Without a doubt, one of the coolest products released in the last year was not a digital camera, or an iPhone, or even an iPod for that matter, it was a wireless SD memory card. Yes, that most mundane of product categories suddenly became very sexy last year with the introduction of the Eye-Fi Card, a wireless SD memory card that lets you to beam your photos to your computer or an online photo service without wires, cords, or cables. In short, the Eye-Fi Card is one of those products that's so simple to use it's like magic. Just snap away with your digital camera and -- poof -- your photos are zapped to your computer in a matter of moments.
While I had read about the Eye-Fi Card, it took awhile to secure a loan because of heavy demand for the product. But after shooting with the 2-gigabyte (GB) card in a Canon PowerShot SX100 IS digital camera recently, I can say that the Eye-Fi Card definitely lives up to the hype. Even better for Mac users, Eye-Fi is about to release an update which will make the card compatible with Apple's iPhoto software. The new Mac update also includes support for Mac OSX (10.5) Leopard and Apple's Sarari 3 web browser, making Eye-Fi much more Apple friendly overall. (Which is a good move considering that Apple users will highly appreciate the simplicity of the Eye-Fi card.)
Another interesting recent development with Eye-Fi is that they have announced an agreement to license their technology to Lexar Media which should make the card available to a wider range of users considering that Lexar's one of the biggest memory card makers out there. The deal with Lexar should also expand the technology to the larger sized CompactFlash (CF) cards that are typically used in higher-end digital SLRs. And lastly, the price of Eye-Fi-enabled cards should eventually come down with the Lexar deal. Though the benefits of being able to wirelessly transfer your photos with an Eye-Fi card are substantial -- bye-bye card readers and USB cords! -- the cards aren't exactly cheap. The 2GB Eye-Fi SD card currently retails for about $100. In contrast, you can get a regular, non-WiFi 2GB SD card from Lexar, SanDisk, Kingston, for as low as $18.
But enough of the industry shop talk. On to my trial with the Eye-Fi Card!
Less Process, More Fun
Usually with product tests, I have a lot to say about the actual process or getting a device or gadget up and running but with the Eye-Fi Card there isn't a whole lot to describe. Which is, of course, a good thing. As with many of Apple's products, the Eye-Fi Card doesn't come with a giant instruction manual that seems like it's been badly translated from the original Japanese or Korean. Instead, the well designed little box that Eye-Fi comes in just slides out to reveal two panels. On the left is the Eye-Fi Card housed in a small, USB thumb drive card reader (don't worry, you only need the card reader for the initial set-up!) and on the right is a fold-out "Quick Start Guide."
Once you pull the USB reader with the Eye-Fi Card from the box, plug it into an open USB port on your computer. You'll want to find a port with a little room around it though because the supplied USB reader is kind of wide. In my case, I plugged the reader into a USB port on the back of my 23-inch Apple Cinema Display that's attached to my MacBook. It took less than a minute for my MacBook to recognize the card reader and once it did, a removable disk icon appeared on my desktop labeled "Eye-Fi." I double clicked on the icon and found a folder labeled "START HERE." Inside that folder was an Eye-Fi.dmg file which I double clicked and opened. I then dragged the "Eye-Fi Manager" icon into my Applications folder -- as is visually instructed -- and launched the "Eye-Fi Manager."
An on-screen instruction box popped up that let me configure the card to my home wireless network. Though this might sound like a complicated part of the set-up involving plugging in a lot of numbers and code, it's not. Basically, the set-up instruction box will show you a list of the local wireless networks from a pulldown menu and you just select your own. (It actually should be at the top of the list since it's already recognized by your computer.)
The next part of the process is picking an online service to wirelessly send your photos to on the web. This is only an option. If you don't use an online service -- like me -- you can skip this feature. There are a lot to choose from, however, including Flickr, Shutterfly, Picassa, Kodak Gallery, and Wal-Mart, and I imagine this is a feature that consumers looking to make prints from their digital photos will get a lot of use out of. After you select an online service -- or skip the option -- you can pick a desktop folder where the Eye-Fi card will zap your photos to. The default, on a Mac, is the Pictures folder but you can pick any folder you want. And when the Apple update becomes available, you will also be able to upload them directly to iPhoto.
In the Camera
Once the set-up is complete, I ejected the Eye-Fi card from the card reader and inserted it into the Canon SX100 IS. Since it has 2 gigabytes of capacity, the Eye-Fi card gave me room for about 1000 pictures on the 8-megapixel Canon camera which will be more than enough for most people. After shooting a couple of test picture of my cats, I ran into my first and only glitch. At the time I tested the card, it was not yet compatible with Apple's Safari web browser -- which was the default on my machine -- so rather than sending the pictures to my computer, the Safari browser kept telling me that it was working on it. After going back to read some of the material that came with my test sample, I realized my mistake and switched to the Firefox browser which Eye-Fi supports. I wonder, however, how many frustrated consumers have made the same mistake!
Like I said though, that was my only issue with the Eye-Fi Card which is a rarity when I test any product. After switching to Firefox, I immediately saw my photos transferring over to my computer. I got a visual prompt on both the Eye-Fi manager page in Firefox, which showed my images popping up one by one as thumbnails, and also in the upper right hand corner of my screen where my cat pix shuffled by as small snapshots. Very cool!
Just to double check that my photos really did go through, I went to the Pictures folder on my MacBook and there they were. While shooting a couple of photos and having them upload quickly is one thing, I wondered how the Eye-Fi card would fare with a larger number of shots. To test it out, I hit the street and fired away with the Canon SX100 IS and then raced back to my apartment to see how quickly they would upload. Amazingly, the 16 shots I captured with the camera uploaded wireless to my computer in just two minutes. Pretty impressive.
On the downside, the Eye-Fi Card does not currently support hotspots or roaming so Biz Fast Trackers such as yours truly can't bring the card on the road and upload pix to my laptop in the hotel room. Right now, the Eye-Fi Card is designed mainly for consumers with home Wi-Fi networks who don't want to bother with card readers or cables and cradles. That should change, however, in the next release of the card and will be a welcome addition for all us BFTs. In the mean time, I'm sure all the Run Around Moms and Digital Grandparents out there will love this card as is.
Believe the Hype?
Overall, the Eye-Fi Card is worthy of all the good press it's received in the last six months. Though memory cards are an important part of digital photography and there have been some other important innovations, thus far, in terms of speed and affordability, the Eye-Fi Card is the first solid-state memory solution that works like magic. And who doesn't want a little more magic in their life?