Eyefi has entered the cloud. The company recently released a software called Eyefi Cloud for iOS’s, Androids, PC’s, Mac’s and Kindles that instantly shares photos across several different devices, and provides ample cloud storage. As soon as a picture is taken, the program stores it in the cloud, allowing users to alter the picture or edit it before sharing it on social media sites or with friends.
The software can be accessed via the web or as as app on mobile devices. For a yearly membership fee of $49 for 8GB of storage, users can have access to unlimited cloud storage for all their photos, unrestricted sharing, and link multiple Mobi SD cards to one account. Essentially, a group of friends can create an entire album using one account, but each friend using his or her own mobile camera.
This software also extends to stand alone digital cameras. Eyefi already gives wireless capabilities to several digital cameras through its Mobi SD cards, but with the new platform, these pictures can be send directly from a digital camera to a mobile device, and then straight into the Cloud for later viewing and editing. An existing Wi-Fi Mobi SD card can simply be updated with the latest software to use this new program.
Historically, digital cameras have been unable to send pictures wirelessly to a PC or mobile device, and required a manual USB cord or physically removing the SD card from the camera to retrieve photographs. When Wi-Fi SD cards became available, pictures could be loaded to the web, but could not be edited before uploading.
This latest software comes as part of a long line of developments and advances in digital camera technology since Steve Sassen developed the first digital camera in 1975. The idea of being able to see a picture after it was taken was revolutionary for its time. Now, Eye Fi Cloud allows users to take pictures on their camera and watch it appear instantly on their iPad, iPhone or mobile device, edit it, and share as desired. This reduces the time it takes to view pictures, and makes sharing more efficient and convenient.
As more users download and use this software successfully, Eye Fi will expand its market beyond North America. But for now, they are content with providing instant cloud storage for mobile device, smartphone and digital camera users in the Northwest part of the world.
