Articles tagged with: memory cards

The world's first memory card with built in Wi-Fi, has now morphed into the world's first memory card with geotagging. From today the simple Eye-Fi card we've come to know and love will be split into three models - Home, Share and Explore.

The Share appears to be the standard model we've already seen, with ability to transfer shots from camera to a PC wirelessly, or to sites such as Skype via your home network. The Explore adds a roaming agreement - currently in the US only - to upload photos to photo sharing sites via a network of hotspots across the country. Lastly the least expensive, Home, is for simple transferring to PCs only.

As an added bonus the Explore gets the new geotagging service to add location information to each photo's EXIF data. It's not quite perfect as it doesn't use GPS but rather the Skyhook system as featured on the iPhone, which triangulates from known nearby hotspot locations.

They'll be on sale in the US for $79, $99 and $129. No word yet on when we'll see them here.

[Eye-Fi]

If you're after a spot more storage space for your SonyEricsson smartphone, the folks at Sony have an extra bonus for you. They're bundling a free album download inside the unfeasibly large box that accompanies each tiny 2GB or 4GB Memory Stick Micro card.

There are fifty albums to choose from, including The Fratellis, Amy Winehouse and MIKA. We particularly like the token inclusion of The Eagles, just about the only back catalogue offering, though Sony's press release also promises Johnny Cash and Bob Marley, not that we could find them.

Just buy your card then pop along to www.music4M2phone.com to start downloading.

If your laptop is blessed with the wrong kind of memory card - or none at all - a USB multi-card reader is the way to go and this one has to be the smallest we've seen. Still able to list a dizzying number of formats, including MicroSD, Mini SD, SDHC, standard SD and MemoryStick Duo, Pro and Pro Duo, it measures just 35mm square and 17mm deep. At 20g it won't leave much of a dent in your laptop bag, and at $12 (£6) plus $3 international shipping, it shouldn't dent your wallet too much either.

[Gadget4all.com]

SanDisk has announced the world's highest capacity microSDHC card with a whopping 12Gb capacity. No bigger than a fingernail, the 12Gb card can hold 50% more data than the currently available largest card (a paltry 8Gb) and according to SanDisk, can store the equivalent of 1,500 128Kbit/s MP3s or 24 hours of MPEG-4 video. 

The card means that it's now possible to pack almost as much music into a compatible mobile phone as Apple's top-end (16Gb) iPod touch, which is more than enough for most people.

SDHC cards of all types do require an SDHC compatible slot and won't work in standard SD card slots. Most relatively recent handheld devices are compatible, however.

The SanDisk 12Gb microSDHC card conforms to the new SD 2.0 specification and adheres to the SD Speed Class 4 Rating – a data transfer speed of around 4Mb/s, in other words. The 2.0 spec also supports cards with capacities of up to 32Gb.

[SanDisk]

My Windows Mobile device has a 256Mb memory card, of which I've used 122Mb. However, the card is listed as being full. Have you any idea what has happened to the other half of my memory? (I've tried reading another, 128Mb card and that one was correctly detected.)

Geoff Lindsey, via email

Toshiba has launched the world’s biggest SDHC card at IFA in Berlin. The 32Gb SD-HC032GT4 Class 4 (guaranteeing sustained data writes at 4MB/s ) card will start mass production in January 2008 and will be joined by the 16Gb SD-HC016GT4 SDHC card and the 8Gb SD-MH008GA microSDHC card.

Anyone looking to boost their digital camera of MP3 player capacity should note that SDHC cards can only be used with devices that support the SD Memory card Ver. 2.00 standard and they’re not backwardly compatible with standard SD Memory cards. Prices for both cards have yet to be announced.

www.toshiba-memory.com

My PDA seems to be having trouble with my miniSD card. I can browse the contents of the card in File Explorer, but if I try to access it from Windows Media Player using the library, an ‘unexpected error’ occurs. Why would this be the case?

Ken Clarkson, via email