Well this is for all those shutterbugs who are in a relationship with their cameras and pictures and have experienced heart-break when they see the memory full sign at crucial times.
Eye-Fi memory cards. These simple SD memory cards which when pushed into an ordinary camera gives it the power of 'endless' memory. You read that right 'endless' memory as opposed to your slim SDHC cards! This is possible because of the fact that as soon as you click pictures, they are sent over the internet to be stored on your computer or photo sharing sites like picassa, flickr and even facebook! How does it do this? Simple, it has built-in Wi-Fi which uses your home (or any) Wi-Fi network and transfers the pictures and videos over to wherever you want you memories to be stored. There are 32 Wi-Fi networks that can be pre-configured into the card and it will make sure that whenever you enter one of these networks, the card will automatically make space for your new memories and clean the oldest and safely stored data, thereby providing a virtual endless memory.
What's more? It also automatically geo-tags your photos. This means when you see these pictures after a certain period you'll know exactly where they were taken. It uses Wi-Fi triangulation to achieve this. Wi-Fi-Triangulation is a technique that works by sniffing around for wireless networks in range, measuring their strength and comparing the results to a database. It does not connect or use these hotspots but merely sweeps for relevant data for comparision. The databases are maintained by a service provider (like Skyhook Wireless and Navizon) which periodically sweeps the area and catalogs new hotspots. This is a technology which is a competitor of the GPS (aweak one though) and is currently found in mobile devices like iPod Touch, iPhones and Windows Phones.
Surprisingly the price point of these cards is not too high. The price range starts from $49.99 for a 4 GB card and goes on till $149.99 for the 8 GB fully loaded pro version. The features vary over the four available variants and can be compared here.
Like almost all things, Internet is quite changing the face of photography too. A few years back, the camera companies dabbled with the idea of integrating networking in the point and shoots but the idea wasn’t accepted as expected. But Eye-Fi, a SD memory card with Wi-Fi, is coming close to achieving what the previous ideas couldn’t achieve. It’s one of the more innovative ways to make us store and share our memories and in the process bringing us closer and closer to The Net.
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