South Korea's Iocell has integrated Internet telephony into a compact USB Flash drive all in the name of conversational convenience.

"The PhoneDrive can fit inside your pants pocket and be carried anywhere," says the company.

The PhoneDrive product line provides between 128MB and 4GB of removable storage capacity, squeezed into a 7.4 x 2.1 x 0.7cm USB drive. The unit also packs in a "built-in sound card and retractable earphone" and holds its own VoIP application tucked away in a write-protected 5MB partition on the drive.

Plug the PhoneDrive into your PC, and it automatically loads up the softphone app - the partition appears to Windows as a CD-RW with Autorun - ready to connect through to - presumably - SIP-compatible VoIP applications on other users' PCs around the globe.

Iocell is also touting VaccineDrive, a USB flash disk with integrated anti-virus software. Again, the code sits safe in a protected partition and is activated immediately the drive is connected courtesy of Windows' Autorun facility.

Iocell said the anti-virus service can and will be updated, though updates are only "free for two years after date of purchase". Updates are pushed via the Internet to the drive, which like PhoneDrive is based on Iocell's C2 technology.

Iocell didn't say when VaccineDrive or PhoneDrive will ship in the West - the company is currently looking for distribution partners. ®

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