Where can I find CD-ROM business cards and “shaped” CDs?
(2005/11/08) You can find CD-ROMs in many interesting shapes, including ovals and rectangles. These are functional CD-ROMs that are, for example, the same size and shape as a traditional business card (well, a really thick business card). They can have your name and contact information printed on the front, and can hold a modest amount of data, typically about 40MB. Recordable CD-R business cards are available as well. As with 80mm CDs (see section (7-14)), you may have trouble playing these “discs” on CD-ROM drives that use caddies or have a “slot-in” design. Some net.vendors (there are many others, but this is a good start): http://www.cdrom2go.com/ http://www.newcyberian.com/ http://www.cdshapes.com/ http://www.pocketcd.com/ http://www.cddigitalcard.com/ http://www.sculptedcd.com/ http://www.avomedia.com/record/index.html http://www.nycd.com/ http://www.cdroutlet.com/ http://www.xdr2.com/ http://www.shimad.com/ http://www.home-run.com/ http://www.cdcardusa.com/ http://www.americal.c
(2001/11/27) The 80mm CD didn’t catch on everywhere. In some markets, notably the USA, pressed “CD single” discs are rarely seen. The 80mm CD-R made a brief appearance, and then vanished for a while. As of the middle of the year 2000, they were once again easy to find. In mid-2001, Sony started using them in one of their Mavica camera models, and towards the end of 2001 80mm-based MP3 players appeared. They’re pretty easy to find now. Using them is not as straightforward as could be hoped. Most *software* will work just fine, because all CD-Rs have slightly different capacities, especially when you consider 63-minute, 74-minute, and 80-minute blanks. The problems stem from their physical dimensions. Pretty much all tray-based recorders have grooves for 120mm discs and 80mm discs. However, not all of them can actually record 80mm discs. Web sites for recent drives will sometimes indicate whether or not they’re compatible. Some CD recorders can read the discs but not write them, possibly
(html) http://www.fadden.com/cdrfaq/ (text) ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-group/comp.publish.cdrom.hardware/ -CDCardUSA sells business card CD-Rs that hold 50mb. They also have labels for them that look pretty good with an inkjet printer. I’ve had good luck recording on them at 4X. With CDCreator it takes about 45 seconds to record 50mb of data and then another 2min 45sec for what I call “overhead”, recording the TOC etc. So it takes 3.5 minutes total from start to finish. I wish I could find a way to speed this up. Going to an 8X reduce the time to record the data to 22.5 seconds but the overhead remains the same so I only save 22 seconds.
