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Here's an interesting idea from a Chinese company called Netcom (not to be confused with the Norwegian operator): adding NFC capability to existing phones via microSD. That's right, rather than relying on external add-ons that occupy ports, Netcom decided to fit NFC chips plus their antennas onto ordinary microSD cards, yet still managing to cram in up to 8GB of NAND memory at the same time. This sure sounds convenient, but there are some caveats: the first rule is that neither the back cover nor the microSD card holder should be made out of metal; then secondly, we noticed that due to the tiny antenna coil, scanning could become tricky if the reader has a small sensing area -- you'd need to position your phone at just the right spot; and lastly, the phone needs a special background app to communicate with the NFC circuitry. The demo we saw used a Java app running on a Chinese dumbphone, and we were told that Android will be next in line to receive similar support. Alas, ...

You aren't looking at a retro microSD card reader, you're looking at an Atari-compatible serial disk drive that just  happens  to use microSD in lieu of 5.25-inch floppies. In a Zork inspired fit of nostalgia (we've all been there), hardware modder Rossum paired up an Atari connector with a LPC1114 microcontroller, capable of emulating up to eight Atari drives, managed by a custom, auto-booting app. The whole package is neatly packed in to a tiny 3D printed replica of the original Atari 810 disk drive, and is available for sale never -- but don't let that stop you: Rossum's schematics are free for the taking. The word's biggest little Atari drive is just a DIY away. Rossum

Aside from shipping without Adobe Flash Player preloaded, the Motorola Xoom also has the ignoble distinction of having a   non-functioning MicroSD card slot. We're assured by the company's reps that the update to make storage expansion work is imminent, but if you have to have it  right this very minute , there's now a kernel for you. It goes by the name of Tiamat, originating on xda-developers (as most good things do), and has recently stepped up to support MicroSD card storage. You'll find download links and instructions for Tiamat at the source link, plus a few happy reports of it working as advertised.   Android Central xda-developers

Digging through our drawers here at Engadget there is one thing we're clearly not in desperate need of: USB flash drives. We also happen to have a plethora of microSD cards in 1GB an 2GB sizes, left over from the days when picking a smartphone meant Windows Mobile or BlackBerry. This concept USB drive, dubbed The Collector, could potentially solve our conundrum by allowing us to toss all thosethumb drives and find a use for our now homeless microSD chips. The Collector wouldn't have any storage of its own, instead you'd slip up to three microSD cards into it and, when full, simply swap them out for more. It would also combine your smaller chunks of storage into a single block, so those three 2GB scraps would become a slightly less useless 6GB drive. Of course, keeping that pile of microSD cards (now bound by common data) organized might actually be a bigger headache than rifling through your drawers looking for that OFWGKTA mixtape you downloaded so many months ago. Yan...