Filed under: Accessories, Hardware, Retail, Internet Tools
2GB Eye-Fi Geo exclusive to Apple retail
The Eye-Fi Memory Card sends photos wirelessly from your camera to the destination of your choice, like a computer or the web. Back in January of '08, the product gained Mac and iPhoto support, and support for MobileMe was added in September '08. This week, Eye-Fi announced the Eye-Fi 2GB Geo, which is currently exclusive to Apple retail, both online and brick-and-mortar stores. As you've probably guessed, the Geo adds geotagging to the mix. Once snapped and tagged, photos will be sent to a folder on your Mac or directly to iPhoto, all tagged and ready to go. This makes great use of iPhoto '09's Places feature.
It's $60 for a 2GB card, which is cheaper that most of the geotagging add-on hardware we listed a couple months back. If you pick one of these up, let us know how it goes.
Additionally, there's a Eye-Fi app for the iPhone [App Store link] that lets you send photos to your Mac or certain online services direct from your phone.
[via MacDailyNews]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
ars_workerbee said 10:49AM on 7-29-2009
Its worth pointing out that the geotagging feature is not nearly as slick as it sounds, since it uses WiFi networks to determine the location (probably via SkyHook, the same thing that original iPhones, iPod touches and other non-GPS devices use.)
"The Eye-Fi card senses the surrounding Wi-Fi networks as you take pictures. It then translates the information to a specific physical location and automatically adds a geotag to your photos."
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Carl said 10:51AM on 7-29-2009
This is pretty much useless for real geotagging if it relies on geotagging based on wifi access point location. It obviously doesn't do real gps based geotagging.
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ryemac3 said 10:58AM on 7-29-2009
These cards are misleading. They are supposed to "tag" your images with GPS data. But it can only do that by finding your location from sounding Wi-Fi hot spots. A lot of good that will do you if you're taking pictures in the middle of nowhere. Actually, it doesn't even have to be in the middle of nowhere, it just has to be where there's no free Wi-Fi, which is probably where you'll be taking most of your shots.
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jwfnla said 11:08AM on 7-29-2009
No, they don't claim to add 'GPS' data to your photos. They claim to add location, which they effectively do. (No, I don't work for them. I just don't like seeing misinformation spread that hurts a product that I like.)
CVBruce said 11:45AM on 7-29-2009
I disagree ryemac3. These cards are not supposed to tag your pictures with GPS data, they are supposed to tag them with geo-location data.
No where can I see that they claim that they use GPS data.
If I tag a picture with Yosemite Valley, CA, USA in the geo-location tag, I haven't used GPS data, but the tag is still valid geo-location data.
You, failing to read the package or product description, is not misleading on their part.
Having said that, I wouldn't buy one because the accuracy of the method they use doesn't meet my requirements.
Greyson said 11:03AM on 7-29-2009
I totally agree with ars_workerbee and Carl. Eye-Fi tries to make their card more and more interesting by adding all kinds of services, but the core technology - location based on WiFi - just stinks.
The only serious core technology to do geotagging is based on GPS. The days that geotagging based on GPS technology was hard and complex are over. I use the GeoLogTag iPhone app to geotag all photos taken with my DSLR before I import them in iPhoto and it's so easy and straightforward and at a fraction of the cost of an Eye-Fi card.
http://www.galarina.eu/GeoLogTag/Galarina.html
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jwfnla said 11:03AM on 7-29-2009
I've been using their 4 gig card for several months, and it almost always tags the pics correctly. I disagree with the grousers above.
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Rob E. said 11:35AM on 7-29-2009
jwfnia: Do you take your pictures in a wifi hotspot? Otherwise I don't see how it would work.
I agree with the grousers that it's important to point out the difference between Wifi-based location tagging and GPS-based location tagging. 1) GPS is more precise, and 2) GPS works where Wifi does not. The first point I could easily forgive: Wifi location tracking gets me close enough most of the time, although it is occasionally laughably far off. But the second point is going to be a major issue for a lot of people.
It looks to me (and I'd love to have someone who uses it correct or confirm) like you not only have to be in a Wifi hot spot, but you also have to have set up your card ahead of time to recognize and connect to that hot spot. I'm not sure how/if this would work with a typical, public hotspot that asks you to accept their TOS before continuing, let alone one that requires a log in.
Don't get me wrong. It looks neat, and I love the concept, and would love to have one of those cards, but the way it was presented made me think, "Wow, a simple and relatively cheap way to add GPS to a camera that doesn't have it built in." When, in reality, it seems like it would have limited functionality and would not, for me, work for 75% of the photos I take.
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jwfnla said 12:03PM on 7-29-2009
Hey Rob --
I actually use this thing -- I don't think that those above do.
The big chunk of misinformation here is that you need an open network to use the geotagging feature. You don't. It uses triangulation of nearby wifi to tag your pic -- it doesn't need to enter the networks in question. It only uses open networks to upload your photos to the places you've told it to.
Grant said 12:27PM on 7-29-2009
I did a fair amount of research on this product a few weeks ago, and as far as I could tell, the Eye-Fi could actually figure out your location using surrounding Wi-Fi networks without even logging in! I'm not sure how this tech works but that's the impression I got. This review of the Eye-Fi Explore seems to bear that out: http://paulstamatiou.com/review-eye-fi-explore-geotagging-sd-card Of course, the accuracy of your geotags may vary, but for my purposes, simply having the tag be in the correct city is good enough for me. Now that this product is more closely integrated with Apple, I'm very tempted to go for it!
Rob E. said 12:27PM on 7-29-2009
That's good to know that it can get location data from closed networks, and it certainly expands its usefulness. It would probably increase the percentage of pictures it would tag for me to around half. That's better than the zero percent that are now tagged, but it's also a far cry from reliable location tagging. I think this is interesting and it's at a reasonable price. But I don't see it as a replacement for the geotagging solutions TUAW has outlined in their previous article. Rather this is a kind of "poor man's GPS." Except that when you combine that with wifi uploading it seems like it could be pretty fun to have. But it still strikes me as: "If you think geotagging might be neat but don't care enough to make it really work reliably, this might be for you."
Which isn't to say that I don't like the looks of it. The combined features of geotagging and wifi uploading make it very appealing. It's just not killer device its initial description led me to believe it might be.
CVBruce said 12:00PM on 7-29-2009
Actually there are some pretty easy work arounds for this kind of thing.
My car has a gps. Before turning the car off, take a picture of the GPS coordinates.
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THJ said 12:21PM on 7-29-2009
Haha, that's actually a really neat idea. Thanks for the tip.
The geo-location feature of the eye-fi is based on skyhook, check out this site for more info:
http://www.skyhookwireless.com/howitworks/
(I don't work for them, I'm just a nerd)
Aelver said 12:20PM on 7-29-2009
HoudahGeo also makes short work of geotagging if you have a regular handheld GPS (that can record tracks).
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thecase said 2:43PM on 7-29-2009
Does anyone know if this model has RAW support? That's the gating factor for me. I can't find any info about supported file formats for this one.
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daaronson100 said 2:53PM on 7-29-2009
Whats the difference here with this card on the Eye-Fi Explore Wireless card? The explore says it does Geo-tagging too so is there really any difference?
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Sky said 4:04PM on 7-29-2009
Don't know how much of an exclusive this is... I wanted to buy one for my Hawai'i trip tomorrow, but I called a couple of Apple Stores and they said they haven't stocked those in a while now. Somebody better tell these guys! haha
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Geordie Korper said 5:13PM on 7-29-2009
I've been using a geotagging Eye-fi for months and it works well enough for me. It let's me know whether a picture was taken at my house, at a friends, or at what restaurant. I really don't need much more accuracy than that. It has certainly been good enough to tag pictures from pool parties, birthdays, and the like.
From what I can tell it uses a very simple method. It records what the Mac addresses and signal strength of wi-fi base stations that are in range when you take the picture. Then during the uploading process it use that information to query a database to figure out where you are. It isn't exactly rocket science to be able to determine that if the two devices are in range they are probably near each other and the unknown one can then be updated to be in a general area. If you accumulate enough datapoints and combine that with information supplied from other devices that do both GPS and Wi-Fi geolocation, accuracy gets pretty good for most locations.
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samuel said 7:34PM on 7-29-2009
When the iPhone came out it should have had GPS, but the foundation was there, then it came. For years prior to this I dreamed of a solution to auto-geo-tagging images taken with ones camera and when I read about this I was so enthused. Unfortunately the technology is not accurate enough, a really good concept and well designed but it doesn't really work.
Shame, but its still better than nothing!
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Josh M said 9:55AM on 7-31-2009
Not sure what all the hoopla about this "being designed for the Mac" is... my other Eye-Fi cards work just fine with our Mac...
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