
DataStickies: USB drives as sticky notes - JeanSebTr
http://datastickies.com/
======
cperciva
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.

~~~
zem
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.

~~~
bjackman
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.

~~~
noblethrasher
"I don't think there's anything misleading here, but there's still something
irritating about it. _These authors spend loads of time and money writing
stories about the future, 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."

~~~
bjackman
But when I read Sci-Fi, I'm consuming:

\- The author's creativity and intelligence in extrapolating the technology's
wider implications

\- A good story, including character development

\- Often some incredibly clever prose

\- Possibly, _as a very secondary thing_ , elements of "Hey, imagine if AI was
complex enough to form human relationships!" (for example)

Here, I'm being offered the content of "Hey imagine if USB sticks were really
cheap and you could just stick them on your computer like a post it!", but
with the tone of "I created this thing: look how clever it is, here I am
receiving an award for my ingenuity.

~~~
noblethrasher
I understand where you're coming from; I get similarly annoyed when people
that are not UX experts design UI mockups that look cool but have no
consideration of usability, feasibility, maintainability, etc.

On the other hand, I love concept videos.

------
chrisfarms
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.

~~~
AlexanderDhoore
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](https://github.com/Alexander-Dhoore/tagTheWorld)

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

------
Mithaldu
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.

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

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

------
skadamat
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

------
iamthepieman
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.

------
hardwaresofton
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
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
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.

------
krasin
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/](http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/flashkus/)

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

------
sigkill
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.]

~~~
bencoder
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

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

~~~
bencoder
I was anticipating a very smart connecting board that can determine two
working connections and disable the others. I wasn't arguing it's completely
viable but simply that it's not beyond the laws of physics as OP suggested :)

~~~
sigkill
I'm sorry I don't understand your description. You said a grid of conductive
dots right? You'd need two separate grids of dots if you're going to use one-
wire. Would you superposition both grids? Then it would short. If you have one
'band' on top and one band below, then it's just a rail setup.

~~~
bencoder
There's nothing special about ground, it's the same as a digital pin set to
low (from an M/C perspective). You don't need to have two separate grids. Just
try out combinations of pins as data/power and ground until you get a set that
works and float (disconnect/set as input) the others.

------
prawn
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.

------
glasshouses
This is bad science self-congratulatory wank.

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

------
flyinglizard
Quite an elaborate trolling, this.

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

------
egypturnash
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.

------
diydsp
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 ) )

------
salehenrahman
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
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.

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

------
slovette
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.

------
proksoup
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).

~~~
proksoup
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.

------
qdot76367
We have arrived at the future as predicted by Saturday Night Live.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Q-BH8j06pM](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Q-BH8j06pM)

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

------
vonskippy
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.

~~~
shittyanalogy
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

------
shittyanalogy
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. ;)

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

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

~~~
anon4
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.

~~~
notimetorelax
> There is no transactional filesystem that works cross-platform Frankly I
> don't see how this is a problem for a project that wants to implement 4GB
> stick-it notes, doesn't seem to be the greatest challenge. > no filesystem
> in the world can protect against data loss in the event of accidental
> disconnect If note falls off and copying didn't finish, sure you'd expect to
> lose data. Otherwise if cache is disabled there shouldn't be a problem.

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

~~~
sp332
Would dragging a huge hard drive around make you feel better? What's wrong
with a sticky note?

------
Ellipsis753
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
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.

~~~
Ellipsis753
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.

~~~
robobro
And expensive, and very easy to lose. I like how this kind of storage almost
seems disposable.

~~~
Ellipsis753
Few people lose their phones and the problem is that my files are not
disposable.

------
Riesling
Idea for improvement:

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

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

------
kbar13
cool! I haven't seen a visitor counter used in a really long time.

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

------
userbinator
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...

------
devsatish
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

------
HCIdivision17
Is there any graphene prototype that suggests this could be sold in the near
future (next couple years)?

~~~
wmf
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/nl101902k)
[http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/nn3059136](http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/nn3059136)
I would assume it's over a decade out, though.

~~~
HCIdivision17
Thanks, especially for the link to a paper that doesn't need payment. I'm
looking forward to reading it over lunch!

------
magic5227
This is just a proof-of-concept, correct?

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

~~~
indrax
It's proof that there is a concept.

------
bcguy390
this is almost as bad as phonebloks

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

This is a waste of time.

------
sbierwagen
Bullshit.

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

------
philliphaydon
I'm really confused...

------
anon4
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
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?

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

~~~
pseingatl
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
Great for what?

