SanDisk Corp introduced a new flash storage drive on Wednesday that also automatically backs up data to the Internet.

When consumers store documents, photos and music onto SanDisks new Cruzer Titanium Plus USB flash drive, it will back up that digital information to a Web service offered by a start-up company called BeInSync, which stores data onto Amazon.com Incs computers.

The new storage drive, which SanDisk believes is the first of its kind, is the latest in a wave of devices that link up with the Internet to offer new features to products that were previously considered stand-alone, or offline, devices.

Toshiba last week launched legal action against an Italian disc duplication company it maintains has infringed its intellectual property.

The complaint, filed with the Milan District Court, claims that disc replicator Acme SpA has been punching out discs that match the DVD specification even though the Italian company has not licensed the technology from Toshiba or the DVD6C Licensing Group, one of the holding companies for DVD patents pooled on behalf of nine companies.

This, Toshiba alleged, has harmed its own DVD business, and it wants the Italian court to force Acme not only to license the allegedly infringed patents but also to cough up damages. Toshiba also wants the court to ban Acme from replicating DVDs in the meantime.

In Service Pack 3 for Office 2003, Microsoft disabled support for many older file formats. If you have old Word, Excel, 1-2-3, Quattro, or Corel Draw documents, watch out! They did this because the old formats are ‘less secure’, which actually makes some sense, but only if you got the files from some untrustworthy source.

Naturally, they did this by default, and then documented a mind-bogglingly complex workaround (KB 938810) rather than providing a user interface for adjusting it, or even a set of awkward ‘Do you really want to do this?’ dialog boxes to click through. And of course because these are, after all, old file formats … many users will encounter the problem only months or years after the software change, while groping around in dusty and now-inaccessible archives.

After telling you all that Digg was the best social destination of 2007, the column made it onto the front page of the site. And while some comments echoed my sentiment–namely, that other social sites are, well, crap–the vast majority of commenters found a number of faults in Digg.

Although the general opinion of Digg faithful can’t be judged based on comments on one story, can it be said that there is a Digg revolt in the works that is led by a group of individuals who are fed up with Ron Paul stories, crazy videos, and a broken comment system?

If the comments on that story are to be believed, a revolt could happen.

As one commenter put, “I think Digg has been the social site that went downhill the most in 2007.” Is it true? Did Digg really go downhill in 2007? Obviously, I tend to disagree with this sentiment and I truly believe that Digg was the best social destination of the year. But why have so many disagreed?