ports. Charge & sync USB devices on four front ports. Charge USB devices on two right rear ports. Also includes one mini-USB port and one AC adapter port.
- Includes AC adapter and USB cord.
- Color: silver.

This product is powered using an external power source with a range of 110-240v.

4-in-1 Power Charger

4-in-1 Power Charger is ready to handle anything

When your phone, music player, tablet, or other devices need charging, you’re going to need to have a few different options available depending on where you are. You might want something that will plug into your car’s power socket, the wall, a USB port, or a 9-volt battery (if you’re desperate). Whatever situation you face, you never want your lifeline to be bricked, but you also don’t want to tote around 4 different charging options for several different devices.

If you want a end-all charger to take care of all your needs at once, then the 4-in-1 Charger might be of interest to you. It will let you choose your preferred method of charging, and is small enough to fit in your bag. The cord retracts when it’s not in use, so you also don’t have to worry about a tangled mess out of your bag. It will work with most all iPod and iPhones, as well as BlackBerry, Samsung, Motorola, Droid, Nokia devices, Digital Cameras, and more. It will cost around $40, and also comes with different adapter tips.

4-in-1 Power Charger is ready to handle anything - The Red Ferret Journal

Satechi Slim Surge Protector

Cool Tools: Satechi Slim Surge Protector

If you are sick and tired of electrical surges screwing up your gadgets and devices connected to a power outlet, then here is something that you might want to consider. The Satechi Slim Surge Protector is said to come with 2.1 Amps of juice for each port and consists of 5 protected power outlets. It currently retails for a highly affordable $15.99 each, and with 2.1 amps of power, it can charge just about the majority of power hungry devices out there in the market, ranging from the new iPad to the Amazon Kindle Fire, iPhone 4S, and Samsung Galaxy S3 amongst others.

Capable of protecting up to 5 devices from electrical spikes and surges, making sure that your collection of expensive electronic equipment and valuable data will remain safe at all times, there is also the inclusion of the Safety Shutdown Technology that relies on thermal fuses in order to power off the user’s system so that it will offer protection against fire and other damage just in case a power spike occurs. The presence of a green LED indicator that lights up will let you know that your equipment is being protected.

Satechi Slim Surge Protector » Coolest Gadgets

External USB Batteries

From Cool Tools: New Trent External USB Batteries

I have used a New Trent IMP500 external USB battery for the last two years, mostly in the backcountry, to keep multiple devices charged (you need to make sure you have adapter tips or a short cable for each type of device) and am impressed with its capacity and durability. These batteries work when you need them to work.

New Trent has consistently made the most powerful and reliable external USB batteries for USB-devices like the iPhone. Look at the New Trent website to decide which product is right for you, then look at the reviews on Amazon for confirmation of my first sentence.

The newest battery, IMP1000, has 11,000 mAH capacity, about 5-6 recharges for an iPhone 4. Before I bought my IMP500 I researched extensively before buying. Since then I have used this battery under extreme conditions for the last two years, and am more than satisfied.

-- Kim 

New Trent IMP1000
1100 mAh
$75

Available from Amazon

Manufactured by New Trent

Cool Tools: New Trent External USB Batteries

STRANGER DANGER – Don’t Insert Unknown USB Flash Drive in your Computer

This is a Flash Drive:    Sometimes it’s called a Thumb Drive: .  If you don’t know where that Thumb Drive has been, don’t stick it in your USB port:

Why would someone (maybe you) who would never drink from an open bottle you found in a parking lot, take an abandoned/discarded/lost thumbdrive they stumble upon in a parking lot or the street and insert it in their computer?  Well, that’s exactly what someone at CENTCOM did (click on the link to see why Centcom is so important).

From the NPR Show “Fresh Aire” (topic: Assessing The Threat of Cyberterrorism) Feb 10, 2010:

Terry Gross interviewed James Lewis. Who “directs the Technology and Public Policy Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He was the project director for the Commission on Cybersecurity for the 44th Presidency, a project started in 2007 to make recommendations to the next president about cybersecurity.”  The entire interview transcript is here.

GROSS: What are other favorite ways of attacking companies or individuals?

Mr. LEWIS: The high-end attacks will be more sophisticated and some of it involves what we call social engineering, right? So social engineering is, I get your e-mail address, I get some data about you, or maybe I find out your wife's name or your birthday or something and I send an e-mail - I get your contact list and I send an e-mail to all your friends. It looks like its from you and the header is: My birthday is coming up or something and it has the date. Inside that e-mail there might be embedded or contained some malicious package. The friend sees the e-mail, thinks it's from you, they click on they click on it and open it, hey presto, I've got him, right?

Works great and that's been used - that's, you know, it's a more labor intensive effort but it's used against high-value targets. The other one people know about now, I'm sort of upset it because it was so - it was such a wonderful technique that I'm upset it's become public now and people stopped doing it: Put some bad software on a thumb drive, you know, in three or four thumb drives, drive to the parking lot of the place youre targeting - DOD, some company, a bank - and scatter the thumb drives in the parking lot, right? Now, a good citizen picks up the thumb drive and...

GROSS: These are like little portable...

Mr. LEWIS: Yeah, the memory sticks.

GROSS: Portable memory sticks that you just plug into your computer.

Mr. LEWIS: Yeah.

GROSS: Right.

Mr. LEWIS: Throw - how much - it's not going to cost you that much. Throw four or five of them in the parking lot, someone will pick it up and plug it into their computer. And at that second, if they haven't taken certain precautions, and most people haven't, at that second you will implant your malicious software that will allow you to either take control or to exfiltrate data. So that's a good one too. People are learning about that one. That's how DOD got hacked last year. That's how CentCom classified networks got hacked so...

GROSS: That's how CentCom got hacked - that somebody picked up something from the parking lot and plugged it into their computer?

Mr. LEWIS: The other one I heard about is, of course...

GROSS: Wait, wait, is that true? That's how CentCom got hacked?

Mr. LEWIS: Yeah. It was a memory stick. It was funny for me because I gave a talk once to one of these defense contractor groups about cyber security and at the end they gave me a present for talking. It was a memory stick.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. LEWIS: Made in China. I said you clearly haven't been listening.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. LEWIS: I've heard the same things happened at Justice where somebody scattered them in the men's rooms and Justice was smart enough to figure out that - whoever found it was smart enough to figure out not to fall for the trap. But, you know, look, you've got intelligence agencies with 10,000 employees and multi, hundreds, million dollar budgets who spend every day trying to figure out some way around your defenses. You’re going to come up with something.