We’ve seen the writing on the wall and it seems to indicate that Nintendo is working on some USB devices for the Wii, but Laurent Fischer of Nintendo Europe quashed that idea while another option now seems open. According to GamesIndustry.biz, he says that the company is “working on a solution” to the Wii storage problem, but he also says “definitely there’s no plan to issue hardware,” like a hard drive.

So the thinking now is that Nintendo is working on a firmware update that would allow downloaded games to be played directly from SD cards, but no one knows for sure. We may get more details as E3 approaches.

If you love robots like I do, you’ll notice very quickly the complete lack of robot flash drives. Where’s the robot love? Team is doing something about that with their “T-Bot R50″ robot-shaped flash drives that were shown off at the Computex event. Looks like they’ll come in 1GB,2GB,4GB and 8GB sizes. You can choose between red, white, blue or black. They have a cool retro look.

If Flash Gordon had a laptop, this would be his preferred USB memory. It’s the creation of a crazy modder over in Russia and it’s full of retro steampunk shininess, hand crafted from polished brass and copper, with a lot of attention to detail. He got all of it just right.

Which makes me wonder why no company has yet taken advantage of the whole steampunk thing and started mass producing usb memory like this. They could move a ton of items. Geeks like me would eat it up. I shouldn’t have to rely on a modder from Russia for my usb needs, that’s all I’m saying.

OCZ Technology recently unveiled PC3-16000 4GB (2×2048MB) DDR3 kits for those needing high-performance memory. These join existing 2GB modules of similar design.

The OCZ DDR3 PC3-16000 Platinum Edition kits combine two 2GB modules for 4GB system density running at 9-9-9 latencies and a 2GHz data rate, according to OCZ. They reportedly achieve this at 1.9V.

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.

According to an announcement by Numonyx CEO Brian Harrison, the company is expecting to have phase change memory (PCM) commercially available and start shipping this year. PCM is a new type of memory that would be in competition with Flash memory and has been in the works for decades but has yet to see commercialization.

Numonyx is a joint venture between STMicroelectronics and Intel and appears to be the first to announce a real-sounding time line for this type of memory. A number of companies have been working on phase change memory including an announcement from IBM in late 2006. Harrison says they are shipping samples now and will have the new memory widely commercially available in the next year or two.

Forget the fact that bombs do not look like this these days. They used to. In fact, every cartoon villain has hurled his share of these babies at an enemy at one time or another.

Unfortunately, hard as it is to believe, this hasn’t been made yet. It’s just a concept. So if you are an old school villain you’re going to have to wait to get your hands on one. If they stamped it ACME or TNT on the side it would be complete for all your needs.

We’ve all been there. You misplace an item, but you know damn well you left it on a shelf. You can see it in your mind’s eye. It’s frustrating, but a new device from Japanese scientists looks like it can help.

The Smart Goggles use sophisticated object recognition software. With a mounted webcam, the Goggles will recognize specific objects and save a few seconds of footage. So, when you lose your car keys, the goggles will just bring up a video of the last time the object was seen. Sure, you wouldn’t want to wear it all the time. It’s not practical. However, for those suffering from memory loss or Alzheimers, this could be very helpful.

Looking somewhat like a urinal cake, the Memory Mouse doesn’t look like it would be very comfortable to hold. And looking like a urinal cake, why would you want to? The interesting thing about this concept device is that it has 4GB or 8GB of built-in memory and a touch scroll wheel.

So, it would make up for it’s lack of style by freeing up an additional USB port for other devices, but it isn’t wireless. The touch scroll wheel might be a good idea, but I’m not convinced. The notches on a standard scroll wheel are important, especially in gaming. But really, using this device as it is above, would be like playing Air-Hockey without the Hockey.

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.

A group at Princeton University has found an exploit in common computer hardware that allows them to break codes and retrieve the encrypted data stored on the computers hard disks. The process at its most extreme involves direct access to the computer using a can of compressed air held upside down to freeze the DRAM chip(s) to access the encryption key stored in memory.

When stored data is encrypted, the software usually will use a key to encode and decode the data. That key is most often created and stored into a computer’s memory after a user logs into the computer with a password. According to the researchers, a common misconception is that once the computer is turned off, the DRAM memory disappears and so does the encryption key. In their studies, partially funded by the Dept. of Homeland Security, they found that data is actually retained in the computers memory for many seconds or sometimes even minutes after the computer is turned off. They also found that by freezing the memory chips with liquid nitrogen found in a common can of air for removing dust, they could get the data to remain in memory easily for as long as ten minutes, and often longer.

Here’s a strange combination you don’t see everyday. It mixes a 7-in-1 card reader with a floppy drive. This allows you to transfer files from your old floppies over to memory card. Limited to the speed of the floppy. The problem is not many people use the floppy anymore.

Even if you have some floppy disks laying around, chances are they no longer work. This one is probably not a great idea, even though we do love gadgets where they’ve combined new with old. Though some pack rats are sure to have boxes of disks and refuse to stop using them, those people are surfing the net using a 286 machine and will never find this article.

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.

Today scientists from IBM, Macronix and Qimonda unveiled a new type of memory with the intention of possibly being a replacement for flash memory which is used in many electronic gadgets today.

The new memory announced today is called “phase-change” memory. The memory would have the same applications as flash memory, but with a a couple key advantages. First of all, the phase-change memory has shown to be faster than flash memory; up to 500 times faster. It would also only consume about half the power that flash …