Three Products That Simplify Your Digital Life Grace Aquino
Three Products That Simplify Your Digital Life: Grace Aquino
Review by Grace Aquino
Jan. 31 (Bloomberg) — Most of us have gadgets that are
truly indispensable. My cell phone, for example, lets me e-mail,
surf the Web, store contacts and, of course, make phone calls.
I found three other tools that make life simpler: the first
wireless memory card for digital cameras, from Mountain View,
California-based Eye-Fi Inc., a new universal remote from
Logitech International SA and the latest password-management
software from Siber Systems Inc.
Although transferring photos from a digital camera to a
computer using a USB cable is pretty simple, imagine how much
easier it would be without a wire. The $100 Eye-Fi memory card
lets you move images from a camera to a computer using a
wireless local area network, or Wi-Fi, connection.
Eye-Fi combines storage and wireless into an easy-to-use 2-
gigabyte memory card. Using the SecureDigital card format, it
works on many digital cameras, such as those from Canon, Kodak
and Nikon. (It won;t work on Sony and Olympus cameras, and
others that don;t use SD memory cards.)
The software installation was a breeze. I set up Eye-Fi to
transfer pictures directly to a folder in my PC;s hard drive and
to a photo-sharing Web site. Supported sites include Facebook,
Yahoo! Inc.;s Flickr, Kodak Gallery, Google Inc.;s Picasa and
Shutterfly. You can choose only one site for the auto-upload
feature, though you can change your selection at any time.
Once the PC setup was complete, I popped the card into a
Canon G9 camera and snapped some shots. With the Eye-Fi Manager
software running on my computer, the wireless card automatically
transferred my photos to my system and to the photo site I had
selected, Google;s Picasa.
Transfer Time
The transfer time varies with the size of your images. It
took me less than a minute to transfer a single 12-megapixel
photo and only a few seconds for a 2-megapixel file. Uploading
snapshots to both a computer and a photo site takes more time
than if you choose only one source.
Eye-Fi connects to only one computer at a time, though you
can set it up on multiple machines. The card works on both
Windows and Mac systems. If you go outside your Wi-Fi network;s
range, you;ll need to change the network setup in the Eye-Fi
software.
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Tags: Auto, images, niko
