CAMERA WI-FI MEMORY CARD NOW IN THREE VERSIONS

If there's a weak link in how most consumers use their digital cameras, it's the tedious process of having to offload. Too often we'll just let the pictures reside on the memory card until it's full. And then it's a job trying to remember what images you've saved and which still need to be transferred. The Eye-Fi card saves you from all of that. It's a 2 GB memory card that contains a Wi-Fi radio.

Last year I reported on an amazing 2 gigabyte SD memory card that had a Wi-Fi radio shoehorned into it. Now that it's been out for a while, the company has taken all of its consumer feedback and created two new versions of this little flash memory wonder.

The original version is now called the Eye-Fi Share ($99.99). When you drop this memory card into your digital camera and begin taking pictures, the images are wirelessly uploaded to your computer and to any of the over 20 Eye-Fi online partners such as Snapfish, SmugMug, Picasa, Facebook, Kodak Gallery and Windows Live. But for some, this was just too complicated. All they wanted to do was to be able to take pictures and have them automatically and wirelessly transferred to their computers.

For those people, there is now the Eye-Fi Home ($79.99). When you take pictures, they're instantly transferred to your computer. When you are out and about, the Eye-Fi card works like any other ordinary memory card. The 2 gigabyte capacity will let you take hundred of pictures. When you return home and turn the camera on, the Eye-Fi Home automatically detects your Wi-Fi network signal and immediately begins transferring only the new pictures you've taken since the last time you downloaded. All of this happens without you having to do anything. The included software senses the Eye-Fi Home's presence and does it all for you. No longer do you have to connect your camera to the USB port or remove the memory card and plug it into a card reader to offload your images.

The newest card is the Eye-Fi Explore. This card does everything the Share does but adds two additional functions. Unlimited Geotagging is added to every picture you take. Geotagging adds your exact geographical location to the image. The exact longitude and latitude coordinates are added to the hidden EXIF data that accompanies every digital image that's taken with your camera. This information comes via any nearby Wi-Fi network as you take your pictures. This coverage area continues to expand as more and more Wi-Fi networks are mapped and added to the system. Around 70 percent of the populated areas in North America are already in place. In addition, Explore will add the name of the city or named location if it is available.

The other feature of the Explore is that it allows you to upload your images from over 10,000 Wi-Fi hotspots across the U.S. This happens via Eye-Fi's alliance with the Wayport Hotspot network that includes all of the hotspots at MacDonald's, selected hotels, airports and a variety of other retail outlets. The entire network automatically knows it's a Eye-Fi card, and knows where to send your photos via your card's unique code. You get a one year free subscription with the card. It's $19 a year after that.

As with all the versions, installation is simple. Every Eye-Fi card comes with a card dock which you plug into any available USB port. Load the software and the application automatically detects and records the card's unique identification code. You also tell the software where you want your images stored on the computer as well as what application you want to display them such as iPhoto on the Macintosh for example. From now on, anytime the card is within your computer's range or a Wi-Fi hotspot, it automatically begins downloading your images. The images are copied, not moved. That means the images remain on the memory card itself. But after a while, users come to rely on the copy process and then manually erase the card after the transfer so that they can take more photos.

If you're tired of having to buy more and more memory cards because you can't remember which images you have saved and the whole download process is just becoming too cumbersome, the Eye-Fi cards just may be the answer. The Eye-Fi works on both Windows and Macintosh.

www.eye.fi

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