James Bond always had the coolest gadgets, some quite fanciful, others quite possible. Decades after a James Bond picture arrives in theatres, devices appear on the market that emulate some of the wild ideas the movies put forth, from spy cameras disguised as lighters to cars that can drive themselves.

One only has to look at the dearth of gadgets coming on the market today to see that we can now all have a bit of 007 in us, from home security systems that look like motion detectors to eavesdropping devices masked as a cell phone.

Is that Timex really a watch? Or is it a USB flash drive holding your sensitive data? The answer these days is that it can be both.

While Timex isn’t the maker, you can get a custom USB flash drive watch that also tells time. Hidden in the band is a USB connector. When you want to steal a little data (or back up your own), you can just unhook the connector and transfer up to 8 gigs of data. Best of all, it’s right there with you all the time. No more fumbling around in your pocket to find a handy USB flash drive, it’s right there on your wrist along with the current time and date.

Ordinary pens aren’t so ordinary either these days. Uncap the end and instead of ink you’ll find a USB flash drive. One second you could be writing an innocent note to someone and the next you can be docking the pen into a computer and backing up data. Not only are these great pens, but great USB flash drives as well. Sure, you could go with a standard USB flash drive, but why not get one that can also serve as a writing instrument, always at the ready to be analog or digital at a moment’s notice.

Even traditional USB flash drives can be pretty stealthy. There are drives on the market that contain their own ID scanner that can read fingerprints. Once you’re ready to lock down the data, you simply scan your own fingerprint once and the drive will use it to identify you and lock out intruders. Unless they have a duplicate set of your fingerprints, but that’s another story all together. You can be confident that no one else can access your data with these amazing drives. And if you want others to access it, it can handle up to 10 unique fingerprint IDs, so everyone that is supposed to access the data can.

These are just a few of the many USB sticks on the market today that aren’t what they appear to be. Because the actual drives are so small, they lend themselves well to becoming anything a savvy designer can think of. So, the next time you’re using an innocent looking lighter, perhaps you should wonder if it too leads a secret life as a USB flash drive