Gearfuse

Why Apple hasn’t gotten with the program and jumped on to the flash memory train yet is beyond us. Why give themselves the extra trouble of a drive with moving parts? This hack shows you how to install flash memory into almost any iPod. Make sure you back up all your music BEFORE you start.

Sadly, there are no directions on how to actually do this hack, but if you know your iPod hardware, you can probably figure it out yourself. The adaptation removes all moving parts from the iPod, so take a good look. — Andrew Dobrow

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Kronos is a watch designed to pleasure us geek men. The Kronos watch features a USB flash drive integrated into the wristband latch for your convenience. The added feature of the flash drive offers companies a much further reach of prospective buyers. We know we’d be much more liable to buy a designer watch if it were to come with flash memory capabilities.

The Kronos watch was designed by Andrew Willkerson in hopes that it will help people avoid pocket clutter while still enjoying portable memory. The men’s analog watch was made as a design project in a Graduate Computer Modeling class. We give him an A. — Andrew Dobrow

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Sony is in quite a pickle. The sales of the PSP are lagging in a bad way with hardware shipments down 72%, and only 10,000 units in the U.S. With those facts in mind, it’s no surprise that retailers have begun to lost hope for Sony’s portable gaming console. Many have even offered Sony an ultimatum. Either lower the price of the PSP, or they’ll not be ordering any more.

With the two year anniversary of the PSP rapidly approaching on March 24th, a price decrease does not seem out of line. A year ago, on its first year, the price was dropped $50. Could we be seeing another decrease of $50 or more? While signs are pointing towards no, another method of warding off retailers might be on the rise. Will there be new color releases? Or could there be a redesigned PSP with the long-rumored 8 GB flash memory? Nobody knows, but something is going to happen. — Andrew Dobrow

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USB flash drive design as become out of control. In this rather unique design, you get a “thumb” drive in every sense of the word. In this image we found, you can see the detail put into this thing. It’s actually kind of gross.

We’re going to wait to purchase a finger themed USB flash drive until the middle finger version comes out, which we expect will be more than 256mb of flash memory. — Andrew Dobrow

“Thumb” drive [Spluch]

With flash memory as the leading source of memory along with the conventional RAM, it’s a wonder more companies haven’t dipped their fingers into the memory cookie jar. Along with other next-gen memory prototypes, such as MRAM, IBM has announced it’s working prototype named, phase-change memory (PCM). IBM states that PCM has the capability of being 500 times faster then the average NAND Flash (pictured), regardless of the fact that it’s smaller in size and uses close to half the energy of flash cells. The IBM version seems to be superior to Samsung’s introduction of a PCM device, the PRAM, which only claims to be 30 times faster then Flash. Very early plans are being made to have the product in production in 3-5 years, which in modern times, translates to sometime before 2015. — Andrew Dobrow

IBM announces the future Flash killer [ARS Technica]