If you are the kind of person that likes to share your digital photos and you don’t have an Eye-Fi card yet, you are missing out.  I bought one a couple months back, and I love it.

The Eye-Fi card is a wireless memory card. It looks and stores media just like a regular SD/SDHC card, and it fits into any camera that supports the SD format. On top of that, the Eye-Fi card has built-in Wi-Fi that uses your wireless network to effortlessly transfer photos and videos via  WiFi to your computer. The card allows up to 32 networks which can be added to the system, so you are not bound to using just your home network.

Set up of the card is simple. During the quick set-up, I was asked to customize where I wanted my photos sent. Then the Eye-Fi software allowed me to choose not only my computer, but gave me more than 25 photo sharing sites that I can send to as well. (Flickr,Fotoki, Facebook, Twitter, MobileMe, YouTube, Webshots, Snapfish, Picasa, Typepad, DotPhoto, Costco, PhotoBucket, Ritz, Walmart, Kodak, Walgreens etc.) Allowing me to instantly upload images to social networking sites or order prints through partners that print hard copies. During set up, you can customize not just where media is being sent, but how you want it organized. You can preset album names, tags, descriptions, and even privacy preferences on certain sharing sites.

The card I am using is the Eye-Fi Pro which allows me to hit any open Wifi Hot spot like McDonalds, or Starbucks for instance, and it allows me to set up Wifi networks for places that I go to on a frequent basis that have free WiFi which is great. It also has RAW support and an 8 gig capacity which is a must. at 150 bucks the cost is a bit more, but I think it is worth it. The entry-level cards don’t have hot spot access which sort of limits the card functionality. It’s not that hard to plug your camera in and download the photos if you are at home.

One thing I have been playing with and plan to use on the Trip to France this spring is the Geotagging feature. When used with iPhoto, it sorts the images into locations where they were shot. So if you are wanting to put together a travel log with your photos, it organizes them for you. Photos imported into iPhoto can be made into a photobook, and since they’re automatically geotagged, inserting a map of your trip is just one click away.
My only real gripe witht he card right now is limited camera compatibility. While Eye-Fi is making headway and adding new cameras all the time, This card doesn’t work with my Lumix, or EP1 so I am having to use it with an older Canon point and shoot that is not my favorite camera to work with. Hopefully as this product gains traction in the market, Eye-Fi will get all camera brands on the compatibilty list.

At CES Eye-Fi announced  new Eye-Fi software, available for download to all Eye-Fi users at the end of January, features improvements on existing popular Eye-Fi software functionality as well as brand new sharing capabilities. By popular demand: viewing photo & video uploads by date with a nifty calendar and viewing uploaded items in large format. New & improved: republishing items to different sharing sites (eg upload to Flickr, then to Facebook); creating a batch from multiple sources (eg a few Eye-Fi’s items, your photo library, any folder on your hard drive…). The website has little info about the software now, so I’ll be curious in a couple of weeks to see the full feature set.