Memory Card That Sends Images Wirelessly From Cameras to Computers Wins CES Prize

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Eye-Fi Inc.’s new wireless card technology won the top prize at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Last Gadget Standing session. The contest is held by Yahoo Inc.’s technology section and the winner is chosen by the volume of audience applause. In this case, the Eye-Fi wireless card won hands-down.

The Eye-Fi card is currently available through major online stores like Amazon.com for $99.00. It has 2GB of storage capacity and uses Wi-Fi to send pictures to computers and photo-sharing websites (probably via an intermediary desktop application).

The technical details of this card from Amazon.com are as follows:

• Uploads photos automatically from Eye-Fi Card inside your camera. Built-in Wi-Fi connects to your home network

• Provides free and unlimited photo uploads to your computer and your favorite photo or social networking website. Photo transmission is secure and private

• Supports sharing and printing websites, including Fotki, Shutterfly, dotPhoto, webshots, phanfare, Picasa Web albums, flickr, TypePad, Wal-Mart, snapfish, VOX, smugmug, facebook, photobucket, Kodak Gallery, and Sharpcast

• Handles full-resolution jpeg images and intelligently re-sizes photos if limited by your chosen photo or social networking website

• Fits digital cameras that use SD memory cards and offers 2 GB of memory to store photos on the card.

Eye-Fi seems to work with all standard cameras that accept SD memory cards. I personally hope to see this technology come to other types of cars as well, including xD, Memory Stick, etc.

Eye-Fi had stiff competition at CES this year and it beat out rivals such as a golf simulator, a wireless projector from Toshiba Corp., the Sansa TakeTV, a USB memory stick from SanDisk Corp. that transfers video from the Internet to the TV, and the Looj, a $99 gutter cleaning robot from iRobot Corp (the company that won the contest in 2002 for its Roomba Vacuum).Other previous winners include General Motors Corp.’s OnStar GPS service.

This win for Eye-Fi doesn’t automatically make them a winner in the market, but they do get bragging rights. I'm confident most consumers would love the idea of throwing out those cables and cradles currently needed to download photos from a camera to PC. I would also like to see this in other applications such as data transfer from devices like Palms, iPhones and Blackberrys.