September 23, 2004 From Storage, a New FashionBy MICHEL MARRIOTT OWARD the end of the latest Tom Cruise thriller, "Collateral," the story's action turns on the performance of a player new to most movie audiences. For a suspense-charged moment Mr. Cruise and his co-star, Jamie Foxx, are upstaged by a silvery finger of portable storage technology. In recent months, these slender solid-state memory chips - known by many names, but officially U.S.B. flash drives - have increasingly been seen blinking from the ports of computers in classrooms and libraries, conference rooms and offices, coffee shops and airport lounges.And when...