Oh! Gizmo

By David Ponce

As Uncrate points out, being the “world’s first” often results in your having to charge an obscene amount for your wares. That said, we kind of like Imation’s wireless USB hard drive, if only because once again, any effort to ditch wires is welcome by us. Featuring transfer speeds of 15MBs/second and a range of 30 feet, the drive can store up to 1.5TB of whatever you think worthy of keeping around. If your main workstation is a mobile computer you can see how this setup can be useful as you won’t have to actually walk to your drive and tether your computer every time you want to back something up.

Sadly, ditching the wires on your external drive will cost you a pretty $450.

[ Press Release ] VIA [ Uncrate ]

[ The following article is sponsored by Eye-Fi. The device was provided free of charge, and I am being compensated for the time I took to review the product. The opinions expressed are entirely my own. -Ed. ]

By David Ponce

No one really likes cables. And the more electronic devices we own, the worse it gets. Anything anyone does to do away with all the spaghetti-like clutter is a good thing by my book. So that’s why I’ve always been a fan of Eye-Fi, makers of an SD card with an embedded Wi-Fi chip. Not only because it allows me to do away with the always-hard-to-find USB transfer cable, it actually makes my camera more useful (well, not quite my camera, no fault of Eye-Fi, but more on that in a minute). How so? By making it a snap to actually offload pictures from it and sharing them with whomever I like. This happens to be the entire point of cameras, but being the lazy person I am I’ve been known to leave pictures in there forever.

So does it work? Absolutely. Keep reading for a short review of the product.

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By Andrew Liszewski

Thanks to companies like Eye-Fi, WiFi equipped SD cards are readily available allowing you to upload photos or videos from a digital camera to your PC or online sharing service as you take them. But KDDI has just shown off the first WiFi equipped microSD cards at Wireless Japan 2009, which is currently running until the 24th.

The company actually showed off two different cards, one manufactured by Mitsumi Electric Co. Ltd. and one by Renesas Technology Corp. and while both used different wireless hardware, they were each IEEE802.11 b&g compliant. And while there aren’t any digital cameras that use microSD cards, non-smartphones that don’t feature built-in WiFi should benefit from the new cards, though pricing, availability and even storage capacities have yet to be determined.

[ Tech-On! - KDDI Exhibits microSD Card with WLAN function ] VIA [ SlashGear ]

By Evan Ackerman

When I reviewed the Eye-Fi wireless SD card back in May, one of the quibbles I had with it was that there was no way to decide which pictures you wanted to upload. The card would send ‘em all… Good ones, bad ones, naked ones, everything you take just goes. In fact, here’s what I said: “there isn’t any way to designate specific pictures to upload, or not to upload. But of course, there isn’t really a way to integrate that sort of functionality into the card itself.” Yep, I said that. Happily, I’m here to report that I’m an idiot and Eye-Fi is a genius, because they’ve made it happen: you can now selectively upload pictures from your camera.

It’s quite simple, really: using the online manager, you can set up the card to only upload pictures (or videos) that you’ve designated on your camera as locked. That’s it. The rest of the pictures will stay on your card for you to do whatever you like with. On my Nikon D40x, the lock button is right next to my thumb. It’s easy, it works, and as of today it’s available for free for all Eye-Fi cards.

Also released today is a new, uh, level? of Eye-Fi card, the Eye-Fi Pro. It costs $150, and is able to handle RAW files, as well as connect to a computer via an ad-hoc wireless network, i.e. no router necessary. These are certainly nice features, although RAW support at least seems more like a firmware upgrade, and it would be cool if Eye-Fi would push that option out to their other cards, even if it’s for a small fee, so that people who want to be able to upload RAW don’t have to buy a whole new card. I guess I shouldn’t really complain, though, since we’re getting the selective upload update for free.

[ Eye-Fi ]

As we’ve mentioned to you before, the Eye-Fi card is really a pretty brilliant idea. Digital cameras are neat little gadgets, but getting all your awesome pics from your camera to the computer and to the internet is still a stone age process that involves plugging cables into things and taking cards out of things and running software and pushing buttons and waiting around. It’s utterly ridiculous. Eye-Fi has the solution to this, with an SD card that includes a WiFi antenna that automatically sends pictures and video that you take directly to the internet and your computer, no cables necessary.

We’ve got a full review of the Eye-Fi Explore Video for you, right after the jump. (more…)

by Shane McGlaun

A couple years ago, I moved from a simple point-and-shoot camera to a much more complex Nikon D80 DSLR. At the time, the D80 was one of the best cameras you could get. The thing I missed right away with the D80 compared to my old camera was the ability to shoot video, but at the time, no DSLRs were able to record video.

Today things are much different and there are several DSLR cameras on the market that can shoot video in HD resolutions, like the Nikon D90. Canon today announced a new entry-level EOS Rebel T1i DSLR camera that can record video in full 1080p resolution, though at only 20 fps.

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By Evan Ackerman

We’ve been fans of Eye-Fi cards since they were prototypes in 2006. I mean, what’s not to be a fan of? It’s a SD card that automatically uploads all your pics to your computer or the website of your choice over WiFi. Cool!

Now there’s a bunch more to be a fan of, as Eye-Fi has released their next generation of cards. The new cards have 4 gigs of storage, and can upload not only pictures, but also video (even HD video) to YouTube or Flickr. They’re available in two versions: the Explore costs $99 and includes low-res geotagging and hotspot access, while the $79 Share doesn’t include these features. You can preorder the new cards now, and the should be shipping by the end of the month.

Meantime, the original 2 gig versions of the Eye-Fi now start at only $49.

[ Eye-Fi ]

By David Ponce

We’re big fans of Eye-Fi, makers of SD cards with integrated WiFi which allow you to use any digicam to send your pictures to your network. I won’t spend a good deal of time speaking about their features, other than to let you guys know that as of “sometime in ‘09″, the cards will also let you upload videos as well as pictures.

I got a demo on the showfloor and have to admit it works quite well.

[ Eye-Fi ]

By Evan Ackerman

Unless you have an Eye-Fi card, getting pics from your camera onto your computer is more or less a pain that generally involves a cable. Cables, we know, are evil because you never have them when you need them, and when you don’t need them, they’re behind your desk having sex with each other and making cute little baby cable tangles of annoyingness. So having a cable that stays right with your camera and actually serves a purpose is a good idea, right? Sure it is!

This cable has a regular USB connector on one end and a mini connector on the other end, and is strong enough to swing your camera around with. You can find it on Amazon for only $8, along with an inexplicable picture of a record player.

[ Amazon ] VIA [ RGS ]