21st
The Eye-Fi—my favorite consumer electronics product of 2007—just keeps getting better. Today’s new release changes the upload strategy to copy directly from the camera to your computer (if it is found on the wireless network). Previously the camera only knew how to upload to the Eye-Fi web service, and the server on your computer would pull images down from the web (if configured).
They’ve made this major change because it’ll get images off the camera faster, using less camera battery. Also, they’re listening to their users: the fact that you couldn’t get images directly from the camera to your computer on a wireless network was the second most popular complaint that I’ve seen. (The first is that the Eye-Fi doesn’t work on hotel WiFi services which require a click-thru from a captive portal before granting general Internet access.)
Some quick tests are pretty impressive—the images show up on my laptop about 3-4 seconds after capture, in single shot mode on my Canon SD700 IS.
I should also note that if your laptop isn’t found, the card will behave just like it used to: upload directly to the Eye-Fi web service; no laptop is required to get your images up to Flickr, or wherever you keep them on the web.
