Dr. Stuart Parkin and colleagues at IBM have recently published a paper in Science introducing a new type of storage technology dubbed ‘racetrack memory’.

The memory uses something called spintronics which uses the storage of bits generated by the magnetic spin of electrons rather than their charge to identify each as “on” or “off”. This new storage solution offers some advantages over the most popular current options. It’s faster than traditional hard disk drives and has a lower failure rate since there are no moving parts.

Aleratec, a developer of devices for mass duplication of data onto different media formats, announced today a new USB flash drive duplicator which can work without a computer. It is called the Aleratec 1:11 USB Copy Tower SA and pricing is set at around $1,575.

The Aleratec 1:11 USB Copy Tower SA lets you copy, compare, or erase up to 11 flash drives simultaneously. Controls are handled via a simplistic front panel interface with backlit LCD display. This display “indicates the function selected and also monitors progress and status of each operation and displays the results.”

Zana is hopping on the “tech with wood on the outside” bandwagon and so they will be selling wood-engraved USB flash drives that feature silver as well as “precious stones” for about $59. That will get you about 1GB of storage.

If you want a name or some other personal message engraved on it, you’ll probably have to pay more. I guess this is for the stylish geek who wants to make an impression, but frankly I’m not all that impressed. I would think they would get dented and dinged pretty easily. Then there’s termites too.

The minute you see it, you just have to love the USBee concept flash drive. Traditional USB flash drives stick out from the back, and they’re easy to knock out accidentally. The USBee solves this, because just like a bee, it is capable of bending in any direction. This helps prevent your USB port from being permanently defunct should a standard USB flash drive be broken off at its connection point.

It’s not only ergonomic, it also has a vents for cooling and a detachable protective cap that sits on the back of the device when not in use. It’s the bee’s knees baby! All zing and no sting!

If organization is your thing, you’ll love the SpaceStation from Ultra. Many of us have several various sized USB flash drives sitting around everywhere. Chances are, they aren’t labeled so it’s a mess. The SpaceStation will definitely solve this problem with 6 individual USB flash drives in a credit card sized package. It also includes a set of labels, thereby making your organization complete.

You can get the flash drives in either 1GB or 2GB capacities giving you a total of 6GB or 12GB. Some included labels are for music, videos, games and work. This will help you know where everything is at, which will save you time. Plus you get a pretty credit card sized picture of Earth. What more do you want?

Irish startup PortoMedia will soon be offering movie rentals on flash drives instead of your typical media device. It’s a pretty simple concept. The company sells you a flash storage device along with a special $50 card reader that has a super fast proprietary USB connection of 95 megabits per second.

Just take the flash card to any location that has a company kiosk. The kiosks will contains hard drives that store hundreds or even thousands of movies. Enter your ATM pin code, choose your movie, and download it in less than a minute. After that, you just go home and watch it. It does have it’s advantages over DVD or Blu-Ray. They would never run out of movies, no return neccessary, no long lines and you could get movies anywhere, whether it be the mall, supermarket, even a gas station.

SanDisk put out a set of new USB drives that don’t pack much uniqueness on the inside but attempt to set themselves apart with some unique designs on the outside. According to SanDisk, the Cruzer Tag Drives add a little “funky” fun to your run-of-the-mill Flash-based storage.

Corsair is set to roll out to computer users a new 16GB “high performance” USB flash drive. It is called the Corsair 16GB GT Flash Voyager and pricing will be around $170.

Samsung is trying to dispel some concerns consumers are having about using flash-based solid-state drives in their computers, saying they are more reliable that a lot of people think. Sure, having a 64GB SSD in your notebook at first sounds like a pretty good idea. Faster boot times, no moving parts to wear out, but then the price hits you. Adding that SSD can increase the overall price of the computer by as much as $900. Also, in terms of computing, a maximum 100,000 write cycles just doesn’t seem like that much.

Michael Yang, flash marketing manager at Samsung, is assuring us that 100,000 write cycles is actually quite a bit. He states that the SSD can write 100,000 times to each and every memory cell, and the drive controller evens out the cells that get written to with “wear leveling”. As an example, Yang says that a 64GB SSD could be fully erased and filled again with data every hour and it would still last years before failing. He also said the failure would then likely come from the controller, not the memory cells. He also expects the price of SSDs to drop around 40 percent each year, making this alternative more affordable.

USB flash drives come in many shapes and sizes, but once in a while one comes along with a design that stands out from the crowd. The Wedisk flash drive is a little Wii remote look-a-like which isn’t touting incredible capacities or performance but it does allow its owner to further profess their love for Nintendo’s latest and greatest gaming console while at the office.

The Wedisk has a retractable USB connector that pops out with a push of one of the Wii-mote buttons but that’s the only gaming action you’ll get. It comes in capacities of 1GB, 2Gb, 4GB and 8GB and in colors of the familiar white and a black version. It also has a LED indicator for showing that is connected and utilizes USB 2.0 for PCs or Macs.

Larger capacity solid-state drives will be on their way soon from SanDisk. That’s because SanDisk and Toshiba are working together on a new 43-nanometer manufacturing process which will give us SSDs with the same capacity as those of today’s typical 2.5″ hard drives.

Flash memory is the natural replacement for hard drives in ultra-small notebooks like the MacBook Air and Asus Eee PC, because they use less power, generate less heat, and have faster access times than hard drives. The only downside is that as the Gbs go up the cost will get higher.

Pioneer is offering a new line of products that should score big with DJs. In the old days you had to lug around crates of heavy records, but that’s not the case anymore thanks to technology. Their backs are grateful. These days being a DJ is much easier, but the life of the DJ is about to get better still thanks to the MEP-7000, unveiled today at NAMM.

The 4.3-inch LCD screen is the central hub and command center. Two OLED screens help with the functionality of the DVD mixer with pitch, playback and position information. It also has dual DVD drives and USB adapters that make it compatible with everything from MP3 players to flash drives to hard drives. If you want to expand the command center ability, just plug a PC into the unit and the PC and will cooperate with the other software.

Sony, the proclaimed leader in the high-definition camcorder category, rolled into CES this week with six new HD camcorder models. They offer features like 1920 x 1080 resolution recording and face detection technology. Sony says “the SR12, SR11, SR10, UX20 and UX10 models will all ship in March for about $1,400, $1,200, $1,000, $1,000 and $800, respectively. The HDR-HC9 camcorder will ship in February for about $1,100.”

The consumer electronics giant added that all these new camcorders feature a new high-profile encoding system and, depending upon the model, offer other must haves like high resolution digital still captures and hybrid/hybrid plus movie recording.

You can get the full details of these new Sony HD camcorders after the jump.

Imation has being showing around at CES its updated line of secure, rugged Pivot Flash Drives. Two models make up this family – the Pivot and Pivot Plus – and they range in price around $70 to $250.

The Imation Pivot drives come in storage sizes ranging from 1GB to 8GB. The more basic model is described by Imation as having “an enhanced design and security features,” meaning it offers up encryption software and a tamper resistant design. It’s also enhanced for Windows Vista ReadyBoost.

Corsair has released some new versions if its Flash Voyager and Flash Survivor USB drives, both featuring capacities that are pumped up to as much as 32GB each. The Voyager model has a rubberized covering and looks like it might be waterproof, but its not. It’s actually designed to take the occasional drop and keep on ticking, which is really nice if you’re holding 32GB of data or a whole bootable OS in your hand. The Survivor has an aluminum casing and it is actually water resistant, letting you tote your 20 hours of outdoor video through the rain forest without worrying about destroying the data, or something like that.