Eye-Fi: First Wireless Memory Card for Digital Cameras

Fri Nov 2, 2007 12:47PM EDT

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Now here's a great idea. Take a normal-looking 2GB SD card. Add a wireless chip to it. Stick the whole thing into your camera, and before you know it you've got a wireless camera. Now add a dose of software smarts onto the SD card to manage the whole thing and what do you get? You get a quick wireless ticket straight from your camera to any one of 17 different social networks or photo-sharing sites including Facebook, blogging sites like TypePad, photo-sharing sites like Flickr and Snapfish, or your PC or Mac. If you've been lamenting how your photos never seem to make it out of the camera, lament no more. The price? $99.99 with 2GB of storage (about 1,000 photos).

I caught up with Jef Holove, CEO of Eye-Fi, shortly after this product was announced. He shed some additional light on how stuff works behind the scenes. The card has everything, including the software necessary to get you up and running. All you need to do is tell the card which service you want your photos sent to. It also archives the photos on your PC or Mac. And while you can belong to multiple services, you can't send your photos to more than one at a time. Currently the card supports JPEG files only, but transmits photos without any degradation in resolution. It will resize the photos if the online destination requires it.

Holove says, "Digital cameras made it extremely easy to take pictures, but the rest of the process is a hassle." Wireless, he says, will make things much easier. We'll have a review unit momentarily and report back, but this sounds like a winner.

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  • 1 Posted by expatrique on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:57PM EDT Report Abuse

    This would be great for events. Portland Institute for Contemporary Art's yearly Time Based Art festival here in Portland has a 'Press Corps' of which I am a member, but we deliver our photos back to PICA on CDs and then they go up to Flickr. This could make the process much easier and keep the vibe flowing online as well as in person. For $99 maybe I'll invest in a couple and see if it works.

  • 2 Posted by zookiebandit on Thu Sep 3, 2009 11:01PM EDT Report Abuse

    Will it be available with Bluetooth for the Bluetooth enabled printers? It would be great to send a photo directly from my camera to the printer without cables.

  • 3 Posted by n9xvt on Thu Sep 3, 2009 7:32PM EDT Report Abuse

    Even if they use Wi-Fi it's still a great idea, and if you have a home network with a wireless printer you can almost have instant pictures! Fineally

  • 4 Posted by ytech_robinraskin on Thu Sep 3, 2009 10:58PM EDT Report Abuse

    I finally got to try out the card and it really works as advertised. Sort of amazing. You pop it in your camera, take your photos and before you know it they appear on your PC posted to whichever service you use--Robin

  • 6 Posted by gnehrli on Thu Sep 3, 2009 4:10PM EDT Report Abuse

    Totally awsome! I'm a mom of toddlers and other critters! And with the holidays coming around, it will be a SNAP to upload them so friends and family can see!! oh wait... when does it come out? THANKS EYE-FI!!!

  • 7 Posted by bsrutherford on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:14PM EDT Report Abuse

    is this only for digital cameras? or, say, could you put this in something like a palm treo 700w?

  • 8 Posted by bonhamowls73 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:11PM EDT Report Abuse

    would this work in a treo 700w for wifi access along with storage for the phone?

  • 9 Posted by william_abraham2005 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 10:46PM EDT Report Abuse

    What? I had no idea such a device would be able to do such things. It's basically putting a 'Photo' Server in a chip? That sounds almost impossible to do. I guess I'll just have to see to believe.

  • 10 Posted by illg1 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 4:23PM EDT Report Abuse

    I still wonder how it all works when you are so far away. You somehow need to be within some wireless network service distance, right? Who exactly pays for traffic?

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