Digital Camera Memory Card With Wi-Fi

thefickler writes "A Secure Digital memory card with built-in Wi-Fi networking will allow digital cameras to upload images automatically to home computers and photo-sharing web sites. This product of California-based company Eye-Fi is currently in beta and should be launched later this year. Would you pay $100 for a 2-GB memory card in order to save the hassle of plugging in a USB cable?"

Selective market

[Devil's BSD]

Assuming I'm reading this correctly... there already is a market for cameras with built-in wifi. Canon has a few models; one that comes to mind is the SD430. Nikon also has a few models. Even Kodak has an SD-sized Wifi adapter. I am also aware of adapters for professional high-end cameras, i.e. the Canon WTF-E1.

It's a selective market because not everyone will be able to take advantage of the full benefit. If you are a corporate photographer, for example, it might be nice to be able to have your photos automatically uploaded to your network share as you snap photos at board meetings and whatnot. On the other hand, I don't think Wifi will do you much good on your African Safari trip.

All in all, this article is just another slashvertisement. Just another company probably trying to get the word out about their new product - hardly anything revolutionary. The market already exists, it is a niche market, and no, I will not be paying a hundred f**king dollars for it.

Bah, I don't need no USB cable

[MelloDawg]

My SD card has USB built-in:

http://www.sandisk.com/Products/Item(1853)-SDSDPH- 2048-SanDisk_Ultra_II_SD_Plus_USB_2GB.aspx [sandisk.com]

This solution seems alot simpiler than Wi-Fi: no SSID/WEP/WPA/etc stuff to configure.

Funny, people are usually more impressed by my SD card than my new Nikon DSLR.

I was a beta tester

[evw]

I used a beta version of the product and really enjoyed it. I thought it was at its best in a "digital party" social scene. It's a lot of fun snapping pictures at a party and having them immediately uploaded where they can be displayed on a big screen and shared with everyone.

The version I tested could be configured (using a computer app while the SD is mounted) to automatically upload to Flickr, Phanfare or a long list of other photo sharing sites. I believe they also had a version that would upload to your PC but I wasn't testing that.

Setup for the card was done using a PC. The camera is oblivious to the WiFi capabilities. On the plus side the card can be configured to connect to any of the networks that your computer knows about. On the negative side, I think you need the computer to add new networks.

pfft...

[djupedal]

My Nikon S6 [nikonusa.com] has done this for this last year... SD & WiFi & 3" LCD - I can even control it from the computer.

Re:Not the first

[jrumney]

What you posted a link to was an SDIO WiFi card. Such cards are commonly used in PDAs and in this case printers to give them Wifi capabilities. They require SDIO support in the device and drivers. TFA is about a 2Gb memory card, which has onboard Wifi and the software to use it to transparently upload files to a server. To the device it appears as a 2Gb memory card, not as an SDIO Wifi card.