Maximum PC sd card RSS Feed

Blockbuster to Rent Movies on SD Cards at New Kiosks

Pulkit Chandna — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:03:16 -0600

Blockbuster will soon begin renting movies on SD cards. You will need to visit your nearest Blockbuster Express Digital kiosk to rent your favorite movies. There, users will be able to transfer DRM-protected movies to their own SD cards. According to a Fast Company report, the rentals will cost $1.99.

All said, hardware incompatibility may prove to be a major issue as not all phones, TV sets and notebooks feature a full-size SD cardslot. The kiosks will be built and managed by NCR Corporation, the very company that manages Blockbuster’s DVD-rental kiosks.

Image Credit: Fast Company

Eye-Fi Pro

Gordon Mah Ung — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:00:58 -0600

Latest version caters with advanced features

We’ve long loved Eye-Fi’s series of Wi-Fi-enabled SD cards that allow you to instantly upload pics from your camera to a website, but it has lacked two key features: the ability to select which photos you want to upload and the ability to perform peer-to-peer transfers from the camera to a computer or laptop. This new card addresses those needs.

An ad-hoc mode in the latest Eye-Fi lets you upload directly to your laptop.

The card continues to support all the good stuff we’ve seen before in Eye-Fi cards: the ability to connect to open access points to upload your photos to a photo service, Wi-Fi-based geo-tagging, and video sharing. But we’re more excited by the improvements in the Eye-Fi Pro. Now, instead of uploading every image on the card, you select which photos you want to upload by checking the write-protect on the files and the card dutifully uploads them. JPEG, video, and even RAW files are now supported, too. And in case you’re wondering whether RAW is too large to transfer via Wi-Fi, we moved an 18MB RAW file from a Canon EOS Rebel T1i to a laptop in about two minutes using the Eye-Fi Pro’s Ad-hoc mode. Not bad.

While the new Ad-hoc mode is one of the improvements we appreciate about the Pro card, it’s also one of our complaints—the long-sought-after ability to upload without the need for an access point is great to have but not exactly easy to set up. You have to dig through the site’s FAQ for a PDF on how to do it, and even then, you still have to fuss with it. Our other complaint is the size. With 16GB SD cards in the $30 range, a 4GB card, especially one aimed at “pros,” with RAW support is just too small. Still, that doesn’t take away from how cool and useful the Eye-Fi Pro is.

LaCie DataShare Turns Puny SD Cards Into Burly Thumb Drives

Andy Salisbury — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 17:32:33 -0500

You’ve got a digital camera, you’ve got a cell phone, and along with these you’ve probably got a few SD cards laying around that you just don’t use anymore. It looks like someone at LaCie had the very same issue, and decided to turn them into an extremely easy to use flash drive.

The LaCie DataShare is compatible with all SD and MicroSD cards currently on the market (SD/SDHC/Class 1 to 6), and comes with two separate sides, that let you discern your private data from your public data.

If this looks like something you could make use out of, be sure to check it out on LaCie’s site here, where it’s currently on sale for $9.99.

Image Credit: LaCie

Eye-Fi Cards Jump to 4GB, Now Upload Videos

Andy Salisbury — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 16:54:11 -0600

If you’re any kind of fan of adding WiFi to your digital camera, you may want to check out Eye-Fi’s latest cards, which will double the previous storage cap and add support for uploading videos.

The new versions are the 4GB Explore Video, which will run you $100 and the 4GB Share Video, for only $80. The Explore will automatically geotag photos and videos for you, and offers hotspot access at over 10,000 locations. The Share loses the ability to geotag, and only allows users to send photos and videos to the Web and your home computer.

These new cards are available today. If you’re not looking for all of the fancy frills and are happy with the 2GB space limit, you get the old cards for only $50.

Image Credit: Eye-Fi

Eye-Fi Explore

Gordon Mah Ung — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 14:00:00 -0600

When we reviewed Eye-Fi’s original wireless SD card (March 2008), our verdict was that this device, which lets you automatically upload images to the Internet via Wi-Fi, was a cool gee-whiz item hurt by a number of flaws. This update fixes those weaknesses and turns this wireless card into a must-have item for photo-sharing.

The original card worked with only secured access points that you had to program in manually. With the Explore, if you take a photo at the park and then walk into the range of one of the 10,000 supported hot spots (you get one year of free access; subsequent years cost $20), the camera will automatically start uploading your pics to the photo-sharing website of your choice. Even better, walk near an unsecured access point and the Explore will climb aboard and upload your photos from there.

You can either access just your secured access points or turn on open hotspot support, but there’s no way to limit which open access points the card will seek out—and using an open access point without permission is against the law in some states. The card’s geotagging feature isn’t perfect either. The tags are not based on GPS coordinates; rather, they’re based on a survey of Wi-Fi networks by Skyhood Wireless. The company claims to have millions of access points mapped, but that won’t help you if you’re standing on top of Half Dome at Yosemite.

Even with these problems, the Eye-Fi Explore is damned cool. For users of the original card, a firmware update adds the geotagging and hotspot support, so there’s no reason to upgrade.

Now if Eye-Fi could increase the storage capacity beyond 2GB and make a Compact Flash version we’d be even happier.

Eye-Fi Wireless Flash Card

Gordon Mah Ung — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 15:51:42 -0600

Miniaturization has brought us amazing advances—tiny transistors, microscopic nanotubes, bite-size Frosted Mini Wheats, and now the Eye-Fi. Combining a 2GB flash card with a Wi-Fi radio, this affordable hybrid card lets you easily upload pictures directly from your camera to the web and your PC.

Setup is easy. You plug it into your PC and run the included software, pick from a list of photo-sharing sites (including SmugMug, Flickr, and Facebook), create an Eye-Fi account, and configure security (40-128 bit WEP, WPA-PSK, or WPA2-PSK). For our test, we uploaded images to SmugMug from our Canon EOS 1D-MkII N.

Like magic, images we shot popped up on our SmugMug page and the client PC. Of course, Wi-Fi capability in a digital camera isn’t new—but it’s never been this cheap, this tiny, or this universal. Because the Eye-Fi is a standard-size SD card, it should work in almost any camera.

So what’s wrong with it? Speed. It took roughly 6 minutes to transfer a 5MB image over our corporate LAN, which has 14Mb uploads and 30Mb downloads. Bang out 35 photos, and you’ll have to leave the camera on for the evening to upload your pics. Fortunately, the images are also stored on the card, so if you shut down, you can resume your upload later. What is wacky is that images are sent from the card to Eye-Fi’s server, which then disperses them to your website or PC. The impact on battery life is difficult to gauge but is certainly a drag. The card also can’t upload video or RAW files and doesn’t work with access points without security or in peer-to-peer mode.

Despite all these warts, the Eye-Fi is still very cool. You could, for example, use it to post snaps of your hot New Year’s party to the web as it’s happening. The card’s also handy for tuckered parents who don’t have the energy to upload images of little Timmy to a web page for grandma to see. With the Eye-Fi, you bang out a couple of shots and set your camera down. There are clearly improvements to be made, but for $100, it’s a fun toy to try out.