Cardmedia has announced the new Biodisk USB 2.0 Fingerprint USB Pen drive, which allows you to secure the access to your files via fingerprint access control. Like the existing Biodisk USB 1.1, the Biodisk USB 2.0 will let you register up to 5 fingerprints to restrict the access to the stored data, and optionally set up a password protection access.

Antivirus companies are reporting the spread of a new variant of the mass-mailing PC virus known as “Bagle.” The latest version of the malicious software, which some experts refer to as an email worm, is rearing its head worldwide. By Thursday morning, virus trackers in China, Japan, the United States and parts of Europe had reported instances of the threat. Trend Micro said that the new offshoot, which it calls Bagle.AZ, is distributed as an email attachment that cloaks itself as a delivery notification or confirmation. It uses “spoofed” email addresses to appear to be from a known source.

Turkcell and Research In Motion (RIM) announced plans to offer the BlackBerry to mobile customers in Turkey. BlackBerry will operate on Turkcell’s GSM/GPRS network in Turkey and international roaming will be supported in countries where Turkcell has GPRS roaming agreements in place.

The week he died, science-fiction humorist Douglas Adams was honored with an asteroid named after one of the characters from his classic “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” Now Adams has his own name in the heavens as well, in the form of asteroid 2001 DA42. Not only does it memorialize the year of Adams’ death (2001) and his initials (DA), but it also referenced the number 42–which is absurdly meaningful in the “Hitchhiker” saga as the “answer to the Ultimate Question.” (The problem was, no one ever knew precisely what the Ultimate Question was.)

Motion Computing has converted its M1400 Tablet PC into a thin client device, substituting Windows XP Embedded for Windows XP Tablet PC Edition. Dubbed the “M1400TC,” the device is useful for equipping mobile workers with tablet-style computing resources, while keeping sensitive information on secure network servers, the company says.

Housed in a case slightly bigger than a cigarette box, the Hama Mobile DataSafe OTG with 20 GB hard drive manages the data of most connected removable media. The DataSafe supports copying and deleting single files or entire folders, can backup the entire contents of terminal devices with USB type A connector and manages the entire file structure, both on the integrated 20 GB hard drive and on the connected devices.

The three-year-old patent dispute between NTP and Research In Motion (RIM) saw a flurry of activity early this year as the Canadian government stepped into the fray. The Canadian government argued in a brief filed Jan. 13 that a decision by the U.S. appeals court on Dec. 14 to uphold the patent infringement ruling against RIM and send the case back to a lower court for judgment could significantly harm Canadian technology companies and innovation. Canada asked the U.S. court to consider RIM’s appeal to rehear the case before 12 judges, or “en banc,” rather than return the case to the lower court.

Hama will introduce a card reader at CeBIT that can process 22 card formats. With the 22 format USB TravelDrive Card Reader, even the small TransFlash cards are no problem for the right adapter, which are usually already provided with the cards.

Cardmedia has announced the availability of the Super X USB OTG, a new portable storage device providing from 20 to 80GB of storage. This portable storage device allows you to copy directly from a Digital camera, USB pen drive or USB Card reader to the internal hard drive using the USB OTG (On The Go) technology. The Super X also acts as a USB Bridge, which allows you to backup from one USB Storage unit (i.e. digital camera) to another USB storage device (i.e. USB pen drive or memory card via a card reader).

Millions of Internet users are hooked on search–but they know little about how a search engine works or how results are presented. A new survey released Sunday by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that only one in six search users can distinguish between unpaid and sponsored results. Yet nearly half of all users said they would stop using a search engine if they thought it wasn’t clear about how it presented paid results.