The USB port is one of the most ubiquitous computing interfaces ever designed. The port in its various sizes and guises is found on all manner of computers, game consoles, TVs, cable boxes, cameras, and more. The number of uses for USB is simply staggering.

A company called Infinitec has announced a new Infinite USB Memory Device or IUM. The company describes the IUM as the next generation of USB flash drives. The drive promises media streaming capability and claims to remove worry about how much space is left for storage and removing data before you add new data to the drive.

The IUM allows the user to share an entire HDD along with servers, external storage, and any other storage that your notebook has access to. That effectively means you will never run out of storage space, as long as your PC has space anyway. How much data from the drive is shared can be determined at the file level allowing the sharing of an entire drive or a single image on that drive.

IUM supports all file formats and if lost or stolen none of the files go with the drive because it relies on storage in other locations for actually storing the files. Infinitec also claims that the drive can stream media from a laptop to any device with a USB port including TVs, DVD players, game consoles and more. The IUM is specifically said to support the PS3, Wii, and Xbox 360.

To operate, the IUM has to be paired with a computer and can only be paired to a single computer. This allows multiple IUMs to be used in a location without interference. The downside to the IUM is that since the device uses your laptop or desktop HDD for storage you will need to have the computer with you on the road to access files. One interesting use for the device is to send the digital photos from your PC to a digital photo frame.

Pricing and availability are unknown.