Living In The Clouds: Eye-Fi Card

In this edition of Living In The Cloud Series, I am going to discuss a hardware product, Eye-Fi Card, instead of a cloud based application. Even though it is not a cloud app, this piece of hardware plays a crucial role in people’s life in the clouds. Eye-Fi is a wifi enabled SD card which helps people using cameras with SD card memory slot to take pictures/videos and automatically upload to their own computer and photo/video sharing sites using any wifi connection. At present, these cards are available in 2 GB and 4 GB capacities. Their Pro version even allows uploading/sharing of RAW files.

In this cloud era, the availability of ubiquitous internet connection has profoundly changed the way people do their daily routines. Even though we are seeing tremendous advancement in optics and electronic capabilities of cameras, there are not any (unless it is a smartphone) low and medium end cameras with direct access to internet and, hence, the cloud based photo and video sites. Eye-Fi card fills this gap by adding data capabilities to the camera through the SD card. After resisting the temptation to buy a card for a long time, I finally fell in line and bought one. I can’t tell how big a relief it is for me and my family. It has totally changed the way we do photography in our family. No more fights about whether I uploaded the pictures and shared with family and friends or not . It is all automatic and all I have to do is to keep clicking photographs.

As it is customary in this series, I will add a video of the app below

As I usually do in this series, I will list out the pros and cons from my point of view.

Pros:

• Setup is so easy that even my grandma can do it. This is the biggest advantage with the product so that mainstream users can use it without any technical and configuration worries.
• A very good collection of photo/video sharing sites including photo printing sites like shutterfly, Kodak Gallery, Walmart, Costco, etc..
• Ability to configure privacy options in the app itself is a big boon.
• As an added bonus, the eye-fi card users get an iPhone app and this app helps them do the same things with their iPhone photos.

Cons:

• The cost is still not enticing for massive adoption.
• One drawback which I found particularly unappealing is the lack of availability of an option to post to multiple social sites at the same time.
• The capacity of the cards are still not attractive. The biggest card is only 4 GB and with video, it gets filled up fast. We need the 16 and 32 GB ones soon.

Overall, this is a great product that simplifies your workflow.