Eye-Fi's Wi-Fi answers 'Where was I?'

Lori Grunin | May 12, 2008

When we reviewed Eye-Fi's Wi-Fi card for digital cameras back in November, it was but a lonely single child in the company's product portfolio. Today, Eye-Fi announced the birth of siblings, creating a tiered product line of SD add-in cards that deliver Wi-Fi connectivity--and now more--to digital cameras.

The kid bound to get the most attention is the Eye-Fi Explore, a US$129 card with two notable features. First, the company has teamed up with Skyhook Wireless to provide geotagging for your photos; Skyhook's Wi-Fi positioning system essentially triangulates your location via queries to local wireless access points. Second, when you purchase the Explore card, you get a free year of Wayport hotspot access--just for your photo uploads, of course. (I won't be able to resist sticking the card in my laptop to see what happens, though.) While an interesting, novel approach to geotagging that I look forward to trying, it's clearly a solution for those who stick to urban areas. But given Skyhook's claimed accuracy of 20m you could probably reconstruct a night of drinking that ended badly even if you can't quite make out the photos.

With Eye-Fi Share, the company simply rebrands the existing product at the current price of US$99. Both Share and Explore allow you to upload your photos to most of the popular photo-sharing services and Facebook.

At the bottom of the Eye-Fi pecking order, US$79 Eye-Fi Home basically replaces a USB cable, simply providing the ability to download photos wirelessly to your PC.

All of the cards, slated for June 6 availability, come in 2GB capacity and deliver what are referred to as "consumer grade" transfer rates. That is, so slow that no one wants to talk about it. Card performance isn't that much of an issue in point and shoots, unless your camera requires the speed for movie capture: just something to be aware of. Unless you're seriously cable-averse, the Home option doesn't seem like a great deal, though: a comparable 2GB card costs about US$10 and the cable usually comes free with the camera.

Via Crave CNET

Filed under: Digital Cameras
Leave a comment | Bookmark | Share