SwivelCard is a business card with brains. There are many inventors out there trying to come up with products and gadgets to make life easier and seamlessly merge technology in our everyday lives. But, not all of them stand out in terms of originality. IntelliPaper is one of those that compel you to sit up and take notice. They have come up with paper USB drives. Yes, you read that right.
These drives are essentially strips of paper, almost as thick as business cards, embedded with memory chips. While their data holding capacities are limited, ranging from 8 MB to 32 MB, they present us with vast data distribution possibilities.
These drives are fascinating to use, although they have a few bugs. You might have some trouble in getting the USB reader to register in your computer and you might have to call the company’s helpline to sort it out. The reader does not yet have the ability to write data on drives, but the makers promise that the functionality is coming in the near future.
These paper drives might not appeal to the average consumer, but they can find an eager audience in businesses that want to distribute information easily through the mail. It would be quite cool to open a regular mail, only to find a paper USB drive. The makers are developing a version that can be used as a greeting card. To access the data from the drives wirelessly, the company is developing a Near Field Communication – enabled version.
The product’s pricing is attractive. It is quite easy to imagine companies distributing these drives at trade shows, and the thought of its success with consumers who might be ready to buy boxes of ten–count cards for $9.99 does evoke a lot of confidence.
There is the concern of what might happen if one of these gets wet. But, as the company points out, these drives are made to be disposable. If, by chance, a drive does get washed, it would not set someone back by a considerable sum as would be the case with regular drives. All you have to do is pull out another one and be more careful with it in the future.
IntelliPaper is a brilliant idea. Let’s admit it, paper flash drives are things straight out of a James Bond movie.
