Wi-Fi on SD Card: How Compelling is Instant Photo Transfer?
A new company called Eye-Fi has developed an SD card with Wi-Fi to allow legacy digicams to transfer photos. I know the likes of Canon, Nikon (especially Nikon) and others have pushed out integrated Wi-Fi cameras, but this company would argue that there are tens of millions of cameras out there that need Wi-Fi. The card combines the memory with Wi-Fi (most cameras only have one SD slot).
My question to you, the Media Center community, is how appealing is Wi-Fi connected cameras? I think being able to replace the USB cable is great, but I actually usually just pop my SD card into my PC to transfer. Am I like everyone else, or are you looking to use the network for photo uploading and display?
June 15th, 2007 at 3:31 pm
Popping your SD card into your PC only works when your PC actually has a card reader :) There are ton of machines out there without card readers which means it’s a huge hassle to have another USB cable.
Actually, I think it’s a great idea. You could build a lot of passive systems around it. Microsoft’s Surface comes to mind, instantly pulling the pictures out onto the digital surface. A more real-world use would be viewing those pictures on your Media Center. I use Media Center in what I consider the “clean” (as in less clutter) way, meaning I have a multi-tuner machine sitting up in a closet in my office while using my 360 as the interface. No SD card reader on my 360 yet I do have WiFi, it would be great if I could come home from a trip, set my camera anywhere and weed through the pictures instead of going upstairs to my desktop, firing up the right software, transfering photos around etc. It would be even better when friends came over, they’d just bring their camera instead of you having to either hook it up with cables or copy them to a temp location.
The more I think about this the better it is. The piece missing is the “discoverability” of the wireless SD card. Drop than in and you have a killer solution.
June 17th, 2007 at 6:13 am
I think you’re right, the discovery and pulling of pictures onto a device like a Surface PC would be great. I think that’s what Microsoft has in mind with Surface, putting something down on it and instantly having it “pour” out onto the screen.