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It doesn’t seem all that long ago when little USB, Flash memory “thumb drives” came in sizes such as 32MB, 64MB, 128MB and so on.

But now – get ready for this – Kingston Technology has just announced that they’re marketing a 128 gigibite Flash drive compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux computers. Wow!

The new password protected DataTraveler 200 (DT200) line of portable drives includes a 32GB, 64Gb and the world’s first 128GB USB Flash drive.

“The new DT200’s robust storage capability lets consumers store complete libraries of music, photos and videos. It is also a great tool for business users who carry around large databases or files,” according to Andrew Ewing, Kingston’s USB business manager.

Now the bad news. The 128GB drives are built-to-order only. If you want one you have to place an order through an e-tailer or reseller.

Notice, I’m haven’t mentioned price yet. The 32GB drive comes in blue or black and has an MSRP of $120. The 64GB drive (yellow or black) retails for $213.

I hope you’re sitting down for this one… The special-order, 128GB Flash drive comes only in black – and will set you back a whopping $546!

Luckily, this costly memory investment will be backed by a five-year warranty and Kingston’s 24/7 tech support

Research in Motion has announced a new member of the 3G BlackBerry smartphone family, the Tour (AKA the 9630).

This phone was designed for to replace older CDMA handsets including that large, clunky, long-in-the-tooth, model 8830 “World Edition” smartphone that Verizon has been selling for awhile.

The most important feature of the Tour is that it lets you communicate on 3G, EV-DO Rev. A networks here in North America, as well as 3G UMTS/HSPA (2100 Mhz) and quad-band EDGE/GPRS/GSM networks overseas.

The new “candy bar style” handset also sports:

A full QWERTY keyboard
A full HTML Web browser
480 x 360 display
Removable/rechargeable 1400 mAh battery (5 hours talk time/14 days standby)
3.2 MP camera with flash, variable zoom, image stabilization, autofocus, and video recording
256MB Flash memory
Hot swappable microSD/SDHC memory card slot (16 GB now, 32 GB soon)
GPS (geotagging support, BlackBerry Maps and other location based apps/services)
Voice activated dialing
Enhanced background noise cancellation
Low-distortion (that’s their description, not mine) speakerphone
Bluetooth (2.0) support

And, of course the phone comes standard with RIM’s BlackBerry messaging services and the company’s new BlackBerry App World.

As for availability, the RIM press release states that “the BlackBerry Tour smartphone is expected to be available this summer from carriers in North America.” In this country that means expect a version for Verizon and another for Sprint.

One last point, despite the onslaught of iPhones, Android phones, Palm Pre phones, Symbian phones, Windows Mobile phones, and all the others, a whole lot of people still buy and use BlackBerrys.

RIM President and Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis reminds us: “BlackBerry continues to be the top selling smartphone brand in North America,” and adds “we are proud to add this powerful new 3G world phone to our successful product portfolio.”

It seems that Palm’s new webOS operating system – as introduced on the new Sprint-distributed Pre smartphone – is incredibly easy to hack.

Popular blogs are picking up on reports that the Linux/Javascript/HTML-based operating system firmware seems to be very easy to modify – and that’s exactly what is being done.

All sorts of interesting hacks have been discussed including an emulator for Nintendo’s Entertainment System (NES) and even a way to simulate a Sprint phone activation.

There are reports that Palm is forbidding the Pre Dev WikiWebsite from posting one such hack – allowing the Pre to work as a wireless modem – during the Sprint exclusivity period, and apparently politely threatening to have the site shut down if it happens.

Sprint would probably object to someone signing-up for unlimited wireless text services and running other devices instead, They do not offer a “tethering” service plan.

According to Engadget:

“We have been politely cautioned by Palm that any discussion of tethering during the Sprint exclusivity period (and perhaps beyond-we don’t know yet) will probably cause Sprint to complain to Palm, and if that happened then Palm would be forced to react against the people running the IRC channel and this wiki.”

I guess this sort of thing is exactly why Apple, Google and Research in Motion keep tight control over the applications written for and distributed to their iPhone/Android/BlackBerry smartphones.

Sadly, my test sample has been sent back to Palm but you can see what I thought about the phone in my TSC video review:

It’s hard to believe that it’s been 40 years since the Woodstock Music Festival took place on an open field in Bethel, NY.

It’s also pretty amazing that 40 years have gone by since men walked on the moon. For the best account of that unbelievable feat you should read my friend Craig Nelson’s terrific new book “Rocket Men”.

Back to Woodstock. I figured that after all this time we would have read every story, viewed every bit of film and heard every note that was played at the gathering. But, I was very wrong.

Sony’s Legacy Recordings has just released a series of new CD sets called “The Woodstock Experience” with some material that has never before been released.

For instance:

Jefferson Airplane – Includes their album Volunteers coupled with 13 songs from their Sunday wee-hours set at the festival, including six previously unissued live tracks.

Janis Joplin – Includes I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama! , her first and only solo album, coupled with her entire 10-song festival set, including three previously unissued live tracks.

Santana – Includes the debut Santana LP coupled with their entire 8-song set, including one previously unissued live track;

Sly & The Family Stone – Includes their fourth album, Stand!, coupled with their entire 8-song set, including seven previously unissued live tracks.

Johnny Winter – Includes the debut Johnny Winter solo LP coupled with eight songs from his Sunday evening set including seven previously unissued live tracks.

What? No Incredible String Band?

According to Sony, each disc will be packaged inside a mini-LP cover with inner paper sleeves: CD-one replicating the front and back covers of the original LP, and CD-two featuring iconic photography of the artist performing at the festival. These mini-LPs will be housed in a paper-board slipcase sharing continuity of design recognition across all five packages. The slipcase will also contain a two-sided 16×20-inch fold-out poster, with one side displaying iconic photography of the artist performing at the festival, and the other side displaying a classic crowd shot of the audience.

And these albums are just the tip of the 40th anniversary Woodstock iceberg. Expect new documentaries and major motion pictures, books, more albums, repackaging of the movie and original album sets, rememberances (I’ll spare you mine) and endless news reports from the once infamous, historic muddy field.

As we used to exclaim: “Far out! Groovy!”

Nokia has a new smartphone on the way too.

It’s called the N97.

When it was introduced to the press a few months ago it looked quite amazing.

That was before the Palm Pre/Apple iPhone 3G-S/3G wars began.

Well, Nokia is finally releasing the smartphone to the public at a posh roll-out party on June 25th, here in New York, from 6-9pm at Marquee (10th Avenue, 26th-27th). Public is invited (but you should RSVP early if you want to go.

Can’t wait to try the N97. We’ll let you know what we think as soon as we get our hands on one.

The more I think about it the more I believe that Apple may have dealth a death blow to Palm on Monday.

Don’t ge me wrong, I think the Palm Pre is a terrific phone. I enjoyed my week with my test handset. If there were no iPhones the Palm Pre would rule.

I proudly showed it to attendees at this past weekend’s super charity Auction Napa Valley in California. Everyone wanted to touch it and seemed quite impressed.

I also let a young, rabid iPhone fan try the Pre. After just a few minutes, Ian Christopher Kirk was mighty impressed:

“The first moment I held the Pre I fell in love with its slick look and feel and its super easy to use touch capabilities.
The one thing I dislike is the flip keyboard. Once you push the keyboard out it completely changes the feel of the phone. It goes from slick to very abnormal.
The keyboard itself is too small. I have relatively average size fingers and it is very hard to type. I would recommend the Pre to anyone – but the keyboard might be a hassle…”

But Palm may be too late. They now have to contend with the iPhone 3G-S. Among its many new features, Apple’s third generation smarphone has double the operating memory and double the speed of the last iPhone.

There’s also twice as much storage memory (16 GB) which is twice as much memory as inside the older 3G – and twice as much as in the Palm Pre. Don’t forget – they’re the same price – $200 with 2-year contracts (but without Sprint’s deal-killing $100 rebate scheme).

I won’t even dwell on the fact that there’s also a new 32 GB iPhone 3G-S which will sell for $300.

On top of all that is the real killer — Apple’s genius plan to continue marketing last year’s 8 GB iPhone 3G while lowering the price to 100 bucks. By doing that they literally cut the feet out from under the Palm/Sprint possibly killing the new Pre as well as those two companies in the process.

Palm and Sprint don’t have the luxury to wait until the Pre builds-up sales steam and market share. They don’t have the luxury of waiting until there are enough new Pre apps to make WebOS a financially viable contender. And they don’t have the luxury of waiting to release a GSM version of the Pre for nearly every other cell phone market on the planet.

Game. Set. Match.

It will be interesting to see if anyone can ever catch Apple.

The fourth largest U.S. cell phone provider is investigating the possibility that their computers were hacked into and loads of confidential data was compromised.

According to reports, one document in particular which named T-Mobile American servers was published, over the weekend by security Website Insecure.org.

There was reportedly also a note threatening to sell confidential T-Mobile data to the highest bidder.

According to a T-Mobile spokesperson:

“Following a recent online posting that someone allegedly accessed T-Mobile servers, the company is conducting a thorough investigation and at this time has found no evidence that customer information, or other company information, has been compromised. Reports to the contrary are inaccurate and should be corrected. T-Mobile continues to monitor this situation and as a precaution has taken additional measures to further ensure our customers’ information and our systems are protected. As is our standard practice, customers can be assured if there is any evidence that customer or system information has been compromised, we would inform those affected as quickly as possible.”

Scary stuff.

They didn’t even have to announce any real technological breakthroughs today – even though they did. All they really had to do was cut the price of the current iPhone and create widespread panic in the industry.

This morning, here in San Francisco, at Apple’s keynote speech at their WWDC there were announcements about the next version of the Mac OS X operating system (Snow Leopard) – the newly redesigned MacBook Pro family of laptops – and, of course the third generation iPhone 3G-S.

Snow Leopard adds a slew of cool new features to Apple’s slick operating system including 64-bit hardware support, next-generation QuickTime X and update support for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. A little something for average user as well as professionals. They should also be commended for keeping their OS update price at $29.

MacBook Pros now come in 13, 15 and 17-in screen models that sport new features including uni-body construction, better looking displays and a promise of longer battery life. Prices start at $1,199 (13-inch), $1,699 (15-inch) and $2,499 (17-inch).

The new iPhone 3G-S (along with Version 3.0 of the iPhone OS) sports a lot of new features but seems more evolutionary than revolutionary. Don’t get me wrong, any improvements Apple makes to their industry-leading smartphone design is fine with me – and even better with iPhone fans.

The new iPhones have faster processors, tout better battery life, faster HSDPA wireless connectivity (which might negate any improvements in battery life) 16GB of storage in the $200 model and 32GB in the $300 device.

There’s now a 3.0 megapixel camera inside that does stills and videos (which you can edit on the phone), universal search and voice calling and song selection. The new Palm Pre matches the 3MP camera and similar search features but lacks all the voice enhancements.

But the biggest announcement of the day was that the second-generation, 8GB iPhone – the current iPhone 3G was plummeting in price – down to $99 – beginning immediately. Not only does that undercut Palm’s 8 GB Pre by one hundred bucks – but it also kills the market for Palm’s inexpensive Centro. It also puts a damper on any cheap new Palm devices down the road – as well as possible Google/Android phones, future designs from Nokia or, basically, any other phone you can think of.

I told you – it’s pure genius.

Apple’s iPhone 3G-S will be available beginning on Friday, June 19th.

ST. HELENA, CA –The Napa Valley Vintner’s annual 3-day charity celebration of the region’s wines was a big success.

Despite the questionable economy everywhere, events for Auction Napa Valley 2009 took in a total of $5.7 million dollars with the proceeds going to local healthcare, youth and housing non-profit programs.

Events included a “Great Train Robbery” (with horses, guns and a lot of smiling faces), special wine tastings and amazing “dinners all throughout the valley, a wonderful “barrel auction” of wines on the grounds of the Robert Mondavi winery and finally the grand gala dinner auction under the giant tents at Meadowood — where wine/travel/goodies packages sold for tens of thousands/hundreds of thousands/million+!

The overall spectacle and scope of all the events was mind-boggling especially since everything seemed to work exactly as planned — an amazing feat.

It was good to see that although the final numbers were down from previous years attendees came through for the local charities.

Oh, and the wine was pretty amazing too!

We’re reporting from the big wine charity activities at this year’s Auction Napa Valley.

Today is the big Barrel Auction conducted on the grounds of the magnificent Robert Mondavi Winery in Oakville, CA.

This morning, I got to speak with the “Grand Dame” of California wines, Margrit Mondavi and winemaker Genevieve Janssens about this year’s event and auctions of the past.