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Media Data Storage Wireless Networking Hardware

Digital Camera Memory Card With Wi-Fi 220

Posted by kdawson from the remember-and-transmit dept.
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?"
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Digital Camera Memory Card With Wi-Fi More

Digital Camera Memory Card With Wi-Fi

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  • $1.84 per month (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Harmonious Botch ( 921977 ) * on Tuesday June 12, 2007 @01:02AM (#19474765) Homepage Journal
    Assuming that my memory card or my current wi-fi or some other component will be obsolete in 5 years...$100 dollars amortized over 5 years at 4% comes to $1.84 per month. Heck, I tip more than that to have two burgers delivered to the table rather than get up and walk to over to the counter and get them myself.
    This is a no-brainer.

    • Re:$1.84 per month (Score:5, Interesting)

      by iamdrscience ( 541136 ) on Tuesday June 12, 2007 @01:37AM (#19474879) Homepage
      Yes, but what value does that $1.84/month give you over a regular 2GB SD card?

      A regular 2GB SD card costs between $15 [newegg.com] and $34 [newegg.com] (5 year amortized at 4% blah blah blah is $0.28 to $0.63 per month). Essentially the advantage this card adds is not having to get up off your ass and walk 10 feet across the room to get your camera if it's not next to the computer. To me, that's of very little value -- far less than $66-85, especially given how prone SD cards are to getting lost. Then again, this is just me, I'm sure to some people with fatter asses than myself this is a value worth far more than the price difference.

      • Re:$1.84 per month (Score:5, Insightful)

        by fyngyrz ( 762201 ) * on Tuesday June 12, 2007 @03:47AM (#19475305) Homepage Journal
        Yes, but what value does that $1.84/month give you over a regular 2GB SD card?

        It could save wear and tear on the USB connection. My Olympus E20, a 5 MP DSLR, has a tiny USB connection which I sometimes use several times a day. Plug it in, grab the photos, eject the volume, unplug it, go back to what I was doing, do it again. Photography is a hobby; if I were serious about it, I'd use it more.

        The E20 is a few years old, and the jack is definitely getting loose, though it hasn't actually had a connection problem yet. It'd be nice to not have to worry about it, and use the jack for less common situations. Same thing goes for card readers. Pull the card, insert the card in the reader, read it, pull the card, insert in camera... wear. Wear and more wear. Plus a remote, but real, risk of ESD problems (High plains Montana.. dry as death during the winter, and even some parts of the summer.)

        My E20 has an infrared remote to fire the shutter. When I got it, I thought... I'll never use it. Ooops. I use it all the time. Not only does it allow rock-steady shots off a tripod (no physical contact), it saves wear on the shutter button, allows me the freedom to work more directly with the subject...

        I suspect that a wifi enabled camera might be more convenient than we might think. Wifi has a decent range, too, it isn't choked into 30 feet like bluetooth is. So I'd buy this, and I wouldn't doubt for a minute that it would improve my camera experience. Wouldn't it be cool if the camera could just be set to send the images back to your laptop on a continuous basis? By the time you got to it, it'd already have your stuff ready to look at. While you shoot, it uploads. Yummy! Now that I'd definitely pay for. And it's almost time for a new camera anyway. 5 megapixels isn't exactly top of the line anymore...

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by curmudgeous ( 710771 )
          A multi format memory card reader can be had for $20 to $30 dollars. Heck, you can even buy them as a direct replacement for that aging floppy drive for just a little more. Eject the card and read it directly to save wear and tear on the camera's USB port.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Khyber ( 864651 )
            And while you pull that card in and out, you run the risk of ESD damaging it. Already did it with a 1GB PNY SD card that was only a month old. It's damaged by static so badly that the only thing that can read it is my external memory card reader. My camera doesn't see the card, my friend's camera and Wii both do not recognize it, nor does my dvd plyer with built-in memory slots recognize it anymore.

        • Wear and tear? (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Slashdot Parent ( 995749 )
          Wear and tear?

          I've never heard anybody complain of wear and tear on a USB cable before. I guess there is a first time for everything.

          As for wear and tear on the shutter release button, I would think that your shutter itself would fail before the release button, but what do I know?

          Anyhow, if this card is ever released, I will buy one for sure. If anything, to solve the "I don't feel like waiting for 2 GB of images to download over USB" problem. With this, there would be no waiting. The images would alrea

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by fyngyrz ( 762201 ) *

            I've never heard anybody complain of wear and tear on a USB cable before.

            You still haven't. I was talking about the connector on the camera: "The E20 is a few years old, and the jack is definitely getting loose..."

            As for wear and tear on the shutter release button, I would think that your shutter itself would fail before the release button, but what do I know?

            The E20 uses the shutter button to pre-focus and to snap. It gets used many more times than the shutter itself does; every time you look

        • I remember when several articles were around discussion police misconduct - especially in regards to how they treated onlookers with cameras - that there was a suggestion that a camera with wifi and/or a bluetooth/cellular connection would be very useful.

          If a bad cop doesn't like you taking pictures of him beating up some dude in the street, he can try to confiscate your camera etc etc. If your camera has already uploaded the pictures/video to a "safe house" server, then the pictures will survive even if

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by F34nor ( 321515 ) *
        In addition what is your oppertunity cost for that?

        Or $185 earning 7% compunded annualy is $259 which in 5 years would buy you something 7.5 times faster than a 8800 GTX. Wow NPV and Moores law together forever!

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by mlush ( 620447 )

        Essentially the advantage this card adds is not having to get up off your ass and walk 10 feet across the room to get your camera if it's not next to the computer. .

        You take all your photos within 10 feet of your computer? I'd suggest your working practices are somewhat atypical...

        especially given how prone SD cards are to getting lost. Then again, this is just me, I'm sure to some people with fatter asses than myself this is a value worth far more than the price difference.

        A WiFi SD card would not get lost because it would never leave the camera! If you leave the confines of your house you may find the notion of all your photos being automatically downloaded to a 100Gb protable media player in your bag very attractive indeed. With that sort of setup the main limit on shooting is the number of batterys you can carry.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jc42 ( 318812 )
          | especially given how prone SD cards are to getting lost.

          A WiFi SD card would not get lost because it would never leave the camera!

          Indeed. In my experience, the problem is that USB cables get lost. It seems that nearly every new USB device requires a cable with a unique non-computer-end plug. I have over a dozen USB cables, and most of them fit only one gadget.

          Some time back, the USB cable for my Olympus camera hid itself away somewhere for over a month. Looking around on the internet, I found that rep
      • I dont think it's designed for people who as you put it are too lazy to put the card in a reader. Even in that respect though, I've had 1 microSD card go bad because I use it for storage on a development machine. So I'm pulling/pushing 20-30x each session (testing, unplug, put back on puter to change software, unmount, put back on dev board). After a while the connectors just get borked.

        Besides that, what if you're at a cafe with friends and want to do a live blog update? Or if you're a reporter and want

      • We just had one of our photographers come to us with a 4GB CF card that had failed between removal from the camera and insertion into a card reader. An entire day's worth of shots was lost. Thousands of dollars worth of event preparation, etc. and no documentation for posterity, and a lot of red faces. If we'd had something like this, we could have been beaming the images over to a portable system and made backups.

      • HUGE value to pros (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Slashdot Parent ( 995749 ) on Tuesday June 12, 2007 @09:42AM (#19477673)
        I can't see this card being much more than a novelty to your casual point and shooter, but the value of something like this to a pro is enormous.

        Let's say you're a pro shooting on assignment (event, wedding, on-location, whatever). Do you know how much money it would cost you if your memory card gets corrupted, lost, damaged, etc.? If it happened at a wedding, your career might be over (most wedding photogs shoot on many small memory cards in case one card gets corrupted. It happens more than you think).

        But with a wi-fi SD card, you have instant backup. This is huge! Many pros have an on-site workflow that includes backing up the card the instant it's full. With a wi-fi setup, you can be backed up instantly to a notebook with RAID-1 or something. This insurance policy is worth way more than $100.

        I'd even argue for you this would be a great investment. You say that you are prone to losing SD cards. Imagine if the card never left your camera. How many $15-$34 SD cards do you need to lose before you wish you had just bought the wi-fi card?

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by DaveWick79 ( 939388 )
          That's funny, I see more value in this for the casual shooting.

          The article didn't have alot of details, but despite what everyone is talking about here, it doesn't sound like the card has the capability of uploading content without initializing the transfer via software on a laptop or other computer. Unless cameras start being manufactured with support for wifi (and at that point, why not just integrate the wifi into the camera, not the SD card), I don't think you are going to see anything very automatic.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Linagee ( 16463 )
      Do you really think technology lasts 5 years?

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by timeOday ( 582209 )
        2GB will still be a fine size for camera memory cards 5 years from now. The mexapixel race has really slowed down, having achieved ample resolution for normal-sized viewing and also approaching physical limits for both sensors and lenses. And once you can store several hundred photos (even approximately 200 RAW files), that's plenty for most people most of the time.

        I think there are bigger threats to this product: first, built-in wireless (be it WiFi, bluetooth, or wireless usb) will become standard and

      • I'm not sure, let me check with my 7 year old Dreamcast and my 12 year old Playstation...

    • I was a beta tester (Score:5, Informative)

      by evw ( 172810 ) on Tuesday June 12, 2007 @02:05AM (#19474993)
      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.

      • Re:I was a beta tester (Score:4, Interesting)

        by garcia ( 6573 ) on Tuesday June 12, 2007 @07:43AM (#19476441)
        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.

        I use a mobile device and am uploading pictures almost immediately to my own gallery where ever I am. I need to have E/GPRS and the camera's image quality sucks. For me to be able to upload the same photos to my gallery from nearly wherever I am (with wireless available -- which in this day and age is fairly frequently) would be sweet.

        That is EXACTLY what I'm looking for. For the commenter that it's a "selective market", I can't disagree more. It's just that people aren't accustomed to that kind of ability and obviously aren't aware of the advantages.
    • Not much different than this Wi-Fi SD card [dpreview.com]

      It's gonna be hard to offer security with no user interface on the camera, and I wouldn't use it without that. Once most cameras offer built-in Wi-Fi, these little gadgets - although cool - will be overpriced and obsolete.

      • Re:Not the first (Score:5, Insightful)

        by The Clockwork Troll ( 655321 ) on Tuesday June 12, 2007 @02:30AM (#19475083) Journal
        It is not just a Wi-Fi SD card. It is an SD memory card that transparently and asynchronously uploads all files stored on it to a designated IP endpoint.

      • Re:Not the first (Score:5, Informative)

        by jrumney ( 197329 ) on Tuesday June 12, 2007 @02:55AM (#19475163)
        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.
      • It's gonna be hard to offer security with no user interface on the camera

        Don't configure it from the camera, then. Plug it into an SD card reader and configure it from your PC. It just needs to have a file on the card with the WEP key and SSID (or WPA if you feel like being lulled into a false sense of security).
  • Could this be used to add WiFi to a cellphone with an SD slot? That would be cool...

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by hamoe ( 260438 )
      You could download images and upload ring tones I suppose...

    • There are already some SD WiFi cards out there, I'd imagine that the new thing that this one provides is the shape i.e. it fits entirely into the SD card. Existing ones have an antenna or a part that sticks out usually.

      The device must support the SD WiFi drivers and last I checked the level of support was pretty limited.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by duguk ( 589689 )
        Yes, you're correct. It is called SDIO. Here's a review for one for PocketPC. [pocketgpsworld.com]

        Never used one, but this is the first thing I thought of when I heard of this. Obviously it requires the Hardware, and OS supports SDIO for communication.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mgblst ( 80109 )


        There are already some SD WiFi cards out there, I'd imagine that the new thing that this one provides is the shape i.e. it fits entirely into the SD card. Existing ones have an antenna or a part that sticks out usually.

        The device must support the SD WiFi drivers and last I checked the level of support was pretty limited.

        Why spoil a stupid theory by reading the article?

        No this is no the same thing. In this example, the camera (or any device really) does not need SDIO support, all it need is SD suppo

  • Security? (Score:2, Funny)

    by uolamer ( 957159 ) *
    Of course this product seems to provide convenience and has many applications. I just dont see it being that secure, once you take in account of how 'ignorant' the average person is about security. actually it sounds just fine, please start selling them asap, im bored.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by ettlz ( 639203 )
      This is a very reasonable gripe. I've secured my network with WPA-Enterprise, and as far as I know none of those fancy wireless-enabled devices (cameras, games consoles, print servers, etc.) support EAP-TLS authentication (where do I store the certificate?). It's a nuisance.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ettlz ( 639203 )
        That said, I've just found out some high-end Lexmark print servers do support WPA-Enterprise.

  • My Wi-Fi (Score:5, Funny)

    by dotslashdot ( 694478 ) on Tuesday June 12, 2007 @01:14AM (#19474795)
    My Wi-Fi is much better with memory than me; that's why I married her.

  • Privacy Risk (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Embedded Geek ( 532893 ) on Tuesday June 12, 2007 @01:15AM (#19474799) Homepage
    My immediate thought was relabling one of these so it appeared to be a non-WiFi card. Then, if one could handle the software/virus end of it to force the device to transmit stuff without the owner's knowledge, you would be able to observe and/or steal any and all images from a camera or hijack a cellphone that used it, etc.
    • I would assume that they've implemented this in the obvious way - make it look like a shared file server with no password on it, so it's easy to access from your PC.
      (If not, then it's more trouble to use than simply popping the card into your PC.)

      If it is implemented in the obvious way, then yeah, anybody nearby can also read your memory card, upload your pictures, delete them, replace them with viruses or LoLcat memes, etc. (Ise in ur kamera, downloading ur pictur3z) In general, it seems like a bad idea.

  • $100 for 2GB --- absolutely (Score:4, Insightful)

    by inflex ( 123318 ) on Tuesday June 12, 2007 @01:15AM (#19474803) Homepage Journal
    Biggest hate I have with cameras is having to move that card in/out, not to mention stupid events like racing off with the camera without remembering to put the card back into the cam *sigh*, or forgetting to umount the 'drive' etc etc, so yes, a tiny $100 for 2GB is well and truly worth the gains (for me).
    • Here's my easy fix to your problem - when I pull a card out, I leave the card door open, and when I pull the battery out for recharge, I leave the battery door open. I've trained myself that right before I grab the camera (usually sitting on a designated spot on a shelf) I visually check the doors and make sure that they are closed.

      I also have a DSLR, which I never turn off - I just tap the shutter release to get it out of sleep mode, snap a pic real quick to make sure everything's cool before I go out.

      Oh
      • Or you could do what most of us photographers do...

        1) Have a couple of spare cards. Take the used one out, pop the new one in. [create system to keep track of which is which here]

        2) Have a spare battery. Take the used one out, pop the new one in.[create system to keep track of which is which here]

        Personally, I get the heebie-jeebies when the flimsy little doors to my various cameras are open. I like everything tucked in.

  • Better Security Cameras (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 12, 2007 @01:18AM (#19474809)
    It there is an easy way to trigger the camera into taking a picture, then maybe you could make a security camera system that had better resolution, auto-focus and etc, than the incredibly crappy cameras used in most systems.
  • I have a HP laptop, most of the newer laptops have card readers built in, so it's eaiser for me to just slap the card in that it is to mess with the wireless connection..

    Still, neat idea overall, just not useful to me, might work with my palm lifedrive quite nicely though.... hmm..
  • I would not pay $100. A 2 Gb SD card costs 17.50 today on pricewatch
    not counting sales and rebates that happen occasionally bringing the
    price down even more. So I would pay a bit extra, perhaps $20 for
    a wifi version. HTH.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Zebedeu ( 739988 )
      I would pay for it.
      Hell, I would pay 100 just for adding the Wi-Fi functionality to my camera.

      One of the things I'm really lazy about is connecting the camera to the USB port on my PC. I don't like taking the CF card out because 1) it's basically the same amount of work, and 2) I've heard that sometimes the pins in the camera can be bent during insertion.

      In essence it's the same reason why I like to have bluetooth on my cellphone for synchronization: you're just sitting there and synchronize without having

  • Selective market (Score:4, Informative)

    by Devil's BSD ( 562630 ) on Tuesday June 12, 2007 @01:21AM (#19474823) Homepage
    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.

    • About the market (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Yvanhoe ( 564877 ) on Tuesday June 12, 2007 @02:33AM (#19475093) Journal
      French cops have a new tactic in protests : when they label someone "troublemaker" they ask him to delete his camera's memory. Wifi could be a way to get around that.

      • French cops have a new tactic in protests : when they label someone "troublemaker" they ask him to delete his camera's memory. Wifi could be a way to get around that.
        And here is another solution [cgsecurity.org].

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Twanfox ( 185252 )
          Why attempt recovery that may or may not be possible when you can have the pictures already saved elsewhere? Also, what happens if, by some stupid abuse of power, they simply take your camera to ensure it's deleted? You might not be able to recover anything after they get done with it.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Eric in SF ( 1030856 )
        Ding!Ding!Ding! This is exactly what I was excited about. For street photographers or photographers who happen to be shooting the police beating someone, this is an excellent first step.

        Unfortunately, it sounds like you have to scope out your area FIRST, to find and configure any public wifi networks onto the card, but it's only a matter of time before they will auto-connect to any open wifi connection.

        Once you've got the connection, it's a lot harder for the cops, (or worse - private security guards) to ta

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jrumney ( 197329 )

      Assuming I'm reading this correctly... there already is a market for cameras with built-in wifi.

      Right, and assuming I'm reading it correctly, that market just got expanded to all digital cameras that use SD cards as their storage medium. Previously a camera had to have the WiFi built into the camera, or support SDIO (or the Compact Flash equivalent) and have the drivers and probably some form of UI built in.

  • Adding wifi to phones means the end of of paying for cell/mobile phone service in the home and even in wireless MANs. Lots of phones have SD varients. There are two SD cards on the market already that have wifi and one apparently has memory as well. Although they are not supported by the treo unless you hack it. Go Shadowmite go.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Barny ( 103770 )
      Check out the nokia e65 for a nice voip 802.11g compatible phone, or if you have too much money the n95 :)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by F34nor ( 321515 ) *
        I'm currently in the Middle East and my wife has a Nokia e61 that hasn't been crippled by some slack jawed cell phone company exec. I have been running pbxes.org with Gizmo project for sip Voip goodness. Although since I updated the phone that setup has not worked and I have not tried to figure out why. In the meantime Fring came out and now she can just use Skype on the phone. Its rough sometimes but it works. The sip was always fantastic. Now if I could just get her stupid employers to get off the goddamn
  • Given the size and power requirements for SD cards, I think we can safely assume it's going to be limited to 802.11b speeds for data transfer.

    That means a theoretical maximum of 11Mbps (actually around 7Mbps maximum throughput), which is hardly enough for real-time photo transfer in cameras with a resolution higher than a few megapixels (with compression) and that automatically rules out any professional usage for this thing.

    Even if it somehow managed to achieve 802.11g speeds, it's just around 20Mbps throu
    • Well, how about thinking before dismissing it?
      It isnt just a wireless adaptor, it also got 2Gbyte of memory.

      This means that if, for example, you shoot raw with 10 Mbyte of filesize (which is quite typical), you can take 200 pictures.
      If you are in a studio (or whereever else you have wifi),now every 10-20 seconds, one of them will be transfered away, freeing up that space.

      It might last quite a while that way.

  • Bah, I don't need no USB cable (Score:3, Informative)

    by MelloDawg ( 180509 ) on Tuesday June 12, 2007 @01:39AM (#19474891)
    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.

    • Funny, people are usually more impressed by my SD card than my new Nikon DSLR.
      Well, can you blame them? Sorry, I had to slip that in there. Nikon makes great cameras.

      But imagine this. You are a pro, and you take 150 shots on a corrupt SD card. I'm pretty sure at that point you'll be kicking yourself for not shelling out for a $100 wi-fi SD card that would have given you instant backup to a notebook sitting in a corner somewhere.
      • But imagine this. You are a pro, and you take 150 shots on a corrupt SD card. I'm pretty sure at that point you'll be kicking yourself for not shelling out for a $100 wi-fi SD card...

        I'm pretty sure if it was the $100 wi-fi SD card that was corrupt, you'd be kicking yourself too...
        • Nah. For a pro, the photos are always worth way more than the hardware. Otherwise, you wouldn't be pro now, would you?

          You can always buy a new card. But if you missed The Shot, then you have big problems.

  • Wifi is highly overrated... I'd rather bt+3g (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dfn_deux ( 535506 ) <datsun510&gmail,com> on Tuesday June 12, 2007 @01:47AM (#19474937) Homepage
    I'd much prefer an SD card with a bluetooth adaptor built in that could leverage the 3G wireless internet connection which is the true core of the PAN (Personal Area Network) that is always touted as being the logical goal of the bluetooth architecture. I mean really, BT chipsets are far more optimized for power than wifi and comes with far fewer limitation as to the connections it can make. Let the devices choose the path of least resistance to the internet, be it tunnel over a phone, pda, laptop, or whatever the marketplace has in store next.

    honestly I think that the working group that came up with BT designed it for exactly this sort of purpose. It'd be stupid not to also use this type of integration between PAN components to further enhance the meta data richness of the content created by the camera. GPS, PDA, camera, 3gphone, and headset sounds like a pretty good recipe for being your own gargoyle. I for one wouldn't mind being able to publish video, photo, sound, and location data at a moment's notice directly to the internet. If we are bound to live in surveillance state I'd sure like to get a good grip on the technology before Big Brother does.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by amorsen ( 7485 )
      Bluetooth is so slow it's useless. Headsets need more bandwidth, so you can't get decent bluetooth headsets. File transfer, forget it. Internet access -- even 3G is faster than bluetooth, so forget that too.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by TheRaven64 ( 641858 )
        I get about 64KB/s from Bluetooth. I'm transferring a load of pictures from my phone camera with it now. They're only about 3-500KB each, so about a tenth the size of a modern stand-alone camera. It takes a few seconds for each one, but it's very low power and is much more convenient that removing the memory card. I wouldn't call Bluetooth completely useless.

        The main advantage of Bluetooth is that it defines a complete protocol stack. I can transfer files from my phone to my computer because they bo

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by juhaz ( 110830 )
          But it would be completely useless in a stand-alone camera. 64KB/s + 2GB card == NINE HOURS.

          I don't know about you, but that is not exactly something I call convenient. Even if it weren't a full card, we're talking about a minute per picture here, and that's just too slow.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by jrumney ( 197329 )

            That's kiloBytes per second, not bits. Bluetooth 1.1/1.2 has a max transmission speed of 721kbps (roughly what I get from my HSDPA 3G connection in practice), hence the 64kB/s the GP sees (the rest of the bandwidth is taken up with error correction and other overhead as with any other wireless connection) Bluetooth 2.0 supports an enhanced rate of 3Mbps, so if both devices support 2.0, performance should be better.

            Bluetooth 3.0 is where this technology will become a realistic alternative for everyday use

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by juhaz ( 110830 )
              That's kiloBytes per second, not bits.

              Thanks, I'm quite aware of that. It takes nine hours that little fact included.

              It'd still be hour and half at 3Mbps, not including the overhead, which is, needless to say, too long. So yes, it would take 3.0 to become reality, but we'll see about that when or if it happens.
              • You are making a straw man argument. If you are using a PAN which includes a 3g handset then you are bringing the network with you. As such, photos could be uploaded on the fly. So unless you shoot in contnuous mode and hold down the shutter button to intentionally fill the 2gb of storage you wouldn't be waiting "9 hours" to transfer your photos, the photos could instead be transferred seamlessly in the background.

                If you are able to get a sustained 64kBps all the way from your camera to your webhost you wi

  • Not the memory card... The device! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by FredDC ( 1048502 ) on Tuesday June 12, 2007 @01:49AM (#19474941)
    I think it is a great idea to be able to wirelessly transfer data from devices such as cameras. But I think it's the wrong approach to equip the memeory cards they use with wifi. The devices themselves should have wifi capabilities, and I do see this coming in the near future. Equipping memory cards with wifi is a nice way of making existing devices wifi capable but it's not something which will be usefull in the future as more devices become wifi enabled.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jc42 ( 318812 )
      I think it's the wrong approach to equip the memeory cards they use with wifi. The devices themselves should have wifi capabilities, and I do see this coming in the near future.

      In a sane world, you'd be right. But in the world we live in, most small devices such as phones and cameras are "locked" by their vendors and can't be made to work sensibly with any remote device not approved by the vendor. This isn't about to change soon.

      However, many of those devices now accept SD cards as memory devices. This ma

  • I don't mean to sound like I'm trolling with FUD, but knowing how secure WiFi is, can't this be a privacy issue? For example, couldn't one access data on your SD card by WiFi?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by phorm ( 591458 )
      From what I understand it is intended to do an upload through wifi upon taking a picture, not to be accessible as a network drive itself. Since the connection is uni-directional in that sense, most likely the main concern would not be somebody gaining access to the camera-memory via wifi, but rather interception of the wifi upload.

  • Or... (Score:4, Funny)

    by BooleanLobster ( 1077727 ) on Tuesday June 12, 2007 @02:13AM (#19475023) Homepage
    ... surf the net with your camera!

    I can't wait until they make an eggbeater with a built in webcam. Or a BlueTooth-enabled flashlight.

    This reminds me of the marketing guy talking to Dilbert: "It has to have a 47'' screen and still fit in a purse or wallet. It has to act as a communications satellite as well as an air freshener. It must cure deadly diseases and whiten your teeth while you sleep! AND IT HAS TO BE CAPABLE OF TIME TRAVEL! AND HAVE A TELEPATHIC USER INTERFACE!"

  • Compact Flash? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by redwoodtree ( 136298 ) * on Tuesday June 12, 2007 @02:36AM (#19475111)
    God, if they can do this in an SD card, why not a compact flash? Is it just that there's a much bigger market for SD cards?

    I have a Nikon D70 and this sure would be nice....
    • I would bet it's mostly that SD cards have a larger market share, but there are also practical reasons why it would be less useful on a CF card. I mean, the places where CF is used instead of SD are generally stuff that needs faster data transfer -- wireless is slow, a little slow for a 2GB SD and a lot slow for CF. I mean, I'm assuming this uses 802.11b, you're going to get at best ~6Mbit/s -- a quality CF card can do like 40Mbit/s so that's a huge hit.

      This problem is exacerbated by the fact that there ar

  • pfft... (Score:4, Informative)

    by djupedal ( 584558 ) on Tuesday June 12, 2007 @02:49AM (#19475149)
    My Nikon S6 [nikonusa.com] has done this for this last year... SD & WiFi & 3" LCD - I can even control it from the computer.
  • We're currently testing the Ricoh 500SE [ricohsolutions.com] for geology students' field trips, wandering around sand quarries, mountain areas, with wireless networks to connect them back to base or over the internet to a field studies centre. Last year's project here [open.ac.uk]. So would be of interest to us. Right now we're looking at ruggedised kit for tough environments but we're working towards coming up with a generic solution that could help schools and universities build their own off-the-shelf field trip kit. So a card that could

  • Worthless (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 12, 2007 @02:57AM (#19475173)
    So instead of plugging in your camera every time you want to get the photos off, you get up an plug it into the charger because the WiFi SD card is sucking down the power faster.

    Either way you're not gaining anything.

  • If you consider Microsoft's Surface is $5,000 so you can place a camera on your table and have it move photos around...

    Considering the cameras are starting to do blue tooth on their own, not sure that you need all that much more for moving files around. But who ami I? I'm not a marketing dick, I'm just Joe User when it comes to interconnecting devices. It's awfully convenient that all the devices are now starting to use a single common form for USB connectors -- means I only really need one cable for ev

  • As a sometimes professional photographer, I would use this in a heartbeat if and only if the wifi card can be 100% secured to a PC that I bring to an event. Because then I really don't have to worry about running out of memory card space -- I just have to confirm that the wifi upload is working properly. Which leads to a "heck yes" response

    But if the card isn't secure enough to insure that no-one else can pick up the WIFI transmission and basically pirate my digital work right out of the air, then heck no

  • 2 gig is just fine. It'll store a lot of photos after all. But imagine a different way of using this kind of system: carrying around your laptop / PDA (or even an iPod / Zune with wifi) whilst taking lots of pictures. It stays in a low power state and just wakes up every so often to stream pictures off your camera. You'd never get the "out of memory" errors at a critical point, because your memory card is continually being emptied. Does that make the 2Gig sound worth it? If you could get the device to
  • ...if the card is smart enough to connect to any open AP and dump the contents to an online server every time I take a picture, or as soon as an AP comes within range if there isn't one when I'm shooting. Otherwise no.

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