Eye-Fi update

The beauty of the Eye-Fi is that you never really ever mess with it. All I do is login to flickr and create albums. The second automatic copy goes to my PC, and that's for my backup. It's simply a utility to me now...it just works. Until a couple days ago.

I've been considering trying out SmugMug.com for sharing photos. I love flickr for the community and its openness, but I'd like nicer albums and showy features for the family. SmugMug has some nice touches to it and I'd like to play around. Next step: what's the easiest way to get my photos into SmugMug? Eye-Fi? Maybe. I login to the web console to have a look around. Maybe there's a feature that will handle all of this. Oh, there's a firmware update available? Well, why not. 1 minute...2...5...10..watch an episode of it's always sunny...yepp, it's hung. Great. Oh, and don't disconnect whatever you do! Well, I've got no choice.

My beautiful "utility" is now a paperweight for postage stamps. It functions as a memory card (I appreciate that it didn't trash my photos) but nada else. The most expensive 2gig SD card on the market!

Next report: Eye-Fi customer service. =)

Eye-Fi: Damn convenient

Not all that long ago, if you wanted a nice sized memory card for your camera, you'd spend close to $100 for that privilege. It looks like those days may be returning.

I've been using the Eye-FI wifi SD card now for about a month now. The card supports uploading to several online services as well as your network connected PC or Mac. The configuration couldn't be more simple.

The card plugs into any USB port via their adapter. It appears just like a drive on your computer which you explore into and execute the setup file. After the installation, configuration takes place in your web browser of choice. You identify your wireless network (there's a nice interface to explore for live networks), tell it about your favorite web based photo service (flickr in my case), point it to a folder on your PC or Mac to upload to and you're off and running. Simple as that.

There are a few helpful things I've figured out while using the card that are worth wile to pass along. First, the card uploads to their remote webservice first. From there they dole out the photos to Flickr (or any other service) and then back to your local computer. It's seems inefficient, but it ensures that no matter where you are, your photos will get where they need to be when they can be delivered. Next, make sure you add a "linksys" connection profile. Those damn things are everywhere. I assure you, if you travel around a lot with your camera, you'll be stunned to see some random photo got uploaded when you didn't expect it. If there's an open linksys, might as well take advantage! Lastly, if your Internet connection is busy, don't expect very much. The other night I couldn't get my Eye-Fi to upload pictures. Then I realized that I had a large torrent file downloading. When I killed it off, everything operated as expected.

Go buy one. Toss your camera docks, cables and driver disks in the trash. Never worry about transferring or uploading photos for your friends and family to see again. Eye-Fi takes the nonsense out of digital photography.