The pictures you take using a digital camera are truly ethereal. As you snap the photographs that will forever preserve those precious moments of time, you count on the technology inside your digital camera to store them.

Now if you think about it for a moment, this is actually a tremendous leap of faith on your part since most of us who use these digital devices really don't have a clue as to how our priceless images are actually being stored!

With film, you basically knew that your images were chemically etched onto a light-sensitive strip of celluloid that after developing would produce negatives and printed photos that you could hold in your hand. But all you can hold in your hand in the digital photography world is the flash memory chip you take out of the digital camera. Open one up and you'd find nothing inside that even remotely resembled the pictures you took. Yet they're in there somewhere.

So what do you do when the memory chip gets full? Given that today you can get single memory chips that can hold a gigabyte and more, you can snap away through hundreds, even thousands of images before that happens. Still, eventually you will find yourself carrying around lots of flash memory wafers especially if you're away from your computer for a period of time and can't offload them. And while lugging around a laptop computer is a solution, it's an impractical one. A better way to keep all of your images organized and consolidated into one location is being offered by the Picture Porter from Digital Foci.

The Picture Porter is a portable digital photo album that fits in the palm of your hand. Not much larger than the digital camera itself, the Picture Porter contains a 40 gigabyte hard drive and has a bright 2 inch color LCD display. It also sports several slots on its side that can accommodate virtually all of the popular media card formats including including CompactFlash I/II, MD, SM, MMC, SD Card, miniSD, Memory Stick, MS PRO, MS Duo, and MS PRO Duo. All you do is insert the flash memory card into the Picture Porter and transfer any or all of the images it contains directly to the unit's hard drive. And if your friend is running out of memory space, just insert their card and save their images as well.

The Picture Porter's front panel contains several control buttons that let you easily navigate the easy to follow on screen menus that let you copy and transfer images to and from its hard disk drive. Its bi-directional data transfer ability lets you copy files directly from any memory card to the Picture Porter hard drive and back to any memory chip you insert. Now you can download images, select the ones you want, save them into a folder and then transfer them back out into another memory chip, all without the use of a computer. This is a great way to share the photos you want with anyone.

Just load up a memory chip from the Picture Porter and give it to them. In addition, you can easily transfer files to and from your computer and between computers with different operating systems through its high-speed USB 2.0 connection.

Another ability of the Picture Porter lets you view any of its images on a TV set so you can have a slide show everyone can enjoy together. The Picture Porter supports the more popular image formats such as JPEG, TIFF, BMP and RAW. And if its music and videos you wish to store, the Picture Porter can do that as well. Its ability to hold mp3 and video files truly makes the Picture Porter the ideal away-from-home media storage solution.

The Picture Porter is compatible with both Windows and Macintosh and comes in a choice of either frosted white or graphite. It includes Ulead management software, USB cable, video/audio cable, earphones, AC adapter, Lithium-Ion battery for 3.5 hours of video and 7.5 hours of music, remote control, carrying case, and a user¹s guide. It is available now at Digital Foci¹s online store at www.digitalfoci.com. $299.