Samsung has announced that they are finally taking the leap and making their memory cards available for the consumer market. They will be available in SD, microSD and Compact Flash formats. These cards will be in the ‘Plus’ memory card class and compliant with the Secure Digital class 6 performance standards.

The cards will be available in 4GB, 8GB and 16GB varieties, with speeds from 17 Mbps to 45 Mbps. You’ll be able to get them very soon if you’ve been hankering to use the Samsung brand.

Memory cards are pretty much a commodity market today. They are all about the same and rarely are there any differences between brands. Samsung has decided to enter into memory card market in Taiwan with its own line of branded memory cards.

I point out that the cards are branded because Samsung has been manufacturing memory cards as white label products for other manufacturers to sell under their own brand. Samsung will sell SD, microSD, and CF cards with capacities of 4GB, 8GB, and 16GB.

Kingston Technology is trying to connect with God knows which demographic by announcing today a microSD memory card preloaded with Ricky Martin material. You’ll find the Kingston 1GB microSD card with an accompanying USB reader kit available for around $11.

Now we really don’t have anything against Ricky Martin, but come on Kingston. This is a pretty lame promotion. If you must buy into it however you’ll find the 1GB microSD card loaded with Martin items like the tracks “Somos la Semilla,” “Tu Recuerdo,” concert images and a music video that opened his “Black & White” world tour.

SanDisk brings us word today of a new backup solution for notebook computers which makes use of the ExpressCard slot and a memory card. It is called the SanDisk FlashBack Adapter and it prices at around $30.

The SanDisk FlashBack Adapter plugs into the ExpressCard slot found on many Windows laptops today. Into the adapter is plugged a SD or SDHC memory card, which is sold separately. These two items work in conjunction with user installed software on the laptop itself to offer real time backups of important files directly from the computer to the memory card.