The Greek goddess of memory, Mnemosyne, would surely be proud of this product bearing her name. For starters, it comes at a price few mere mortals can afford and is couched within an extravagant all-aluminum body. The puzzle cube certainly provides a ceremonial feel to accessing the data within, and makers Solid Alliance are pitching it as a luxurious receptacle for your most treasured memories. Yes, under all the sheen, you are still looking at 16GB of standard issue flash memory, but can we really put a price on mythology-infused style?

Despite new cameras being riddled with borderline useless features and modes, useful functionality like automatic geotagging is getting little love from the big players. All the more reason for third parties to sneak in and make a few bucks, and ATP certainly seems to be on top of it. We liked the idea of the company's PhotoFinder, but that base station looked like needless desk clutter. The new PhotoFinder Pro does away with it, featuring an integrated SD, Memory Stick, and MMC card reader. Just sync up the clock in the unit with that of your shooter, clip it onto your camera bag for a day of scenic photography, and then pop your card in before downloading the pics that night. It'll automatically add coordinates to each photo's EXIF information, drastically reducing the likelihood of future spousal arguments about the whereabouts of certain Kodak moments. That sounds like a beautiful thing, and at $119 a good deal, too.

Update: Dan commented to point out that, with the help of an external USB card reader, the PhotoFinder Pro can also tag pics on CF, xD, or any other FAT/FAT32 formatted cards you might have sliding around in the bottom of your junk drawer.

[Via Photography Blog]

It's apparently not quite as far along as the newly-announced SDXC card format, but Sony and SanDisk have just announced that they're jointly developing a new Memory Stick format (tentatively dubbed the "Memory Stick format for Extended High Capacity") that'll reach the same dizzying 2TB heights as its SD counterpart. There's no more details on the format beyond that, unfortunately, but the pair has also announced that they're working on a new Memory Stick HG Micro format as well, which promises to boast a blazing 60MBps maximum data transfer speed. That's made possible, in part, thanks to a new 8-bit parallel interface with an increased 60MHz interface clock frequency. Sadly, there's no indication of a release date either of 'em, with the companies only going so far as to say that format licensing for both new formats is "scheduled to start in 2009."

We'd heard Lexar and Eye-Fi were getting snuggly back in January, and look at that -- nine months later the Lexar Shoot-n-Sync WiFi SD card has arrived on our doorstep. The 2GB card is basically just a Lexar-branded Eye-Fi Share, so you pretty much already know how it works -- you shoot, it uploads -- and it's even the same $99 price, so yeah, yawn. Hopefully these two will do something a little more interesting now that they've gotten used to working together. Lexar also kicked out a number of other cards, including a new 4GB Memory Stick Micro M2 card, a 16GB Platinum II 60x SDHC card, and a 16GB Platinum II 80x CompactFlash card -- no pricing or availability on any of those yet, but we'd expect them soon.

[Via Gearlog]

Read - Shoot-n-Sync
Read - Platinum II cards
Read - M2 card

Hey Sony, since you're so in love with tacking on random letters and such to your flash memory line, how's about we toss three capital consonants in your direction capped off with a lovely question mark? In a move that is depressingly not at all surprising, Sony has introduced the Memory Stick PRO-HG Duo HX, that latest in a long, long line of proprietary Memory Stick products that it insists on producing. These are supposedly "ideal for high performance digital cameras and HD camcorders," and they rely on an 8-bit parallel interface to achieve whatever level of performance they're capable of. Weirdly, Sony only quotes transfer speeds (a maximum of 20MB/sec read and 15MB/sec write) when the card is used in conjunction with the bundled MSAC-UAH1 USB adapter, but anywho, they'll be available in 4GB / 8GB flavors this October for those who care.

[Thanks, Rob]

Beating Sony to the punch is SanDisk's new 8GB Memory Stick PRO-HG Duo card. The "Extreme III Memory Stick PRO-HG Duo" touts the most convoluted name in portable flash storage as well as 3x the performance -- 30MBps read and write -- of standard Memory Stick Pro Duo cards. As such, they are perfect for high performance DSLRs and camcorders. Available worldwide in June for $150.

Sony first announced its speedy new Memory Stick PRO-HG Duo cards all the way back in December, but it's now finally gotten a bit more specific about them, including providing the all important details on pricing and availability. Set to be available in 1GB, 2GB, and 4GB capacities, the cards boast a new 8-bit parallel interface that Sony says translates to a 30MB/sec transfer rate, which makes 'em about three times faster than the standard Memory Stick Pro. To take advantage of all that speed, Sony's also providing an ExpressCard adapter for the new Memory Sticks, although they will still be compatible with standard 4-bit parallel interface hardware, albeit at a significantly reduced speed. While there doesn't appear to be any word on how much the adapter will cost, you can look for the cards themselves to set up back $60, $90, and $150 for the 1, 2, and 4GB variations, respectively, with all three available in August.

We're not exactly sure what's up with Asia's infatuation with toy cars and shoving completely irrelevant (but entirely useful) features inside of them, but now Marsilli is offering up its own admittedly peculiar flash drive in the shape of a vehicle. Presumably in direct competition with Gold Kiwi's Bluetooth GPS receiver ride, this Mobile Remote Control Car is a diminutive four-wheeled ride with impressive aerodynamics, a 512MB flash drive built-in, USB connector in place of a central-mounted exhaust, and it even allows users to drive it around a cardboard course with "any cellphone." Of course, we're not entirely sure if all that controlling action is done over Bluetooth or some other propriety channel, but we have strong suspicions "every mobile" might not be equipped to handle this road burner. Nevertheless, you can probably pick one of these up in the near future at your favorite street corner vendor in Asia, but for now, click on through for a more closeups.

They're slightly behind schedule on this, but Sony today announced the expected doubling of the Memory Stick Pro Duo format to 8GB. You'll be able to pick one of these bad boys up in February for the low, low (as we say in Kazakhstan: NOT!) price of $300.

Oh joy, Sony and SanDisk just announced a new PRO-HG Memory Stick format. The latest format is theoretically capable of delivering 32GB cards touting a continuous write speed of up to 60MB/sec; the same max capacity as the PRO Duo format but three times faster -- ideal for rapid shot modes on DSLRs or for capturing the action in real-time on direct to flash HD video recorders. Unlike the competing SDHC format's inability to work in legacy SD devices, PRO-HG is just an extension of the Memory Stick Pro format so the cards can be used interchangeably. However, PRO-HG media will function as PRO cards in PRO-only devices. In other words, you'll lose the speed advantage brought by that swank new 8-bit parallel interface. Expect to see cards and devices launched at CES in January.

[Via Impress]

USB memory stick manufacturers will stop at nothing to give their particular mass produced piece of plastic an edge over all the other mass produced pieces of plastic. Unfortunately, that means companies like Princeton from Japan are all too happy to market a range of 256MB, 512MB, and 1GB USB memory sticks as having psychic powers, all thanks to an endorsement by Masako Mitaki -- an apparently well-known Japanese psychic -- and a cheap software bundle. We'll give you a prediction: you won't buy this USB dongle. That'll be $5 and your soul, please.

Well, it only makes sense given that over the last quarter century our cleansing techniques have gone from blowing into Nintendo cartridges to CD cleaning kits, and finally now to the most modern equivalent: a set of cleaning cards for your memory card reader from EverGreen. We don't exactly know how this works, other than you're supposed to insert these dummy cards into your reader and presto-chango, some cleansing happens. We've never exactly had a situation where we'd need to use a device like this, but then again, we never expected to need floor-cleaning robots either -- but such is the price we pay to have the future here, now.

Sure, this flash drive isn't covertly disguised as a teddy bear or housing an exceedingly capacious 64GB of storage, but it does have one thing going for it: brains. The aptly-named USB Smart Flash Drive apparently does a little thinking of its own while holding tight to your precious data, and conveys that knowledge via the Bi-stable Cholesteric Display. Although it proudly touts itself as the "world's first smart flash drive," we (and Corsair) would certainly beg to differ. Nevertheless, a little BCD competition never hurt anyone, and this rendition boasts a sleek, black enclosure, 11 character customizable display, on-the-fly readouts of megabyte usage (both numerically and graphically), LCD read / write indicator, write protect switch, and USB 2.0 connectivity. Coming in 256MB (£27.99; $53), 512MB (£29.99; $57), 1GB (£64.99; $123) and 2GB (£74.99; $142) flavors, these bright (ahem) flash drives are available now to keep you posted on just how much (or little) info you're toting.

[Via Red Ferret]

Our PSP Fanboy brethren seem to be rather offended by the idea, but while this new "PSP Double Expand Memory Converter" isn't quite the slickest solution of all time, we're kind of liking the dual memory slots it offers up. The adaptor plugs into your regular Memory Stick slot, attaches to the back of your PSP, and offers up a pair of SD/miniSD/MMC/Memory Stick slots. It's also dirt cheap, at a mere $16.77 US, so if you can get over the clunky method (which is diagrammed after the break) then you can, um, do whatever you'd do with two memory slots instead of one -- for cheap.

[Via PSP Fanboy]