Eye-Fi, the maker of those nifty, wireless memory cards that automatically sync digital camera photos to your devices, as well as to cloud services like Facebook, Flickr, Picasa and YouTube, is today announcing it has raised $20 million in Series D funding. The round was led by NTT DOCOMO, the largest mobile operator in Japan, something which hints at the company’s plans towards further international expansion through carrier relationships.
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This is a pretty solid feature, I have to say, and maybe the one that makes me an Eye-Fi convert. We’ve seen some iOS camera tethering options, and of course the Eye-Fi is already pretty useful for when you have your laptop around, but this super easy send-to-device feature could be really compelling to the average non-tech-savvy user. We heard about it back at CES, but it’s actually rolling out this week. → Read More
The big brand camera companies are committing seppuku in front of our eyes. It’s fascinating.
Last week, I bought a brand new Canon S95 camera. It’s a great point & shoot. Maybe the best out there right now. It captures beautiful 10-megapixel images. It’s great in low-light. It’s fast. And it shoots HD video. I anticipate I’ll take about 5 percent of my pictures with it in the coming year. The other 95 percent will be taken with my iPhone. How do I know? Because I had the S90 last year and that was my exact usage pattern.
Obviously, the 10-megapixel, $400 S95 is the superior camera when compared to the 5-megapixel, $200 (with subsidy) iPhone 4. But the fact that I always have my phone on me easily trumps the specs. But to me, there’s actually something other than just the portability factor that leads to my usage being so heavily skewed towards the iPhone: connectivity. → Read More
If there was one problem with the otherwise excellent Eye-Fi card it’s that images stored to the card had the nasty habit of appearing on public Flickr accounts without their owners knowledge – images that usually involved the owner in a compromising position with a close, naked friend or a barnyard mammal. Sure you can control where the Eye-Fi sends stuff but not many people bothered with those settings.
The company has just announced Eye-Fi View, a sharing system that makes sense. View creates a temporary private storage space for all Eye-Fi users where it keeps photos safe and sound for up to a week (you can buy unlimited storage for $4.99 or $49 a year.) You can see the updated View UI at http://center.eye.fi/. → Read More
We’ve all heard about mayor deals with Foursquare. That is, a person who is the “mayor ” of a venue (essentially, has checked-in there the most number of times) gets access to special deals, such free items or discounts. Gowalla goes about its deals a bit differently. Because there are no “mayors” in Gowalla, instead, they’re focusing on giving everyone an equal opportunity to earn special deals.
One such deal launching later today is with Eye-Fi, the makers of memory cards that give devices WiFi capabilities. Starting in a few hours, when a person checks in through Gowalla at any U.S.-based Best Buy or Apple Store, they’ll automatically have a chance to win a free 4 GB Eye-Fi card. A message will pop up on their screen about the card post check-in. And a simple click on the “Did I win?” button below that message will reveal if you’re a winner of the $75 card the spot. There will be 500 winners for this particular promotion. → Read More
While the Eye-Fi Pro X2 – an 8GB Eye-Fi card with RAW support and ad hoc mode – is already available, the company just released two new additions to the X2 line, the Explore and the Connect. The Explore includes automatic geotagging for images and videos. Here are the specifics:
Eye-Fi Connect X2 – At 4GB capacity, the Eye-Fi Connect X2 will automatically upload JPEG photos and videos to the computer and one of more than 25 online sharing sites, such as Flickr, Facebook, YouTube or Picasa, through a Wi-Fi network. MSRP: $49.99.
Eye-Fi Explore X2 – At 8GB of capacity, the Eye-Fi Explore X2 will automatically upload JPEG photos and videos to the computer and one of more than 25 online sharing sites. It offers lifetime automatic geotagging so photos and videos arrive at the user’s computer with location information already included to identify where the image was captured. Explore X2 also offers one year of hotspot access for uploading away from home at more 21,000 AT&T and Harborlink locations across the Unites States and through open hotspots. MSRP: $99.99.
Eye-Fi Pro X2 – Unveiled at CES and winner of CNET’s “Best of CES” award, the 8GB Eye-Fi Pro X2 will automatically upload JPEG and RAW photos and videos to the home computer, and will send them to one of more than 25 online sharing sites. It also allows users to create an ad hoc connection directly to their computer to wirelessly upload photos and videos while away from a wireless router. Like Explore X2, Pro X2 offers lifetime geotagging and one-year of hotspot access to enable uploads away from home at more than 21,000 AT&T and Harborlink hotspots and open hotspots. MSRP: $149.99.
The Eye-Fi card is famous for being a cool, fun way to upload, inadvertently, images of you and your friends naked or on the toilet. Now, however, you can upload those naked photos to your local FTP/FTPS server. This service allows you to bypass standard photo-sharing sites like Flickr and dump your stuff up unfettered by the limitations placed upon us by photo sites. → Read More
I took some photos yesterday afternoon, and didn’t get around to trying to move them from the camera to my laptop until later in the evening. What should have been a simple process — connect cable to camera, connect cable to laptop, import photos — was stymied by my complete inability to find the cable I needed! It’s not like I use a USB A-to-Mini-B cable every day. If only there were some way to wirelessly transfer photos from my camera into my computer. What’s that, Eye-Fi? You say there is? Do tell! → Read More
What can be said about the latest Eye-Fi SD card that hasn’t been said about every other iteration? The Pro is just that, a Pro. With support for RAW files, Ad Hoc network support and Selective Transfer, the Eye-Fi Pro is perfection. → Read More
I think I speak for every camera nerd out there when I say, Hallelujah!!! It’s about damn time Eye-Fi released an Ad Hoc enabled SDHC card. Live blogging will now be 100x easier.
The 4GB Eye-Fi Pro now supports RAW files on top of pre-existing support for JPEG and video files. Geotagging and Hotspot access are available on the Pro model as well. The Eye-Fi Pro is available now on Amazon and Eye-Fi for $149. → Read More
My favorite little at-home gadget is getting a shake up today. Eye-Fi’s Wi-Fi SD cards not only upload images, but now video to YouTube and Flickr. The Share Video and Explore Video cards are now 4GB standard and the existing line of 2GB Eye Fi cards received a price drop. → Read More
Sony’s DSC-G3 point-and-shoot digital camera not only has built-in Wi-Fi, but it also has its own Web browser. Guess that makes uploading your photos to the Internet a little easier. → Read More
Good news, YouTube freaks. Eye-Fi is going to demo the all new video-upload-to-youtube feature at CES. According to the Video End-User Research: 2008, you guys use your camera to shoot videos quite often. It’s the same as before, just with video and in HD. → Read More
Evernote is a service that lets you send photos and select text and images then upload them to a central location. Then you’re free to search the items—photos of business cards, for example—in order to “remember” them. Now, couple Evernote with an Eye-Fi card and then you may have something. The new partnership between Evernote and Eye-Fi started yesterday, meaning that you can take proper photos (with an SLR, I hope) of whatever—a funny ad on the street, a sale price sign on some out-of-the-way store, and so on—then send them off to your Evernote account. Why use your brain to remember things when you can rely on proprietary technology! It seems like a long overdue step for the Evernote folks. → Read More
Everyone’s favorite wireless memory card is now available with four gigabytes of storage. The Eye-Fi Anniversary Edition has just been announced to commemorate one year of wireless photo slinging from the Mountain View, California-based company. The card is selling with an MSRP of $129.99 but Costco members can get it for $99 on Costco.com – not too bad for a 4GB SDHC card with a built-in wireless chip that automatically transfers photos to your computer and 25+ online photo sharing services. You can also add automatic geotagging and/or Wayport wireless hotspot access for $14.99 per year, per service. → Read More
Eye-Fi cards are great, but if you’re rocking a CompactFlash setup like me, you’re kind of out of luck. And then a simple thing like this adapter comes to your attention and whole realms of possibility are opened to you. $28? Hell yes, I’m getting one of these things. → Read More
The other week Eye-Fi announced that upload speeds were improved for their SD cards and today we’ve learned that they now support Twitter and RSS feeds. If you haven’t already updated then you should fire up your Eye-Fi Manager ASAP. One can assume this applies to the Lexar mashup, Shoot-N-Sync. These little buggers just keep getting better and better. → Read More
The famous Eye-Fi card, which beams your photos wirelessly from your camera to your computer or what have you, is getting an upgrade. Starting October 5 (If I’m reading this correctly), Eye-Fi cards will now upload at twice the speeds they used to. Am I missing something here? Quote: Eye-Fi Inc., makers of the world’s first wireless memory card for digital cameras, today announced enhancements to its family of Eye-Fi cards that will make the upload of digital photos from camera to computer twice as fast. The faster wireless speeds will also be made available to existing Eye-Fi users at no extra cost. Depending on the card you already have, you can also get upgrades like geotagging and direct-to-web uploading for various services like Adoramapix (?) and MobileMe (gah!). You can also purchase year-long access to a type of wireless hotspot I have never heard of before, despite there being 10,000 of them. All in all, fine additions to a fine product. Lovely. → Read More
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