Hitachi and Intel team up on mobile hard drives

Usually we try not to geek out way too much on these sorts of industry announcements, but you gotta cut us some slack if we get a little excited at the prospect of cheaper storage and longer battery life in our portable obsessions. Hitachi and Intel are collaboarating on a new standard called CE-ATA
(Consumer Electronics-Advanced Technology Attachment) which should standardize (and hopefully shrink down even further)
those compact hard drives that are popping up in MP3 players, portable video players, and yes,
even cellphones. The goal is to finalize the spec by June 2005, with the first mobile minidrives ready to go by August 2005.