Camera memory card 'not formatted' after use, any chance of recovering pics?

[Raging Turtle]

I know very little about this stuff, but I'm hoping someone here might.

Between myself and a friend, we probably took a hundred pictures yesterday on my camera.  Towards the end of the evening, I got a 'card not formatted' message when I tried to use my camera, and my computer won't read the images when I attach the usb cable to the camera.  Grrrrrr. 

I tried another memory card, which worked fine for both the camera and the computer.  But I have no idea why the memory card I was using would go kaput like that; I was able to view pictures I had taken with no problem up until I started getting the message.  I assume formating the card would erase any existing data, so I haven't done that yet, and my cunning plan of 'blow out the dust like it was a NES' didn't work either. 

Any advice on possibly recovering the pictures?  It was a bit of a going away party for me before I leave the country, there are some pictures in there I would certainly pay money to get access to.

[Hoax]

There are people who you can pay to perform various data recovery black arts...

[Trippy]

Google on:

Flash recovery

or some other combination of words. The really expensive cards even come with their own recovery software since accidently reformatting/deleting is so common. If the card has a physical problem I'm not sure how successful these programs will be, though.

[Krakrok]

I bought a cleaning kit for a camera with a jacked up memory stick reader connection. It might have memory card cleaning gear with it too. And yeah maybe you can read it with an all in one reader.

[Raging Turtle]

Downloaded one of the flash recovery programs, still wouldn't read the camera, so I bought a 10 dollar memory card reader, and the recovery program was able to scan that.  I've got my pictures! 

Thanks for the advice.  If people want me to post a few pictures of a semi-drunken evening of sailing, let me know. 

[NiX]

Post 'em anyway! I'm interested to see what you look like. I recall you being the off-shore teacher.