SanDisk is set to launch later this year what it calls "the new digital film" - a write-once medium it hopes will replace all the memory cards its been persuading us to buy for our digital cameras for last five years or so. The new product may use holographic memory.

Exactly what the technology is, SanDisk isn't saying. Greg Rhine, the company's consumer products chief, would only say it uses "3D memory", according to a PC Magazine report. Rhine did indicate the medium is read-only, suggesting it does indeed use holography to encode data in optical interference patterns within a three-dimensional medium.

Rhine said the product would hold images for 100 years, though where that's a minimum or a maximum, he doesn't appear to have revealed. Either way, now folk have become accustomed to storing pictures on a computer, it's questionable whether they'll want to go back to keeping everything in the digtal equivalent of a shoebox.