Storage shrinks by leaps and bounds

Smaller Can Be Better . . .

Philips is secretly working on a newer, better optical disk standard. Blu-ray is the emerging standard for a system that will use blue lasers to record high-definition TV pictures on DVD-sized discs, and is backed by a group of leading firms, including Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp and Sony.

Tentatively called SFFO, short for Small Form Factor Optical, the technology could let your mobile phone store five two-hour movies, squirrel away 25,000 digital photos or hoard 48 hours of MP3 music on a three-centimeter disc. The disc will be the same thickness as a DVD. . . The drive is currently 0.5 centimeters thick, 5.6 centimeters long and 3.4 centimeters wide.

The first versions of the disc will store one gigabyte on each side, but the dual-layer coating already used for DVDs will double the capacity to four gigabytes in total.

Source: New Scientist, at http://www.newscientist.com/news/print.jsp?id=ns99992930