Tag: USB

Tether, a tethering app that's been available for BlackBerry smartphones for some time now, just hit Android phones. For $24.99, it will let you share your Android device's data connection with your computer via USB. Unlike Google's free Android tethering app, Tether works on Android 1.5 and up (the built-in app started with Android 2.2). Now, to readers outside the US, Tether may sound like a ...

Ever wanted to use your non-jailbroken iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad as a USB flash drive? Then head on over to Phone Disk right now and grab yourself a free download for either Windows or Mac. Once installed, Phone Disk lets you use your iOS device of choice like a flash drive, with the majority of the file system available for browsing. Like a 'disk mode' or 'mass storage device', you can dump ...

Using a well-documented and easily-replicated flaw in the USB specification, a bunch of plucky Canadians have managed to turn innocuous peripherals like keyboards into a hardware trojan horse. The team produced a modified keyboard that was capable of transmitting data in Morse code, using an LED -- but that was just a proof of concept! There's nothing to prevent a keyboard from sending data ...

John T. Haller's Portable Apps suite sets the standard when it comes to one-stop-shopping for programs for your USB flash drive. Today on the official Platform blog, Haller has shared details and screenshots of the upcoming 2.0 release -- and it's looking good. Currently in beta for about two more weeks, the final release is slated for some time later this month. Among the improvements you'll ...

I play around with a lot of Linux distributions and while I typically just virtualize them using an app like VirtualBox or VMware, sometimes it's nice to be able to test them on bare metal. A nice, pain-free way to do that is with Pendrive Linux's Universal USB Installer. The tool's actually been around for a while, but you may not have heard of it -- it's not talked about as much as other ...

If you do a lot of resolution swapping on your PC, it get to be kind of a pain clicking through to your display properties all the time. While there are plenty of apps which provide hotkeys to change display modes, Hotkey Resolution Changer is a nice alternative. HRC is totally portable, making it a nice utility to add to your USB flash drive. Set up the modes you need on your desktop, laptop, ...

Now that the final version has been released and the public is happily playing with the new features and increased speed of Opera 10.50, it's time to update that portable version on your USB flash drive. Fortunately, Opera@USB has just released an update. Both a standalone portable version of Opera 10.50 and an upgrader for users of Opera@USB's previous 10.X versions are available. Teamed ...

One of the more irritating problems in trying to automate backup to a USB drive is that the drive letter may randomly change. There are utilities to keep this from happening, but they can be a bit of a hassle to set up. Back4Sure is a simple backup utility with all of the generic features you would expect, and one nice extra: It lets you specify the destination volume by label (i.e, ...

There was a bit of a furore over Microsoft's 'Windows 7 Netbook Installation tool' back in November because they broke the cardinal rule this decade of software development: they used open-source code and didn't declare it. Even worse, they modified open-source code and locked it up in proprietary, closed-source software. FOR SHAME! But it's OK: it was just a mistake, an honest mistake. They ...

PortableApps.com has been amassing a large, loyal fanbase for years - and with good reason. The project continues to turn out useful applications that we love to run from our USB flash drives. Today, project lead John T. Haller announced the addition of a handful of closed source applications to the PortableApps family - something that has never been done before. Haller offers a number of ...

Plenty of people out there are still running the odd DOS application - many of them for business purposes. So what are you to do when that trusty old printer breaks down and you can't find a new one with a parallel port? Why not buy a fancy new USB-only printer and make use of a stupid Windows trick that's been around for a while? It's a fairly simple process. Step one is to install the ...

I can't always get to my main laptop when I feel like putting together a blog post. If you've read some of my other lists, you probably noticed that I'm a big fan of portable applications for just this reason. As long as I've got my trusty USB flash drive, I'm always equipped with the programs I need to get things done. Here are ten of my favorites (plus two alternatives). With these programs ...

My flash drive works pretty hard, so I've spent a lot of time gathering a reliable, powerful set of portable tools that allow me to work hard and play hard, even if I can't do it on my own PC. Here are two dozen apps that I always have at the ready. Encryption Truecrypt - Why is TrueCrypt first on the list? Simple. A multi-gig, easy-to-lose, unencrypted drive with your data on it is a ...

USB Image Tool is a utility for creating an exact image of pretty much anything you plug into your USB port. This isn't the same thing as copying and pasting all the files on a flash drive to a new directory or zip file. Instead, every chunk of data on your flash drive is saved in a single file that you can then burn to a disc, upload to an offsite storage location, or just save on your hard ...

Way back in the dark ages of 1993, we were introduced to this thing called email. Email in the olden days was not like email now. All the packets traveled uphill no matter where they were going, and usually there was a good three or four feet of snow on the internet backbone. We used these big hulking things called VAX/VMS nodes that were attached to some pretty sweet fourteen inch monochrome VT ...