Eye-Fi: Download and upload your photos effortlessly

The act of downloading pictures to share online with family and friends is something I don’t look forward to, to say the least. So I was thrilled to learn that there is a faster, easier option in Eye-Fi.

This wireless memory card allows you to automatically deliver your pictures to your favorite photo sharing or social networking website quickly and easily, without the hassle of wires and cradles, or the added step of uploading from your hard drive to online if you’d like to bypass. Not quite ready to share your photos with the world? Eye-Fi will wirelessly deliver the images to the file of your choice and even arrange them in easy-to-find date-stamped folders, for uploading later.

There are three different Eye-Fi cards you can chose from — The Eye-Fi Home ($79.99) allows wireless downloading to your home computer only, the Eye-Fi Share ($99.99) allows unlimited WebShare services and the Eye-Fi Explore ($129.99) offers everything the Eye-Fi Share does, along with unlimited Geotagging and Hotspot Access for one year.  Each of the cards offers 2GB of memory and comes in SD format.

Depending on the card you purchase, when you set up your Eye-Fi account, you can chose a preferred destination for your photos from among more than 20 websites including popular photo sharing sites like Kodak Gallery and Snapfish.  Eye-Fi not only uploads to the site you’ve chosen, it also handles logging you in and out and re-sizing your photos if it’s required. This feature is really handy because I often forget to upload my images to Kodak Gallery after I upload them to my computer.

To get your photos from your camera to your computer or to your chosen photo sharing site, simply turn your camera on.  You can even transfer photos while your computer is powered off, thanks to Eye-Fi’s Smart Boost technology which uses your home wi-fi connection to store the images with the Web-based Eye-Fi Service.  Then, when you turn your computer on, the images are forwarded on to the photo sharing or social networking site you’ve already selected.

So that all sounds great but there are some downsides. The first is that Eye-Fi does not transfer video files, which I shoot a lot of on my compact camera, meaning I still have to connect my camera the traditional way. The second is that the images are not deleted after they are uploaded to my camera, so I have to delete them manually. The third is that my camera sometimes shuts off before the images finish uploading. And lastly, wi-fi transfer is a lot slower than using a cable.

For a list of retailers who sell the Eye-Fi, click here.