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.
It seems that they're all stuck on an "optical data transfer surface", whatever that's supposed to be. I'm guessing this is just a visual design study, not an end-to-end product design. (Seems to me a workable solution might involve Bluetooth LE - good luck filling a 32GB drive that way though - I estimate it'll take you about 11 days)
Of course, you could store just some cryptographic keys and unique file IDs on a small, low-throughput drive in a form factor like this, and link it into a cloud storage service. That would at least approach making practical sense.
Yeah, I haven't been following the NFC stuff - ubiquitous NFC tags have been "just around the corner" for a few years now.
The thing is, if you're going to require an internet connection to make the little tabs work at all, you may as well just do it all online in a pure cloud service in the first place…
"Each of the dataSTICKIES can be simply peeled from the stack and stuck anywhere on the ODTS (Optical Data Transfer Surface), which is a panel that can be attached to the front surface of devices like computer screens, televisions, music systems, and so on. The special conductive adhesive that sticks the dataSTICKIES to the ODTS is the medium that transfers the data."
This should be made MUCH MUCH clearer, because it's a really cool idea that takes way too long to find in that page.
It looks like the answer is in the pictures on the right in the How block near the bottom. You stick a strip called the Optical Data Transfer Surface (ODTS) to the edge of your computer screen. It can somehow read any dataSTICKY that has been stuck to it. Presumably that strip is connected to your computer through a USB cable or Bluetooth.
But yeah, it is confusing that the site doesn’t make that clear. They should show how you plug dataSTICKIES in right next to that “not the USB port” image in the Why block.
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.
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.
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.
It's likely some design student's final year project.
It's a designer's reboot of the "portable disk" interaction paradigm we have that started with cassettes and moved to floppies and disks and now portable hard drives/flash drives.
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.
The site has the format of a product presentation site rather than a designer's portfolio site. Its format is intentionally misleading. And that sort of disingenuousness is grating.
If this were on DeviantArt, etc., clearly framed as a design, the reactions would be more muted and possibly positive.
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.
"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."
- 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.
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.
Allow me to articulate my issue with it. It pushes the impression that these are the creative geniuses that are pushing things forward. Someone else just has to do the 'little detail' of making it work. The engineers that spend their careers making this kind of stuff have usually thought of these ideas before, but they did not put up a flashy web page for people to fawn over-- because they actually realised the issues and inviabilities involved.
This idea is by no means the worst- that award goes to the 'modular' mobile phone designed to reduce waste, that anyone with the slightest bit of knowledge of mass production or high-speed circuitry would instantly write off as laughable. With flexible circuitry, this is actually not that far from being possible. The main issue is the data transfer.. you could spend a lot of time and money getting something to work poorly, or you could just obtain the same practical functionality infinitely better and easier by making them act as physical shortcuts to cloud (or local) storage-- why would you want your data strewn across many slow, small stickies that you could easily lose instead!? And this links back to my original point that the engineers have already thought of it-- because you have just reinvented NFC.
Now, when i first looked at this i had been awake 24 hours so may have not noticed those things due to sleep deprivation. However i seem to distinctly remember not any of the clarifying language about concepts and envisioning being there 12 hours ago, so i think they saw the negative feedback and updated their website.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
There is indeed a correlation between a physical (or three-dimensional virtual) place and information. The ancient Greeks discovered this. The British historian Frances Yates wrote about this in her Art of Memory. What is lacking in computer UI is precisely taking advantage of this ancient insight.
I knew someone writing books on this concept. He was trying to extend this into quantum mechanics where the underlying foundations are not inanimate particles but information. Science has been taking information out. It requires a long discussion, but let me know if you are interested and I can forward his paper.
> 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.
You have a point.
There has been research on making "File Explorer"-like applications have similar "enriched" context as what you're referring to, but it never took off.
(various interesting ways to approach this idea, but they are irrelevant to the point I want to make here)
I think one reason (though probably not the/foremost reason) might be that, unlike an actual physical storage context, there is no guarantee that whenever you view a particular folder, it will be displayed in this particular manner.
Some applications have their own file-explore/open dialog, sometimes apps or websites will transform your view. Currently, most OS's have at least three different ways to "view" the same folder (list/icons/details).
If your data is on a USB-stick, it's even worse, every device will show you its particular "interpretation" of your filesystem structure. This was less of a problem with the smaller 512MB sticks that might contain just a few files, but nowadays 32GB sticks are not uncommon, holding a user's entire documents library (or a copy thereof).
Contrast with a physical file system, nobody is going to impose their "view" or "interpretation" of your personal (physical) files. In fact, it's considered bad manners to reorder someone's bookshelves without permission ;)
That's (part of) the reason why you can find files so easily in physical systems, because every time you interact with it, your memory of where particular items are located is reinforced, because there is just one representation of that system, regardless of context. This representation might even be sub-optimal qua efficiency, and you can still at least reap the benefit of familiarity.
"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 see where you are coming from now and I think this would be true if search was absent from digital note takers. Now, though all you have to remember is where/which project you usually use to store notes and then search.
That is why, in my opinion, physical locations are less relevant when talking about digital content.
(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).
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.
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?
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.
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.]
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
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 :)
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
98 comments
[ 0.26 ms ] story [ 48.5 ms ] threadThis is a waste of time.
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.
Of course, you could store just some cryptographic keys and unique file IDs on a small, low-throughput drive in a form factor like this, and link it into a cloud storage service. That would at least approach making practical sense.
The thing is, if you're going to require an internet connection to make the little tabs work at all, you may as well just do it all online in a pure cloud service in the first place…
This should be made MUCH MUCH clearer, because it's a really cool idea that takes way too long to find in that page.
But yeah, it is confusing that the site doesn’t make that clear. They should show how you plug dataSTICKIES in right next to that “not the USB port” image in the Why block.
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.
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.
It's both optical, and conducts data via some plastic adhesive. You can't say they haven't thought things through.
Well designed, but, don't they know USB sticks are on their way out?
Graphene organs, stick them to your face and let them compensate for your bad health via sound.
Apparently adverts for products which don't exist and never will exist are also nearly indistinguishable from adverts for advanced technology.
It's a designer's reboot of the "portable disk" interaction paradigm we have that started with cassettes and moved to floppies and disks and now portable hard drives/flash drives.
> 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.
I suppose that's inevitable in the long run.
If this were on DeviantArt, etc., clearly framed as a design, the reactions would be more muted and possibly positive.
- 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.
On the other hand, I love concept videos.
This idea is by no means the worst- that award goes to the 'modular' mobile phone designed to reduce waste, that anyone with the slightest bit of knowledge of mass production or high-speed circuitry would instantly write off as laughable. With flexible circuitry, this is actually not that far from being possible. The main issue is the data transfer.. you could spend a lot of time and money getting something to work poorly, or you could just obtain the same practical functionality infinitely better and easier by making them act as physical shortcuts to cloud (or local) storage-- why would you want your data strewn across many slow, small stickies that you could easily lose instead!? And this links back to my original point that the engineers have already thought of it-- because you have just reinvented NFC.
(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 ) )
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.
And can do the same thing, associate data. Generate unique urls that go to a web service that allows "mapping".
It's on github [1]. Though I haven't created any video or documentation yet.
[1] https://github.com/Alexander-Dhoore/tagTheWorld
You have a point.
There has been research on making "File Explorer"-like applications have similar "enriched" context as what you're referring to, but it never took off.
(various interesting ways to approach this idea, but they are irrelevant to the point I want to make here)
I think one reason (though probably not the/foremost reason) might be that, unlike an actual physical storage context, there is no guarantee that whenever you view a particular folder, it will be displayed in this particular manner.
Some applications have their own file-explore/open dialog, sometimes apps or websites will transform your view. Currently, most OS's have at least three different ways to "view" the same folder (list/icons/details).
If your data is on a USB-stick, it's even worse, every device will show you its particular "interpretation" of your filesystem structure. This was less of a problem with the smaller 512MB sticks that might contain just a few files, but nowadays 32GB sticks are not uncommon, holding a user's entire documents library (or a copy thereof).
Contrast with a physical file system, nobody is going to impose their "view" or "interpretation" of your personal (physical) files. In fact, it's considered bad manners to reorder someone's bookshelves without permission ;)
That's (part of) the reason why you can find files so easily in physical systems, because every time you interact with it, your memory of where particular items are located is reinforced, because there is just one representation of that system, regardless of context. This representation might even be sub-optimal qua efficiency, and you can still at least reap the benefit of familiarity.
I see where you are coming from now and I think this would be true if search was absent from digital note takers. Now, though all you have to remember is where/which project you usually use to store notes and then search.
That is why, in my opinion, physical locations are less relevant when talking about digital content.
(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).
also it would be great if they are chewable.. looks like pack of juicy fruit gum
[1] http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/flashkus/
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.]