Centrelink has kicked off a major technology purchasing initiative worth between $30 million and $40 million, as the national welfare agency continues its drive towards shifting its storage architecture towards being used as a service.

Swedish outfit BlockMaster has launched what it claims to be the world's fastest secure USB stick, curing, it says, the problematic trade-off between security and performance.

Transcend has added a new rugged USB flash drive to its range of memory products. The Transcend JetFlash V70 is claimed to have anti-shock features, survive dust and splashes. For this, its exterior casing is made of rubber, and has a tethered cap holder that will help prevent losing the cap.

Corsair Memory Inc. today announced what it claims to be the world's fastest a 128GB USB flash drive, the Flash Voyager GT. The newest Flash Voyager GT is based on a dual-controller architecture to achieve what Corsair said is single-level cell (SLC) NAND flash memory performance levels using less expensive and higher density multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash.

Corsair Memory Inc. Tuesday introduced a USB flash drive adapter that it said creates a push-button file backup for computers when any flash drive is plugged into it.

In "Applications on a Flash Drive," I mentioned that I keep a flash drive with portable diagnostic tools I use for fixing friends' and relatives' PCs. Andy Ludlum asked what programs I keep on that flash drive.