Cutting The Wire On Photo Uploads

After first writing about it in December of 2007, I finally got a hold of an Eye-Fi card, and now I'm not sure why I hadn't worked harder to get one of these little gems sooner. In my defense they are not readily available in Canada and I really dislike paying the duty that comes with purchasing such things online from outside of the country. I have however very recently obtained an Eye-Fi Connect X2, 4GB+Wi-Fi and there is no turning back... awesome is all I can say. It's very easy to use and the endless memory mode means you never have to worry about running out of memory on your card as it intelligently makes space once your content is safely delivered. The card can be configured to recognize up to 32 Wi-Fi networks and upload content  to 25 different photo and video sharing sites.

Not all went smoothly with the installation on my Windows 7 machine, and I understand that my friend and coworker encountered a similar issue on his Mac. The documentation that comes in the package is sparse, to say the least, but luckily the support forum was easy to navigate and assisted in getting me over the hurdles. It seems as though we both had issues with the "helper" application that analyzes your network and firewall settings. Once resolved the Eye-Fi has performed flawlessly and is my new favorite gadget. 

Eye-Fi Card Identifies Camera Thief

Every now and then one of these stories pops up and it always amazes or amuses me. In this case, reported by Reuters and picked up by the Globe and Mail, a New York couple who's digital camera gear went missing on vacation in Florida returned home to find the photos they had taken along with photos of two employees of the restaurant from which the camera had been left, ended up on their photo sharing website. Luckily for the rightful owners, the camera was equipped with an Eye-Fi Card who's purpose is to automatically upload pictures to a home computer or photo-sharing service as soon as the user is linked to a familiar wireless network. In this case the restaurant employees passed an unsecured wireless network (90 feet is about the range outdoors - 45 feet indoors), whose factory-installed setting matched those of the home system of the camera's owners. I'd venture to say that this would never happen to me as I promptly change my wireless settings out of the box, but in this case the camera was returned to it's proper place and the two restaurant employees found themselves looking for a new job.

Footnote: The Eye-Fi Explore comes with a geotagging and hotspot access for a year, would be thieves beware!