There's not much of a space for a product like this now, since cellphones account for most of the devices with MicroSD storage, and they generally have some kind of data connection anyway. But it's easy to imagine a (near) future where traditional SD cards are considered too bulky for smaller point-and-shoot cameras and camcorders, and a wireless MicroSD card would make sense. [Tech-on]

For those that don't need 64GB of storage, the CR-7100 will hold one 16GB microSD, while the
CR-7000 holds one 32GB SD. The 7200 will be available for $30 and the 7100 and 7000 for $25, all in July. [Photofast via Akihabara]

The announcement came straight from the mouth of Sony Ericsson Global Marketing Director Fortuné Alexander, who conceded that they're "moving in another direction" (like the X1 pictured above). It's also a better direction, considering Sony Ericsson phones has relied too much on proprietary technologies for their products (charging, headphones, storage, etc...). [TrustedReviews via CrunchGear]

With the microSD cards (up to 16GB), you'll be able to supplement your own Xbox 360 expandable storage without having to pay the exorbitant rates Microsoft is charging for its own memory cards. $42 for 512MB, Microsoft? Really?

Plus with the Datel, you can dump the contents of your card directly onto your PC. Supremely useful if you have a load of games that you may or may not get back into at a later date, but want to keep the saves around just in case. [Code Junkies]

Designed by the same folks who brought us those wiseass USB "Keys", the LaCie Data/Share is proudly simple, which is the source of both its strengths and its weaknesses. Along with plain card-reading capabilities, it offers a great way to store an extra SD or MicroSD card on the go, consolidating case and reader into one unit and eliminating dust and fragility concerns for both. That said, it could stand to do a little more; SD cards are well and good, and I know LaCie is aiming to keep things small, but nowadays it's taken for granted that SD readers can handle at least a handful of other flash media as well.

The Data/Share isn't yet listed on LaCie's website, but it's expected to ship at around $15. [Electric Pig]

Three levels of the card reader rotate 270-degrees each, with slots to fit SD/SDHC, T-Flash (Micro SD/Micro SDHC), MMC, M2, MS, MS DUO, MS PRO, MS PRO DUO and XD cards. Just don't be surprised when every jackass in your office is constantly grabbing pulling the hub's USB cable from your computer, only to find that, no, this piece of crap isn't a real Rubik's at all! $12 [Brando]

The Loverish line comes in four colors each and a read/write speed of 6.5MB/second. Pricing was not yet available, but it probably doesn't matter considering these most likely won't make it over to the States anytime soon. If and when it does, we're sure you'll be able to find it at a Hot Topic. [Elecom via Akihabara News]

Apparently it's not just an either/or scenario. The cable can simultaneously charge a mini-USB device and transfer photos to your hard drive. Plus if microSD is more your speed, there's a version for that, too.

Either cable will cost you $12. [Brando via CrunchGear]

The MR-SMC03 is so small that it kind of looks more like a USB hole stopper than a media reader. To use it, you slip your microSD card into the top part of the usb stick and then plug it into your computer. It's available in cherry pink, Azuria pink, black and white for roughly $13... from Japan only for now. [Elecom via Gizmodo Japan]

Crowley is currently holding an open chat on Facebook to answer any questions people might have, although it's heavily selective. Among the questions Crowley won't answer: how intrusive is the multi-platform personal information program Synergy going to be? What about the lack of desktop synchronization, or cloud storage? But he does take a crack at a question on MicroSD expandability.

‘Design' was the highest goal on the Palm Pre project. The phone has to look and function great in the hand and up against the face on a call. The decision to include or not include expandable storage is an easy one when design is the highest priority. The physical size of the device would have been compromised if we added another physical component to Pre. Just a millimeter can seriously impact the curvature of the design in a way that minimizes the design intent. We wanted to maintain a slick curved slider design without building out too much thickness. When you look at the two parts of the product and see how thin they really are, you may be amazed that we were able to fit everything in. And yes, all the stuff does fit.

The other advantage of embedded memory is that you have a large amount of storage out of the box for media and files. Including 8GBs of storage on the phone is a large amount of storage for many people, but not all. Yes, not all. We know that not everyone will be happy, but that is one of many decisions that needs to be made.

We really like the Pre, but 8GB is just not enough these days and given the Pre is thicker than certain competitors, it seems there could have been a way to fit in a slot for expandability or at least double the embedded storage. Crowley's excuse seems kind of lame, but the Pre was never presented as a multimedia-focused phone. What do you guys think? Is only including 8GB a mistake on Palm's part, or will the mass public not care? [Palm Info Center]

While it's still surely a mediocre HD camcorder (I mean, it's $120), the EZ209HD is smaller than its predecessors, ditching the SD slot to save space with up to 16GB of MicroSD, while still fitting a larger, 2-inch LCD screen.

Recording up to two hours of video on a single charge, the EZ209HD supports HD, SD and 60fps shooting. Plus it takes 8MP stills and includes HDMI out for direct-to-TV viewing of your footage. All-in-all, the new Small Wonder appears to be much nicer than older models—though you'll have to wait until spring to buy one.

Also, if you are at the show, the RCA/Audiovox booth will be giving away 4,000 30 of these camcorders. Boy did I mishear that one. They're giving away 10,000 keychains though.

Yes, Sandisk's newest Sansa makes acquiring music easier than ever, with 1,000 songs "handpicked from the Billboard charts" coming on a microSD card for use with the player. If you get bored of those songs, you can grab genre-specific 1,000 song bundles for $40 more.

It's a neat idea, what with the bundles bringing the costs of music down to a delicious 4 cents per song and cutting downloading out of the equation, but you've got to wonder what percentage of said songs will be ones you'll care about. I mean, I love music, but I love specific music, not just music in general. But hey, there are people out there who listen to light rock radio all day at work just to create background noise, so maybe there's more of a market for this stuff than I think. And hell, there's an FM radio integrated in there for those folks as well.

Oh, and the catch, if you were wondering, is that those $0.04 cent songs are locked to the card. No pulling them off onto your computer, no playing them on other devices, no backing up. Eep.

In any case, the Sansa slotRadio will be available in "early 2009" for $100 (1,000 song card included) at RadioShack.

The CrossOver by OCZ is a simple but clever design for a flash dongle. Coming in 2GB, 4GB, or 8GB sizes, the aluminum-constructed CrossOver works fine as a standard USB drive, but it's also expandable with a built-in microSD/SDHC card reader should you need the extra storage (or just want a convenient way to load your microSD with music and stuff).

No info on the CrossOver's price or availability. [OCZ via TechFresh]

The problem with this set of advantages, though, is that they're shared with virtually every other physical format. You know, the ones that that have been careening towards extinction since high-capacity MP3 players made it big? That said, if it comes down to buying an album on a CD or a reusable SD card, the choice is clear. In either case the music is likely to be copied to a computer or iPod rather than lugged around on its own individual piece of plastic, but why not get a perfectly usable 1GB SD card out of it? If you're keeping your Discman spinning on account of scary sync software and the high price of overladen MP3 players, maybe SanDisk's minimalist $20 unit is right for you. Check below for the (respectable) artist release list. [SanDisk]

* ABBA
* Chris Brown
* Coldplay
* Connie Talbot
* Daughtry
* Don’t Quit Fitness Bundle
* Elvis Presley
* Five Finger Death Punch
* Jimi Hendrix
* Jimmy Buffet
* Katy Perry
* Keane
* Kelly Clarkson
* Kiss
* Leona Lewis
* Lynyrd Skynyrd
* Metro Station
* MIA
* Nelly
* New Kids On the Block
* Ne-Yo
* Nickelback
* Pussycat Dolls
* Rihanna
* Rise Against
* Robin Thicke
* Saving Abel
* Shwayze
* Solange
* Sugarland
* Tim McGraw
* Toby Keith
* Usher
* Weezer
* Young Jeezy

High on the list of gadget annoyances that make me want to scab my eyes out with a spork—just below cables and batteries—is the unfettered proliferation of memory cards. Even though they all fundamentally do the same thing—store data for handheld devices—they come in a million different sizes and shapes from almost as many companies, giving birth to retarded but necessary accessories. Anyone looking for proof of this can stop at the 80-in-1 card reader. Unfortunately, many of these dumb pieces of silicon and plastic aren't going extinct. As a consolation prize, here's an illustrated guide to all the ones you actually need to know.

CompactFlash is like the Big Mac of memory cards: It may be bulky, but no McRib is going to take its place any time soon. It long ago moved out of the consumer-oriented gadgets now primarily using SD card, but it's the go-to for pro digital SLR cameras because it's durable as hell, it can hold more data (up to 100GB) and transfer it a lot faster (up 66MB/s with the revision 3.0, though higher capacity cards don't yet reach that rate). All of that matters if you're shooting massive RAW photos at several frames a second in less-than-pampered conditions.

CompactFlash UDMA: The latest version of the CompactFlash spec, 4.0 adds support for the Ultra DMA 133 interface, pumping the maximum data transfer rate to 133MB/s. Looks the same as a regular CF card, but will have UDMA stamped on it. Enables longer burst shooting in the latest DSLRs, besides just sounding impressive. Of course, this parallel ATA interface is on the fast track to be slow balls, with a serial ATA based spec in the works that'll deliver 3-gigabit transfer rates, that is, nearly 400MB/s.

Secure Digital, better known as SD, is the memory card of the people. This sliver of plastic is the reigning king of storage in everyday gadgets, from digital cameras to the Nintendo Wii to non-iPod MP3 players to hell, my (admittedly fancy) alarm clock. Most new (non-Mac) notebooks come with an SD card slot, even if they don't support other cards. Its primary advantage over CompactFlash is smaller size—maybe the perfect memory card size, even. On the other hand, the standard version format is significantly slower, stores less data (the spec allows for up to 2GB, larger sizes exist) and is way more fragile. But damn if they aren't cheap.

Secure Digital High Capacity pretty much spells it out in the name—an extension of the SD format that allows for more storage (up to 32GB) and much faster write speeds (SanDisk's latest hit 30MB/s). Classes—2, 4 or 6—let you know what the card's minimum transfer speed is. The major catch is that while they look the same as a regular SD card, SDHCs won't work in older card readers. Most electronics are quietly swapping in readers that can support SDHC, and of course regular SD cards work wherever they physically fit.

MiniSD is, you guessed it, a smaller variant of the SD card format that's about a third of the size. And yes, there's an HC variant to bring its capacity past 2GB, just like SD to SDHC. Originally for the mobile phone space, it's basically been squeezed out by the even retardedly smaller microSD. Truth is, miniSD is all but extinct now. Fortunately it usually comes with an SD slot adapter, so old ones can just be used as standard SD cards.

MicroSD and its microSDHC step-up are ridiculously tiny, and though they're used in MP3 players and other gadgets, they now completely dominate removable storage on cellphones. They've got basically the same specs as the other SD and SDHC card flavors in theory, but they're not quite as speedy or obviously up to the same crazy capacities. Officially they are way too easy to lose.

MultiMediaCard is the format from which SD and its offspring descended. (Its looks should give it away.) There are a few variants, but since it's been displaced by its SD spawn, you probably won't run into them. They're even dissolving the MMC Association, if that tells you anything. The important thing to know is that if you come across one, it'll work in many—but not all—SD card readers.

Memory Stick and its 300 variations: Okay, it gets kind of ugly with Sony's essentially proprietary Memory Stick format. Once upon a time, Samsung, Sharp and possibly others had Memory Stick readers in certain portable electronics, but the days of non-Sony Memory Stick sightings are long gone. If I could punch the embodiment of Sony in the nuts for any single reason, it would likely be due to the continued existence of all 65,000 Memory Stick formats. Here's the rundown:

The original Memory Stick, which is now obsolete, ran in sizes from 4MB to 128MB. There was also the Memory Stick Select, which was basically like two Memory Sticks crammed together with a switch to flip between the two.

Memory Stick PRO was the first legit sequel to the Memory Stick. It's faster, and theoretically holds up to 32GB, but has only been released in versions up to 4GB. PROs with more than 1GB of storage use a High Speed mode for faster transfers.

Memory Stick Duo was Sony's stab at getting small, shrinking its hot-dog proportioned Memory Stick into an SD-card sized package. Otherwise, it's just like a regular Memory Stick, stuck at 128MB and all. With an adapter it'll fit in regular Memory Stick readers too.

Memory Stick PRO Duo has the same SD-like form factor as the original Duo, but allows for much higher capacities and transfer speeds, about on par with SDHC cards. The highest capacity card is currently 16GB. Yes, there's still more Memory Stick where that came from.

Memory Stick PRO-HG Duo is the latest and largest mouthful of the Memory Sticks. Its big hurrah is that its 8-bit parallel interface gives you transfer speeds of up to 30MB/s, and the faster rates are majorly important for HD cameras. There is, unbelievably, another version, the PRO-HG Duo HX.

Memory Stick Micro aka M2 is the tiniest end of the line, comparable to a microSD card. Guess what it's used in? Sony Ericsson phones. Sadly, SanDisk participates in this farce of a format, along with the PRO-HG. The fattest available size is 16GB, which is notably pricier than its microSD cousin. Predictably, cards with heftier storage don't always play nice in older readers.

xD-Picture Cards are another BS format, created by second-tier camera makers Olympus and Fujifilm, that should just roll over and get smushed by the SD train. There, as always, a few different flavors—M, H, and M+—each one successively boosting capacity and/or speed but all fitting in the same small thin form. They're really only used in (you guessed it) Olympus and Fujifilm cameras—Kodak dabbled before hopping on the SD Express—and pathetically they only hold up to 2GB. Die already. Update: Okay, it does have one legit use—as a commenter has pointed out, it's descended from the extinct SmartMedia format, and provides easy access to a standard NAND flash chip, making it ideal for ROM-dumping for hackers.

SxS is another Sony-developed format, but it's geared toward pros and HD camcorders, with transfer speeds of 800Mb/s. It's available in sizes up to 32GB, but obscenely expensive—Sony sells the 16GB card, with one hour of recording time, for $1100. Conveniently, it uses the ExpressCard form factor, so it'll pop right in some notebooks.

P2 is another fancy ass, pricey pro-level card for camcorders, but it was developed by SD-pimpin' Panasonic. Not surprisingly, it was originally a bundle of SD cards in striped RAID array, but now it just uses core memory components in a RAID setup, contained in a ruggedized shell that fits into PC Card slots. It too goes up to 32GB, but the transfer rate is slower than SxS, at around 640Mbps. On the other hand, it's cheaper too, at $900 for a 16GB card.

And that, friends, should just about do you, at least for a little while, or until Sony releases its next Memory Stick flavor of the week.

Something you still wanna know? Send any questions about memory, Johnny Mnemonic or blackjack to tips@gizmodo.com, with "Giz Explains" in the subject line.

P.S. What other kinds of tech would you like to see an illustrated guide for?

It's impossible to say how these'll work in the market where instant and convenient downloads are a click away, since you'll have to either buy one in a physical store, or purchase them online and wait for them to come in the mail.

But you can guess that downloading market is why the music biz is trying to grab back control of at least some of their music sales. There's no official data on pricing, but word is it'll compare to existing CD albums, and a list of titles will hit in time for the holiday season. [SlotMusic]