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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?"
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.
You could download images and upload ring tones I suppose...
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.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
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).
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.
-*The above statement is printed entirely on recycled electrons*-
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.
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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.
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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.
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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....
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.
A WiFi-enabled memory storage device?
Jeezus..... Just *how* much easier are we going to make it for hackers to gain access to private data?
If you are so lazy that plugging in a USB cable is just, oh, too much to ask of you, then you pretty much deserve to have your data stolen.
Now we have WiFi memory cards for people who don't want the hassle of plugging in a USB cable. What's next? Doors that don't have keys for people who can't spare enough time to use keys?
Useless. I can understand cameras that are WiFi enabled, but making the memory cards WiFi is just asking for a problem, since the cards are also used for storing other data (documents/files, mp3s, etc.).
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
A cheap 3.1MP consumer digital camera for under $100 can do 2048x1536.
Now, I agree the real purpose-built security cameras have their place in their 0.6MP glory, but having a 3-7MP camera snap a photo every time something moves could yield a whole heck of a lot more in detail. Might actually get the bad guys caught. Hook it up to a motion sensor, enable the flash, cue up some swanky techno mp3s, then let the burglars have a disco or rave while they rob your place. The more cheap camera's the better!
Do your cameras do this? And can I do it for less than $500 and yield twenty-seven 8 by 10 colored glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explainin' what each one was?
I would like to see some links, cause google isn't turning them up.
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?
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