The mobile phones and digital music players of the future will be able to hold over half a million songs. Quite why you'd ever want one to I'm not sure, but hey. Such high capacity might enable players to hold 3500 movies, which my be more useful, though I just tried to write down a list of all the movies I might want on my mobile, and struggled to get past 100. Anyway, this boost in storage capacity on portable digital devices may be possible because of a new kind of digital storage technology being developed by scientists at IT conglom IBM.
In a paper in the latest edition of Science magazine, the clever types at IBM's Californian research centre say the new technology they are working on would not only allow devices to hold much more content, but using it would also require much less power, meaning that a fully charged battery could keep going for weeks. The new technology would also make digital music players last longer - though those electronics companies whose budgets rely on people replacing their MP3 players every 18 months won't necessarily be too keen on that facility.
According to Fox News, this is all possible because of something called "racetrack" memory which uses the "spin" of an electron to store data. IBM researcher Stuart Parkin told reporters: "The promise of racetrack memory - for example, the ability to carry massive amounts of information in your pocket - could unleash creativity leading to devices and applications that nobody has imagined yet".
Though don't get too excited about all this yet. Parkin admits their work on "racetrack" memory is still at an "exploratory" stage, though he does say devices using it could be on the market within ten years. So, perhaps get a little bit excited. Especially if you've been struggling to decide which of the 500,000 tracks in your record collection to put on your iPod.