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.

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.

Look around your desk and keyboard area. Go ahead. I’ll wait. You see all that clutter that’s taking up valuable real estate? I’m not judging you. It happens. The Keyboard Organizer wants to help you keep your keyboard area tidy and organized. It’s the world’s first patented storage caddy inside of a working keyboard!

Think of all the stuff you can hide from your friends. Granted, it’s probably going to be all useless stuff like paperclips and Rainbow Brite stickers, but it’s always cool to have a hiding place. It works all the latest PCs as long as you still have PS/2 input. And you can get one for only about $50.

There are a few things most of us would like to have on our notebook computers including longer battery life, more performance and more storage capacity. Samsung can’t really help with the first two items I mentioned, but it can help with the storage space issue. Samsung announced today that it is now shipping its Spinpoint M6 500GB hard drive for notebooks.

The new 500GB M6 drive sports a trio of platters that each has 167GB of storage space packed into a 2.5-inch frame designed specifically for use in notebook systems. The drive is only 9.5mm in height and uses the SATA 3.0Gbps interface, making it a direct upgrade for many notebook users.

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 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.

PNY Technologies, a maker of computer memory products, and Ironkey, a developer of computer security products, are teaming up to create a co-branded USB flash drive for retail. The new PNY 4GB IronKey Secure USB Flash Drive is priced at around $150.

The PNY 4GB IronKey Secure USB Flash Drive offers up a variety of measures to protect and secure your data. These include Internet authentication software, private web surfing, data backup, government-level AES “always on” encryption and a durable body design.

SanDisk knows those who own high performance digital cameras demand memory cards offering better transfer speeds and storage capacities. The company thinks it can meet that need with its new SanDisk Extreme III 8GB, priced at around $180.

The SanDisk Extreme III 8GB memory card is in the SDHC format and comes bundled with a SanDisk MicroMate SDHC Reader. A typical Extreme III 8GB card can store more than 4,000 high-resolution pictures or up to 16 hours of MPEG 4 video. Transfer speeds are rated at 20MB per second.

EDGE Tech is out today with a large capacity USB flash drive. The new EDGE Tech 32GB DiskGO Flash Drive is priced at around $400.

The EDGE Tech 32GB DiskGO Flash Drive is capable, according to EDGE Tech, of storing more than 21,000 pictures, 32 hours of video, 8,000 songs, or 320,000 documents. This USB drive is capable of a transfer rate upwards of 480Mb/second and comes with a preview version of some encryption software.

Zip Zip Memory Bricks are small USB 2.0 Flash memory drives encased inside a Lego-type toy building brick. When the cap is on they appear like a normal toy brick, but pulling one half of the brick apart exposes the USB 2.0 connector. They come in colors of green, yellow, blue, red, black or white, much like Lego bricks do, and have a capacity of 1GB.

The Memory Bricks also have a lanyard attached to make them harder to lose and easier to identify should you happen to drop it into a pile of regular toy bricks. The company says you can stack memory bricks just like you would with regular toy bricks, but what would be cooler is if the memory would stack up as well!

If you are looking for the ultimate in security for a new thumb drive take a gander at the IronKey, the military’s solution to keeping their secrets safe. The IronKey is made to be both tough physically as well as data attacks.

For starters it encrypts your password using 256-bit AES and then encrypts that info a second time using 128-bit encryption. It may sound like overkill but heck why not do it? If a hacker wants to try and guess your password they only get 10 tries before the IronKey destroys all of the data it contains. If the villain tries to pop the drive open and get at the chips inside he will have a next-to-impossible task pulling it out in one piece since the guts are coated with an epoxy and would gum up the removal process.

Proving USB drives can both be ugly and functional Corsair rolled out today the Flash Padlock. This manual security code dependent device is available in 1GB ($30) and 2GB ($40) capacities.

What is perhaps most interesting about the Corsair Flash Padlock is that you can set a PIN up to 10 digits long for accessing the drive’s contents. You have to then enter this PIN on the keypad built into the drive’s body. The Flash Padlock also seems noteworthy for its security feature of automatically locking itself when you remove it from an attached PC.

“Write speed…must have more write speed.” If you find yourself saying this phrase over and over again as you miss critical shots with your digital camera you’ll probably be happy to know Kingston announced today an increase in the speed of its Compact Flash Ultimate memory cards.

The new Compact Flash Ultimate memory cards are now rated by Kingston to have a 266x write speed. That’s twice the minimum sustained write speed previously available in the Ultimate line, said the memory products manufacturer. The cards measure 1.43″ x 1.68″ x 0.13″.

LaCie is thinking big with its latest external hard drive. 2TB big that is. Stomping through the computer lowlands now is the LaCie Big Disk Extreme+. It’s priced at between $350 and $850, depending upon the total storage size you need.

The LaCie Big Disk Extreme+ is available in 1TB, 1.5TB and 2TB capacities. It supports the three major interfaces for transferring files from a Mac or Windows machine to its storage, using FireWire 800, FireWire 400 and USB 2.0. It also comes with backup software which can be launched via a one-button press on the body of the drive.