Into your home, work place, car and everywhere else, that’s where.  ABI Research company has forecasted over 81 million USB wireless modems will be sold in 2010.  Currently over 50% of those sales figures are from cellular companies pushing their services for hotspots and instant wifi connection when out-n-about.

The biggest reason for the USB modem is lack of required drivers, as it’s either preinstalled on the device or installs directly from the device.  In addition, the USB modem is portable and easily swapped between work and home locations.

ABI asks whether embedded modem modules in new computers or the recent interest in personal hotspot routers (a la MiFi) can overtake the popularity of USB dongles. Research associate Khin Sandi Lynn points out that, “In the long run, more devices are looking for a network to connect to. The wireless modem market can solve this in many ways – different form-factors, air interface protocols, and increased attention to style and cultural interests.”

ABI webpage.

Today I read a great article on the future of cell phones, microSD cards and wireless payments.

Imagine a purchase where you receive a coupon because you are in a specific store.  You then find the product, and go to pay.  Rather than pulling out your credit card, you simply wave your phone before a terminal and the purchase is done.  The transaction gets emailed to you, so not even a receipt is generated.  Not bad, and it isn’t far away.

US Bank, one of the leading US financial institutions, will be test piloting the program with their employees and the iPhone later this year.  If all goes well, you can see banks, phone companies and microSD manufacturers teaming up for one sweet contactless purchasing solution.

I am by no means an expert in this field, so I’ll restrain myself from regurgitating the article, but if this topic peaks your interest, jump over to NFC Times and read the entire story.  Very interesting.

If you need to recover files from a Compact Flash card then try Flash Memory Toolkit.  This software package is a free download for most features and will perform functions like read/write benchmark tests and recover files from a flash card or flash drive.

USBPerformance software will allow you to recover a file from a Compact Flash card.  This is how it works.

The utility will make a binary image of your Compact Flash card…it doesn’t matter if you can’t read the data or not, it’ll still make an image file.

Then the utility will mount the image file as a drive letter on your computer [PC only].

From here you can browse your content and recover that file from your Compact Flash card.

In most cases, when a flash card goes bad [either CF, SD, microSD or USB] the problem or error is from the partition table or the File Allocation Table.  Since this mounting of an image gets past those issues, you can get into where the files are stored…from here you can copy them out to a normal working part of your hard drive or another removable media.

Give it a go.  USB Performance website with a link directly to the file recovery page.

IC design houses Genesys Logic and Alcor Micro are expected to see their revenues grow over 20% sequentially in the second quarter of 2010 buoyed by increasing shipments of USB 3.0 controller chips, according to industry sources.

Genesys indicated that it has started shipping, in small volume, its second-generation USB 3.0-SATA bridge controllers, with the third-generation of its kind to be available in the third quarter of 2010. Overall, USB 3.0 chips will contribute over 3% to its total revenues in the second half.

Meanwhile, industry sources indicated that Alcor Micro has landed orders for USB card reader controllers for LCD TV application from a major player in Korea, which will help drive up its USB controller shipments.

Today Nexcopy announces an all new microSD duplicator product line.  We reported on the Nexcopy SD duplicator from several months ago, but that version used SD adapter cards.

The new microSD duplicator is specifically designed to handle the microSD form factor.  There are no adapter cards required.  This alone will increase production by [Nexcopy estimates] 30% because the user no longer has to insert microSD media into SD adapters, then into the duplicator.

The microSD duplicator comes with Nexcopy’s software suite for File Copy, Bit for Bit copy and full binary Verification functions.

The microSD duplicator is available in three sizes of 20 port, 40 port and 60 port target systems.  The starting price is $,1299 and available now for immediate delivery. (more…)

I have been a fan of Steampunk products for a long time.  Typically I report on a Steampunk USB version, but today I get the pleasure to include a microSD card reader.

The construction is similar to other Steampunk products we’ve seen, made of brass, copper, glass, watch parts and clock parts.  The metal connections from the brass wire outside are made with silver solder and an acetylene tourch, which gives it the unique look and feel.  In addition, the maker, put extra time into the fitting and position of the internal components for a solid product.

The Steampunk device is an 8GB flash drive with a microSD card reader at the tail end.  The technology is make of disassembled stock product where the microSD card reader is built into the flash drive.  Clearly the device will show two drive letters when connected to the computer, one for the USB stick and the other for the card reader.

So now you can obtain a Steampunk flash drive with unlimited storage ability via the microSD card reader.  Price is much higher then the stock product, but hey, you’ll never get a great looking, customized case like this Steampunk body.

Source:  Etsy.

Lets start the clock ticking for when microSD media will take over the world for flash storage.

I am still amazed at the small size of the microSD media and it’s expansive ability to keep growing in GB capacity.  Today SanDisk is officially selling the 32GB version of their microSD card.  Sure, it’s $200 USD but when you are an overseas airplane ride and need hours and hours of video content to stream through your 3 inch screen, this will be very handy.  I will forget the fact that a DVD player is less than that…but we’re talking cool factor here.

The new 32GB card makes use of SanDisk’s three-bit-per-cell storage technology and is able to hold around 7,000 songs.  That translates into 19 solid days of listenting to music, without break, 24/7.

So forget the $200 price tag and maybe you can be lucky like me and find a microSD card, 2GB capacity for $3 off Amazon.com.

The Compact Flash Organization [site] released their new 5.0 specification earlier today.  It just blew the cap off the lid of storage limits.  The current specification for Compact Flash is 137GBs…now that is 144 Petabytes, or PBs.

Petabyte is a big number, and most people haven’t heard of it.  Well, to break it down, a petabyte is [around] 150 million Gigabytes.

Look around your house for some Blu-ray discs, that would equal six million blu-ray titles on one Compact Flash card.  I guess that means no more RAID boxes, right?  I mean, what’s better than solid state memory and storage the size of Texas?

We started doing the math on the time it would take a CF Duplicator to copy a 5.0 Compact Flash card, laughed and stopped.  There just isn’t technology out there for bulk data loading to a device like this…let alone finding a ligitimate use of putting that much information on the card anyway.

So we don’t see a practical use for the 5.0 spec yet, but there are other improvements we should get excited about.  The CFA says Revision 5.0 brings an optional quality of service framework that guarantees a certain level of performance and prevents dropping frames, more efficient cleanup of unused space, a new electrical design that better complies with ATA standards.

There’s no mention of when CompactFlash 5.0 cards will ship, but if you are still interested you can read up on the new spec here [PDF], or download the official specification for a C note. (more…)

SD cards come in all sorts of GB sizes and speeds.  Today I thought it a good idea to take a look inside an SD card along with breaking out the speed differences.

To start, the SD media is broken down into “Classes”  The Class depicts the speeds at which a device reads and writes.

There are different speed grades available, measured the same as CD-ROMs, in multiples of 150 kB/s (1x = 150 kB/s). Basic cards transfer data up to six times (6x) the data rate of the standard CD-ROM speed (900 kB/s vs. 150 kB/s).

The maximum read speed and maximum write speed may be different. Maximum write speed typically is lower than maximum read speed. Some digital cameras require high-speed cards (write speed) to record video smoothly or capture multiple still photographs in rapid succession. This requires a certain sustained speed, or the video stops recording. For recording, a high maximum speed with a low sustained speed is no better than a low speed card. The 2.0 specification defines speeds up to 200x.

Some manufacturers use the read speed in their X-ratings, while others (Kingston, for example) use write speed.

SD Cards and SDHC Cards have Speed Class Ratings defined by the SD Association. The SD Speed Class Ratings specify the following minimum write speeds based on “the best fragmented state where no memory unit is occupied”:[9]

• Class 2: 2 MByte/s – 13x
• Class 4: 4 MByte/s – 26x
• Class 6: 6 MByte/s – 40x

SD and SDHC cards will often also advertise a maximum speed (such as (more…)

Nexcopy released a new line of flash memory duplication systems, the CF Duplicator 150PC, 300PC and 450PC.  These PC based systems are ideal for doing bulk data loading to Compact Flash cards.

Nexcopy has some unique features to make any data loading job a breeze.  For example, you can put unique files to each CF card through their Unique Data Copy function.  Or a user can easily copy bootable Compact Flash cards by using the bit for bit Short Image copy function.  The Short Image copy function means only the data clusters used on the CF card will be copied to the target devices…rather than the entire thing.

However, Nexcopy also provides a Full Image copy function if that is required.  I’m thinking this would be good for Ext2 or Ext3 Linux formats where there are potential files that could be in any sector of the CF media.

Nexcopy CF Duplicator line starts out with the CF150PC at $1,200 with an upgrade path to the 30 port and 45 port systems.  So the CF Duplicator is modular in design.

Nexcopy also mentions a user can mix and match duplicator boxes, so you could now copy to SD media, CF media and USB sticks all through one software interface, and at the same time!  Not bad.

You can learn more by visiting the product page: CF Duplicator by Nexcopy. http://www.nexcopy.com/cf-duplicator/

Source: GetUSB.info.