AkinaUSA USB Card - Computer Times Editors' Choice

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Physician's Choice (Great American Products)

June 2008

Editors' Choice Portable Storage Device

AkinaUSA Credit Card-Sized USB Card

Reviewed by Terry Kibiloski

AkinaUSA’s credit card-sized USB Card (Retail $19.95 1GB , $24.95 2GB , $29.95 4GB), is an incredible device that fits in your wallet like a standard credit card. While USB storage devices are not new, this new USB Card is sure to revolutionize the way we use digital data, music, pictures, and video. It is similar to the wrist watch in its functionality. While the pocket watch and other time pieces were available prior to the wrist watch, everyone did not begin carrying a time piece until a suitable transport vehicle like the watch band was invented. AkinaUSA’s USB Card is the same sort of vehicle for USB storage, providing a means to conveniently have your data with you at all times, tucked in your wallet with your credit cards. It is also a card that could save your life!

Imagine you are at the doctor’s office and they ask you for all of your medical information. No problem. You simply open your wallet and get out your AkinaUSA USB Card. Imagine you are in an accident, or you, or a loved one, has special medical needs. With this card in your wallet or purse, emergency medical personnel could immediately have your medical history, doctor contacts, prescription information, and other vital information that could save your life. All of the AkinaUSA USB Cards come standard with a software package called ICE/My Medical Records. This is a password protected medical history package that includes your photo ID, personal, medical, doctor, and insurance information, giving you instant access to your emergency medical records. How is that for convenience? The opening screen of this program is shown below.

In addition to your medical information, there is plenty of room on the card to store your personal and professional data, music, pictures and video. As the old charge card commercial used to say, "you'll never leave home without it." AkinaUSA offers quantity discounts which makes this USB card ideal for business cards that contain videos and screen shots of your entire product line, or handing out take-home digital photos to everyone at a family reunion, or including a digital photo album and family videos inside your Christmas cards, or a gazillion other uses that are limited only by your imagination. No longer do we have to remember to take along our memory sticks, that either look geeky as they hang around our necks, or fall out of our pockets, or get left at our workstations. All we need to do is open our wallets and we have all of our data with us. In our testing, we found it almost second nature to remove this device from our PC and automatically put it in our wallet since it looks like a credit card.

The brilliance behind the AkinaUSA USB Card is that all of the circuitry and storage media is embedded in the connector, as shown in the photo below, unlike other cards which have the circuitry and storage media embedded in the card, many times with the card being glued together, only to fail at the time the glue gives out due to moisture, impact, or just plain aging. We really like the durability of the material used to attach the connector to the credit card-sized holder since it is not glued but is made a permanent part of the carrier itself in the manufacturing process. We also like the fact that even if the card carrier itself somehow did get destroyed, the actual connector could be cut off from the damaged credit card-sized holder since all of the storage is in the connector, and not in the card.

Another great feature of this card is that it is designed for a variety of screen printing techniques, making it possible for AkinaUSA to easily custom brand your USB Cards with your logo (like the Computer Times logo superimposed on the image below), print your family reunion name and date, your family names for your Christmas card inserts, photos, or anything else you want printed on your USB cards. Since all of the cards include the software package ICE/My Medical Records, your family, friends, and customers not only get your data, music, pictures, and video, they also get the card that might save their life. How is that for a personal, business, or promotional value-added gift?

If you need further customization, AkinaUSA can embed custom software onto the USB Card specially designed per client specifications. The company has in-house programming capabilities to assist clients in integrating data from other databases, or creating customized solutions that can be put on the USB Card such as:

• Website Auto Launch

• Electronic Coupon Promotions

• Special Announcements

• Video

• Frequent Shopper Programs

• Integration with existing databases, etc.

In addition to customization, if a company wants to integrate the card with an existing database or proprietary software, the USB Card can provide an SDK (software development kit) that will make the integration easy.

This AkinaUSA USB Card is one of those products that you want to say, “It’s about time someone did this.” It is so simple, logical, and dependable, that it easily earned our Editors’ Choice award. For more information on this product, or to purchase this product, visit Akina-USA by clicking on the symbol of the card below.