A Swedish soldier has been convicted of negligence and fined 21,000 kronor - about $250 US Dollars - for leaving a USB memory stick with military secrets in a public computer.

The Stockholm court says the memory stick contained classified information about improvised explosive devices in Afghanistan.  The Sony Memory Stick was found by an university student in Stockholm and luckily for us, handed over to authorities.

Are you kidding me?  Only $250 dollar fine for misplacing such valuable information.  The only conclusion I can draw is the bomb schematics probably didn’t really work.  After all, when was the last time we heard of a Swedish bomb going off?

The Swedish soldier admits accidentally leaving the memory stick in the computer, but claims he wasn’t aware the information was classified.

Wednesday’s ruling says he acquired the information while serving as a peacekeeper in Afghanistan in 2006 and was supposed to have handed it in when his mission ended.

Source:  Independent UK.

DRAMeXchange published a market research paper stating that NAND flash memory will continue to flood the market at lower prices. NAND flash memory is primarily used for storing songs, photos and other data on gadget type devices like digital cameras, MP3 players and iPods. The biggest contributing factor on why the market will continue to see cheap NAND is lack of sales.

Since production forecasts run months ahead, the market has sitting inventory. To move this inventory prices are continueing to drop. For example, DRAMeXchange reported a drop of 20% in June for NAND memory related devices.

The NAND flash market has been so bad that the creator of the chips, SanDisk, on Monday reported a surprise loss of US$68 million for the second quarter. The company blamed the supply glut for its problems, pointing out that it sold a record amount of flash, 120 percent more than the same time last year, but that prices are down 55 percent compared to then.

SanDisk also reported the flash memory pricing might get worse [better for us] in the third quarter. So, it might be a good idea to start picking out your Christmas items now and make sure it’s some type of flash gadget.

On the flip side, with today’s surplus means these companies are cutting back production as well, so once this flood dries up, we could see a shortage for NAND and prices jumping up…and the cycle goes on.

Source: Network World.

SanDisk is going faster than fast with their new Memory Stick PRO-HG Duo product.  This new Memory Stick line from SanDisk is the fastest format of it’s kind.  So what kind of speed are we talking about?  How about 30MBs per second.  Yep, MBs not Mbts per second.  The sustained transfer speed for both reading and writing is static at 30MBs and it’ll be interesting to see if the spec is the same as the street [experience].

To put this figure in perspective, the non-HG Extreme III Memory Stick from SanDisk is only able to achieve an 18MBps transfer speed. This new memory card represents an increase of over 50%.

If you want to put that into perspective, check out a dated benchmark from a couple years ago.  Boy how times have changed.

The SanDisk Sony Memory Stick PRO-HG Duo is expected to become available late next month with 4GB and 8GB sizes at prices between $90 and $150 respectively.

Source:  MobileMag.com.

Today SanDisk announced their largest Memory Stick Micro card the M2. At convenient 4GBs it’s the largest flash memory card for any mobile phone. The M2 was designed, in partnership, with Sony and their line of Ericsson mobile phones.

Norm Frentz, director of marketing believes, “this is the threshold at which mobile phones provide enough capacity to become the user’s all-in-one portable music player, camcorder, photo album and video player.”

And I for one believe him. At 4GBs you can do just about anything and carry just about anything you could imagine.

The C Series from Sony VAIO is now available in a variety of colors and designs like Sony VAIO pink. Most notably is the pink - perfect for your lady friend. Or maybe this will help inspire your mom getting up with the ages.

Along with wide LCD and fast processing speeds (Intel Core 2 Duo processor) she’s expandable with memory via USB for Readyboost and memory stick slot for data exchange between cameras, camcorders, PMPs, phones - you name it. (more…)

So Griffin developed a 5:1 card reader that fits in your PCMCIA slot - gee aren’t there like 52:1 card readers out there now? Well, if you’re a Griffin fan and need a Memory Stick, SD, MMC, xD card reader this is the ticket for you.

Oh, you say only 4 cards listed, that’s right - Griffin counts the Memory Stick PRO as #5. WOW, maybe we should contract these guys for a marketing campaign. As one could expect, the Griffin ExpressCard reader is plug-n-play and requires no additional battery power. Good job guys. (more…)

Finally a digital picture frame which holds some worth, the Kodak EASYSHARE digital picture frame is loaded with features. First, as any Kodak buff would expect the digital display is fine tuned to Kodak color standards then stack on some MP3 capability to sooth the sole of those fond memories.

Next, bring pictures to life with the EASYSHARE picture frame’s capability to play MPEG 1, 4, MOV and AVI files then funnel those joyous moments through the built-in stereo speakers - load these formats up via compact flash, secure digital, multimedia card, xD, memory stick or interface via USB. And if this isn’t enough (more…)

Memorex jumped into the jump drive market nearly two years ago and with it’s great success, Memorex is now splashing in flash memory. The first of ‘07 Memorex announced their TravelCard flash line of media. This includes SD, MiniSD, MicroSD and a full line of MultiMediaCards.

With world flash drive consumption to reach over 450 million units by 2008 this is a great move. Most popular sizes for the TravelCard will be 1GB and 2GB sizes. (more…)

At 3X the speed of a Memory Stick PRO the Memory Stick PRO HG version is based of a new 8-bit parrallel interface that bumps transfer rates to that of HighSpeed USB of 480mbps. SanDisk and Sony have teamed up to produce this gem of a technology. The speed increase obviously helps transfer rates during download, but it further enhances performance for digital products during activity process like SLR cameras during rapid shooting or digi-cams that recording directly to flash memory.

The news came out today, but don’t expect anything until Q1 2007.

(more…)