memory

I continue to be fan of Eye-Fi memory cards, which wirelessly beam photos from your digital camera to your PC and/or an online service like Flickr or Facebook.

I'm not, however, a fan of their high prices. Dropping a hundred bucks on a 4GB SD card--even one with built-in Wi-Fi--is not my idea of a good deal.

Here's a better one: Today only, Best Buy outlet store Cowboom has the 4GB Eye-Fi Explore Video SD card for $29.99, plus $5 for shipping. (You may also be on the hook for sales tax.) This same card lists … Read more

Typing used to be the domain of writers and secretaries, but now it's an essential skill for just about everybody. Klavaro Touch Typing Tutor is an easy-to-use program that can help everyone, from beginning hunt-and-peckers to more practiced typists, improve their keyboard skills.

The program's interface is plain and intuitive, with a menu that takes you through an introduction and four different levels of typing instruction. The introduction covers the basic concepts of touch typing, and the lessons include a basic course, wherein you practice typing sequences of two or three keys; adaptability, in which you type sequences … Read more

Those who lived through the days of xD card vs. Memory Stick vs. CompactFlash vs. Secure Digital may think people need a new flash memory card format like we need a hole in our heads. Who, after all, has a burning desire to upgrade the 9-in-1 flash card reader to a 10-in-1 model?

An established industry standards group, JEDEC, has a new format it hopes will catch on, though.

The group already took over standardization of the MultiMediaCard specification that's chiefly relevant today hidden away inaccessibly in its embedded form, EMMC, that's used under the covers of various … Read more

When it comes to flash memory cards, large capacity and high data-transfer speeds usually are somewhat mutually exclusive advantages--if nothing else, to keep the costs down. But what happens when you give the product development folks an opportunity to indulge their fantasies?

SanDisk's new Extreme Pro CompactFlash card unveiled at CES, that's what.

This card from one of the premier brands in flash memory products has three superlative attributes: a 128GB capacity, a data-writing speed of "up to" 100 megabytes per second via a UDMA-7 interface, and a price tag one penny shy of $1,500. … Read more

The SD Association announced a new interface for flash memory cards today that triples data transfer speeds.

The faster SD card specification was expected since the group started previewing it in September. But more unusually for the consortium, the SD Association also announced an e-book specification at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

"Our new e-Book application...opens broad consumer access to e-book content, and turns billions of existing SD mobile phones and devices into e-readers," Norm Frentz, chairman of the SD Association, said in a statement. "SD continues to evolve its capabilities to support voracious consumer demand for portable movies, television broadcasts, high-definition home videos, and now full-color books."

It's not yet clear who among e-book reader makers, publishers, or other companies are on board with the new specification, but two partners showing eBook support at CES are Toshiba and Sharp, the association said. Such partnerships will be important to its success, though, and there already are other e-book formats, such as ePub.

But eBook won't live in isolation. "The association plans to support popular external formats like ePublish, CPS, XMDF and ".book" formats in the near future," said SD Association communications director Kevin Schader. And to keep content publishers happy, it's free to use and supports copy protection. … Read more

Lexar Media, one of the premium-brand flash memory card makers, will introduce its first SDXC cards later this quarter with two high-end models geared for professionals, a 64GB card for $500 and a 128GB card for $700.

The 128GB model illustrates the narrowing gap between the SD lineage and a rival format popular among professionals, CompactFlash, which tops out at 64GB for mainstream brands. But while SDXC might be a step ahead in capacity--at least when it comes to announced products--CompactFlash leads in a different domain, data transfer speed.

Each of Lexar's new SDXC cards, with a 133X speed … Read more

A new kind of memory from IBM Labs is promising to revolutionize how much data we can store and how fast we can access it on our mobile and desktop devices.

After spending six years as a theoretical concept, the memory, dubbed Racetrack, finally is a huge step closer to reality. Researchers at IBM have recently confirmed that their theories of the physics behind Racetrack are valid and can be used to develop and manufacture this new type of memory.

This revolutionary type of memory could open up a whole new world for laptops, smartphones, and other mobile devices. Users would be able to store as much as 100 more times data on their portable gadgets, perhaps keeping as many as 500,000 songs or 3,500 full-length movies on one mobile device. And since Racetrack would use considerably less power, a single battery charge could power a device for weeks rather than days or hours.

The new memory is also expected to play a role in desktop computers and servers, allowing them to access more data much faster. In some ways, Racetrack combines the best elements of flash memory and magnetic storage and could prove to be the one technology to someday replace current RAM, Flash RAM, and even conventional disk drives.… Read more

China will soon overtake Japan as the world's second heaviest spender on research and development, according to a report from the Battelle Memorial Institute.

A nonprofit group that conducts scientific research, Battelle published its findings today as part of an article in its R&D Magazine. The article and its full supplementary report (PDF) looked at global R&D spending in general and across six specific segments--Information Technology, Electronics, Life Sciences, Aerospace/Defense/Security, Energy, and Advanced Materials.

Next year, China is expected to spend $153.7 billion on R&D, a big jump from $141.… Read more

In the flash-memory format wars, Secure Digital has vanquished xD Card and Memory Stick. SD, as it's known, is supported by everything from Apple laptops to Panasonic 3D videocameras.

But CompactFlash, a rival flash-card format that prevails in high-end SLRs from Canon, Nikon, and Sony, is holding out. More than that: its backers are developing a high-performance successor. Nikon, Sony, and memory card maker SanDisk have proposed that the CompactFlash Association standardize a sequel that can transfer data at a rate of 500MB per second and reach eventual capacities of 6TB.

"This next-generation format is expected to be … Read more