Eye-Fi (a thing you should buy)

Oh, great … another Thing I Must Have.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet …… Eye Fi.

It looks like (and is) a 2gb Wireless SD card for your digital camera. But wait, there’s more.

Hidden deep within the card is a complete WiFi (802.11g Wireless Ethernet for the geeks among you) and an antenna. Put one of these bad boys inside your digital camera, and your photos just …. go. No more uploading. No more pulling out the card and putting it in the card reader. As soon as the camera’s on and within range of a wireless network that it can talk to, it pushes out your photos. (The network can’t require a web browser to log in, which rules out Starbucks and a lot of public hot-spots out there, but your regular home or office wireless system should work just fine).

This thing is gonna be huge. First off, it looks like these fellas really did their homework on this one. I only heard about it yesterday, but it’s been in beta testing for well over a year, and all the reports I’ve seen are positive.

Plus, they solved the Big Problem right off the bat, which is where do you put the files? It seems like you’d have two big options:

1. Put them on the user’s computer. This would require having that your computer is turned on and running the Eye-Fi software, but I think most folk these days run their machines more or less 24/7 anyway. At least I do.

   Upside: Nobody gets to see your photos. You know which ones I mean. They don’t go out on the Internet (in fact, you wouldn’t need an Internet connection at all; just WiFi in the house) .

   Downside: Well, your computer has to be on and running the Eye-Fi software, and if you want to DO anything with the photos (upload them to one of the big photo sites, etc), you still have to go sit at a PC. Plus, this method would only work from home–since you can only see your home PC from inside your home network, you wouldn’t be able to upload from work.

2. Upload them to a service run by Eye-Fi. This takes care of the turned-on-PC and only-one-network issues right away. All you need is to be within sight of the Internet and it’ll push the rest. Once the photos are on Eye-Fi’s server, they could do lots of stuff with them, including uploading them to one of the big photo services (Kodak, Picasa, Facebook, etc.) so you could share with your friends.

   Upside: Automatic backup for your photos; lots more options for "what happens now" after a photo is uploaded; works from everywhere.

   Downside: Your photos go across the Internet to a server run by people you don’t know. Maybe you should take the pictures of the naked, tied-up intern with the OTHER digital camera. I’m talking to you, Senator. Also, depends on Eye-Fi being around for the long term to run the service.

Looking at the alternatives, Eye-Fi picked both. Want to send to just your computer? Fine. It’ll never touch the service. Want to go through Eye-Fi? Their service is free, will pass the pictures along to whichever of the big photo providers you like, and will automatically download the pictures back to your PC (if you want) the next time you run the Eye-Fi service.

That’s just smart engineering. Build a great, free service for the 90% of people who want the fast, effortless way … and satisfy the 10% Privacy Nerd set by giving them an option where their photos never leave the house. And make the service free, and really good.

Oh, and it works with just about any digital camera that takes Secure Digital media (which is almost all consumer-grade cameras these days).

And it’s $99.

I’m telling you … this is going to be a Big Internet Thing. Set up a WiFi network at an event, put some photographers in the field, and the photos are live on the site even as they’re being shot. You can come home from the party and your photos are THERE. Better yet, have a kiosk at the event where you can buy a copy right then and there.

A truly great idea. If it works.

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