Eye-Fi SD Card Does Location Tracking

HAVE YOU EVER looked at a picture and wondered where you snapped it? The Eye-Fi Explore digital camera memory can help.

Like last year's $100 Eye-Fi Share, the $130 Eye-Fi Explore is 2GB Wi-Fi-enabled SD Card that will automatically upload your pictures to the Web site of your choice or to your computer. But the Explore adds two significant new features: automatic geotagging of images and the ability to upload pictures at a Wayport wireless network hotspot, at no extra charge.

Wayport hotspots can be found in many McDonald's restaurants, Hertz car rental outlets, hotels, and other venues. But since the Eye-Fi Explore doesn't provide a interface on your camera, you must keep an eye out for golden arches of Hertz signs, o ryou muct use a computer to find a hotspot.

Hotspot uploading functioned very incostitently in my test. Initially, the card wouldn't upload at all. After some discussions with the Eye-Fi, I trided again; this time, however, I reduced the capture resolution of my 10-megapixel Canon SD790IS to 0.3 mgapixel. That booted everything into gear.

I found the Eye-Fi's geotagging capability far more flexible. Most of the pictures I took appeared with location tags in place, and most of the locations were correct. But some of them-perhaps 20 percent-were off, sometimes significantly: A couple of pictures I took in South San Francisco were tagged as having been taken in Mountain View, California, about 30 miles away.



The Eye-Fi Explore card is clever, but it costs far more than an SD Card without wireless capabilties. In view of the price premium, it should work much better. -Allan Stafford

PC World November 2008