Eye-Fi

Eye-Fi, Inc.
Private
Industry Computer data storage
Founded 2005
Founder Yuval Koren
Ziv Gillat
Eugene Feinberg
Berend Ozceri
Headquarters Mountain View, California, United States
Key people
 Matt DiMaria (CEO)
Website www.eyefi.com
an Eye-Fi card for sale in Tokyo, February 2010

Eye-Fi is a company based in Mountain View, California that produces SD memory cards and SDHC cards with Wi-Fi capabilities. Using an Eye-Fi card inside a digital camera, one can wirelessly and automatically upload digital photos to a local computer or a mobile device such as a smartphone or tablet.

Eye-Fi offers three models, varying in speed, storage capacity, and software services provided.[1][2]

Hardware

The card is manufactured for Eye-Fi by Wintec Industries Inc. of Milpitas, California, and contains the following major components:

Software

The upload to remote services is via the local Eye-Fi server which has full visibility of the photos and the associated user name and password. The server then uploads to the user's remote storage site and sends the user an email to notify them that the photos have been uploaded to their storage site.

By default, every picture on the camera is wirelessly uploaded to local Eye-Fi servers.[3] Some models also allow for uploading photos to photo sharing, blogging and social networking sites such as Flickr, Picasa, Facebook and PhotoBucket;[4] and some models also allow for uploading videos, both to a personal computer or mobile device and to YouTube.[5]

"Share" versions allow uploading to various photo-sharing websites. The "Share Video" card allows uploading videos as well. The "Pro" adds raw image support and peer-to-peer or ad-hoc networking.[6] The "Pro X2" added class 6 read & write speeds, 802.11n and a new feature named "Endless Memory Mode" that automatically deletes images from the card after they are delivered to their intended destination; all of these have since been migrated to the Connect X2 and Mobile X2.

Pictures are sent from the camera to the local computer using SOAP.[7] This uses an HTTP connection to the server software running on the local computer. Official Eye-Fi server software is available for Microsoft Windows or Mac OS X and enthusiasts have developed server software for other operating systems.

Until September 2013 there has been an add-on service for certain cards offering photo geotagging (via WPS) [8] and hotspot access through relationships with various providers, an offer, which also ended in September 2013.[9] The location was not locally recorded in conventional Exif coordinate form, but was inserted into Exif upon upload on an Eye-Fi-Server .[10]

Settings of the Eye-Fi card such as wireless network access, selecting upload location on local computer and configuring photo sharing sites is done through software called the Eye-Fi Center which is available for both Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. Recently mobile access (in beta) has been added via a browser.

Before use of any Eye-Fi card the user must "register" on the Eye-Fi website, in doing so the card software demands the firewall to be opened for the Eye-Fi software,[3] the same happens every time the user needs to reconfigure its wireless network with the network data ending up sent and stored to Eye-Fi servers and that happens by default to every single picture too.[11]

In its latest version, the Eye-Fi Mobi allows users to transfer photos from a digital camera directly into a tablet or smartphone without the need for a Wi-Fi network or a PC.[12]

Mobile

Eye-Fi offers an iPhone app, but it is only available in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and Japan App Store.[13]

The company also offers an app for Android in the Google Play Store.[14]

Linux

Under Linux, the EyeFi card can be configured using eyefi-config, which allows viewing the logfiles and changing the wireless settings. To receive images from the card, there are several alternatives, including EyeFi Framework, EyeFiServer, EyeFiServer2, iiid, RyFI and Node-Eyefi.

Technical features

16GB Eye-Fi Pro X2 Card

Supported photo services

Scanner support

Some portable document scanners such as the Doxie Go + Wi-Fi and the Xerox Mobile Scanner make use of an Eye-Fi card to provide Wi-Fi capability for document upload.

Awards and accolades

Eye-Fi has won the following recognition:

In November 2007, Wall Street Journal writer Katherine Boehret called the Eye-Fi card "a terrific little tool".[21]

The magazine Wired placed the Eye-Fi Pro on their "2009 Wish List", calling it "Arbus meets Airbus".[22]

In October 2010, Time magazine technology editor Peter Ha placed the original 2 GB Eye-Fi card on his list of "the 100 greatest and most influential gadgets from 1923 to the present".[23]

History

Eye-Fi was founded in 2005 by Yuval Koren, Ziv Gillat, Eugene Feinberg and Berend Ozceri.[24] Jef Holove became the CEO in September 2007,[25] with Yuval Koren taking over in May 2011.

Discontinued models include "Explore X2", "Geo X2", "Pro", "Geo", "Home/Video", "Share/Video", "Explore Video" and an "Anniversary Edition".

See also

References

  1. ↑ Eye-Fi Products: Compare WiFi Cards: the Pro X2 and Mobi
  2. ↑ Eye-Fi current products
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Why do I need internet connection for local upload? Retrieved on 2012-01-20
  4. ↑ Eye-Fi introduces camera cards that wirelessly uploads videos to the Web and an iPhone app Retrieved on 2009-05-19
  5. ↑ Eye-Fi Share Video 4GB SD card with Wi-Fi Retrieved on 2009-06-15
  6. ↑ EYE-FI INTRODUCES A WIRELESS MEMORY CARD FOR PHOTO ENTHUSIASTS Retrieved on 2009-06-15
  7. ↑ "eyefi 0.1: Python package index". Retrieved 21 June 2014.
  8. ↑ Geotagging Service Discontinued Retrieved on 2014-05-29
  9. ↑ Hotspot Access Service Discontinued Retrieved on 2014-05-29
  10. ↑ How Eye-Fi geotagging works
  11. ↑ Why did we develop a desktop app? Retrieved on 2012-01-20
  12. ↑ By Rob Coneybeer, TechCrunch. “Eye-Fi Mobi Delivers Photos From Your Camera To The Cloud | One Lap.” December 14, 2014. December 15, 2014.
  13. ↑ "Outside US". Eye-Fi. Retrieved 2009-04-07.
  14. ↑ "Android App". Eye-fi.
  15. ↑ AR6001GL Embedded 802.11b/g Solution for Mobile and Battery-Operated Devices
  16. ↑ Best of CES Award Winners Jan 9, 2010
  17. ↑ 2010 Innovations Honorees Jan 7, 2010
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 Eye-Fi enables seamless experience with Snow Leopard (press release), August 27, 2009
  19. ↑ Eye-Fi wins Last Gadget Standing contest, again! (press release), January 11, 2009
  20. ↑ And the winners are..., lastgadgetstanding.com, January 13, 2009
  21. ↑ No Excuses: a Wire-Free Way to Upload Photos, Katherine Boehret, The Mossberg Solution, The Wall Street Journal, November 21, 2007
  22. ↑ Wish List 2009, Wired, December 2009
  23. ↑ All-TIME 100 Gadgets, Peter Ha, Time, October 25, 2010
  24. ↑ Eye-Fi: About Us: Management
  25. ↑ Jef Holove biography, Where 2.0 Conference

External links