We love weird Usb Drives here at the Office Supplies Blog. They come in all size, color and shape. This week, we have the Mixa, a 1GB flash drive that connects to your PC via USB.

The drive looks just like an old school tape cassette, and comes in three colors - black, white and turquoise. You get to custom design the look and packaging of the Mixa device by using ready-made images on the Mixa site or by uploading your own personal images, through a fun flash application.

Once you’ve pimped out your Mixa, they’ll then send you outthe drive to your door so that you can fill it up with music, video, photos and other goodies to create that special gift.

Pricing for the Mixa device is about $41 USD including worldwide shipping. Good Mixa!

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 The following are winners of IDSA’s 2008 IDEA ( International Design Excellence Awards ). The below chosen few designs are particularly office environment oriented, which I hope will inspire our blog reader to the possibilities that are inherent in your everyday office cubicles.

Jelly Click

Bronze
Student Designs
Client: Samsung Design Membership (South Korea)
Design: Wooteik Lim (South Korea), Bongkun Shin (South Korea), Heungkyo Seo (South Korea), Jiwoong Hwang (South Korea)

Laptop mice are generally smaller than desktop devices, which can cause the user’s hand to tire easily. Jelly Click is a mouse for laptops that offers enhanced usability and portability. Users simply inflate it to the size that best suits their hand. Its soft texture provides a comfortable surface on which the hand can rest, and its delicate color produces a different experience from an ordinary desktop mouse. When not in use, just deflate Jelly Click for ultimate portability.

Tippi Micro Gel Grips

Bronze
Office & Productivity
Client: VWP (U.S.)
Design: Peter Bristol, IDSA (U.S.)

Tippi Micro Gel Grips are simple devices that provide a simple benefit: fingertip coverings that enhance performance during repetitive and tedious tasks, such as paper handling and sorting, scrapbooking and archiving. These small, colorful rubber grips are worn on the fingertips. Designed to outperform existing products, they liven up tasks and bring a ray of fun into a mundane product landscape.

Trace of Time

Silver
Student Designs
Client: Royal College of Art (Britain)
Design: Ilgu Cha (Britain)

The Trace of Time clock not only tells the time but provides a place for users to make notes: The face of the clock is made of laminated whiteboard. Messages are erased by means of the integrated eraser.

For an easy comprehensive view of this year’s IDEA winners, please visit Businessweek

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Below are other ideas for addressing the other two aspects of sustainability’s Triple Bottom Line. As mentioned above, it is not expected that the organization undertake all these practices but rather to prioritize among them, select those that will have the greatest impact and add the most value, and then over time, perhaps address others.

(1) Economic success: the wise use of financial resources

Check all that currently apply or interest you.

(a) Organization’s Economic Prosperity
• Business Improvement. Develop and implement strategies and tactics to strengthen the business over the short and long terms.

(b) Community’s Economic Prosperity

• Donations. Donate money and/or time to charitable or economic development activities that strengthen the community.
• Voluntary Deductions. Create the opportunity for, but do not coerce, voluntary automatic deductions from employee compensation for donations to social and environmental causes of the employee’s choice.
• Local Contractors. Use local contractors, if available, for needed services.
• Fairtrade Items. Buy fairtrade coffee and/or other “fairtrade” products for use by the organization.

(2) Social responsibility: respect for people

(a) Respect for Employees
• Employee Feedback. Conduct regular employee meetings and/or use other techniques (surveys, focus groups, etc.) by which employees can provide constructive feedback to management; communicate management’s response.
• Training & Development. Encourage and support ongoing skills development and training for employees.
• Performance Reviews. Provide all employees regular performance reviews and personal development plans.
• Mentoring. Establish a program under which experienced employees mentor new employees and interns.
• Manager Training. Provide training for new managers on how to supervise and coach other employees
• Compensation. Provide employees with competitive compensation and benefits
• Ergonomics, Safety Training. Assure employees have ergonomically appropriate equipment, furniture, and workstations (including lighting), and the training to do their jobs safely.
• Electrical Safety. Periodically assess the office for compliance with good electrical safety practices, and correct any problems noted.
• Travel Safety. Provide training on safety related to travel, as relevant (e.g., responding to hotel fires, avoiding street crime, safety in airplanes, food safety, obtaining medical care).
• Back Safety. Provide back-safety training for employees who often lift boxes of records or other heavy items.
• Exits. Periodically check exits to assure they are not blocked or locked so as to prevent emergency egress, and are properly marked if visitors may be confused about their location.
• Emergencies. Establish emergency response procedures that cover fires, explosions, workplace violence and other hazards, and that include evacuation procedures and contacting emergency response authorities. Have the entire staff conduct a drill annually and evaluate the results.
• Harmful Substances. Have the offices evaluated for the presence of the following, and, if present in potentially harmful quantities, manage them appropriately to prevent harmful exposures:

- Friable asbestos
- Harmful mold
- Radon
- Lead paint (for older properties)

• Indoor Air Pollution. Assure that office air is otherwise safe and comfortable.
• Employee Records. Establish procedures for maintaining the privacy of employee records.
• Work-Life. Adopt measures to help assure the proper work-life balance of employees, including as appropriate, the following:
• Child care benefits
• Early or late work hours to avoid traffic congestion
• Telecommuting, where practicable
• Sabbatical program
• Retention of temporary help during times of heavy workloads
• Maternity and paternity leave policy
• Opportunities for part-time work and job-sharing
• Clear communication of work priorities and deadlines to subordinates
• Competitive (and mandatory) vacation policy
• Policy on overtime for hourly workers

(b) Diversity, Fair Hiring Practices

• Diversity. Include diversity as important criteria in the hiring of employees, as well as suppliers, consultants, and other retained firms.

(c) Responsible Governance

• Ethics Training. Provide initial and regular refresher training to employees on the relevant ethics and disciplinary rules, and establish a policy making adherence to legal and ethical standards a condition of employment.

(d) Dealing With Customers

• Customer Privacy. Assure employees are aware of the rules on customer privacy and confidentiality of information.
• Customer Satisfaction. Institute periodic surveys or other regular measures to collect feedback on customer satisfaction with products and services; respond as appropriate.
• Business Promotion; Green Claims. Assure that the advertising and promotional practices of the organization conform to the Better Business Bureau’s Code of Advertising and Code of Online Business Practices. See http://us.bbb.org/ . Assure that any green promotional communications are clear, transparent and balanced, and that green claims about products or services are specific, accurate, and verifiable.

(e) Awareness and Advice

• Sustainability Awareness. Use training sessions or other techniques to raise awareness of employees about the sustainability policy and the sustainability issues in your business.

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BIC® , the well known makers of disposable razor blades, lighters and ballpoint pens is now venturing in the world of Telecom. Partnered with Orange,  the BIC® phone will be a “simple cell phone that is 100% ready to go” and will be launched at first only in France.

The Phone comes with 60 free minutes, the battery charged, and the SIM card already in place, with the possibility of purchasing extra minutes (you pay as you go), with a prepaid “mobicarte” refill card. It focuses on cell phone basics: sending and receiving calls and SMS.
The phone pack will be easy to find and sold over the counter, in major supermarkets and local convenience stores (tobacco shops, newsstands, train stations, airports…), and will be available as of the back to school period.

Like other quick-sale items, the handsets are designed for convenience - available in citrus orange and lime green, in a innovative packaging for €49, or about $75,  which includes the hardware, phone number and one hour of calls. The phone would be great as a back-up phone.

The BBC has released a video statement regarding the disposal of the BIC phones and addresses possible recycling facilities. Many are afraid that consumers will embrace the “throwaway and replace” phone and not make the effort to reuse or recycle the item. Surely this topic will continue to be addressed by many environmental organizations, and by BIC® who emphasize that the phone is not a “disposable” phone.

Learn more at: http://www.bicworld.com/

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Wow, if you thought working at your white-collared job, sitting in your well equipped air-conditioned office, thinking that this is probably one of the safest place to be… you may just want to think twice about that. The office is a jungle. Beside having to watch your back against office colleagues who may be wolf in sheep’s clothes, you may just have to watch out for those seemingly utilitarian office supplies, because in conjuncture with other seemingly innocent office supplies, they may just result to be one of the deadliest office weapon yet. Below is an example of our favorite office supplies- binder clips, turned into office weapons.

Take a few binder clips of varying sizes, turn them upside down, and clip the smaller binder clips inside the larger clips.

It should look like this when the larger binder clips have clipped the smaller ones.

Remove all the binder clip handles.

Add another 2 larger binder clips on top of the smaller edge with a rubber band in between.

Take out the binder clips handle again.

Reverse wrap the larger rubber band.

If you want, you could add a laser pointer on top of this office weapon to help you aim.

You could elongated object of your choice, in this case, pens and pencils works perfectly,

This office weapon could really hurt if used correctly.

Close up of the result of this office weapon.

Disclaimer: Shoplet.com in no way condone the use of office supplies weapon in the work place, or anywhere else.

If you like this post, click here, for another one of our interesting post on office supplies that could kill.

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