MP3 players - these days more accurately termed portable media players - are surely one of the fastest evolving technological devices of recent times, and news that a new form of storage is being developed that could increase capacities exponentially could well have far-reaching effects elsewhere.

Without going into the levels of detail that only a particle physicist would understand, 'Racetrack memory', as it's currently being called, uses the spin of an electron to store data and operate at far faster speeds than current hard drives.

It could allow devices such as MP3 players to store around half a million songs or up to 4,000 movies, would cost far less to produce and require much less power, allowing devices to run for weeks on a single charge and last decades without deteroiorating.

IBM reports that the technology is still at the exploratory stage, but suggests that we could see this sort of thing appearing on the market within the next 10 years. We'll see...