| Eye-Fi Explore Video 4GB |
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Most digital cameras sold today take beautiful pictures, but they also record digital video as well. All of the major camera manufacturers have added video shooting modes to their camera's feature set. The hassle comes when you have to pause to take the time to download the pictures and video from your camera to your computer. With the Eye-Fi Explore Video you can do it wirelessly to your computer via Wi-Fi and it supports not only still-images, but also video. The original Eye-Fi Share from about a year ago supported only still-images, but the new Eye-Fi Explore Video now, as its name suggests, supports wirelessly downloading video files as well. Just like the Share, the Explore Video is a standard SD memory card that comes with its own USB card reader for easy setup and configuring. The card also has 4GB of memory to store your images and videos on before download. To configure the card for first use, just insert it into its own custom card reader and plug it into an open USB port on any Wi-Fi-enabled PC or Mac computer. The setup program will allow you to customize the card and most importantly, setup a "main" computer where the images and videos will be downloaded to when active. The Eye-Fi Explore Video supports wireless networks that are encrypted with either WEP or WPA encryption. You can also link your card to several online photo & video Web sites, such as your YouTube, Photobucket, Flickr, SmugMug, and/or Picasa account. In all, there are 25 supported online photo & video services. The Eye-Fi Manager is an online Web application that you have access to once you configure the card and it is where you can manage everything about your card and the photos and videos that it downloads to your computer. You can also geotag photos and videos with the location where the content was shot. This geotag information can be uploaded to a photo/video sharing site with an accompanying Google Map. The locations that the program determined are actually pretty accurate, but not totally exact. You can also connect to any Wayport hotspot, which there are over 10,000 of them, and the Eye-Fi Explore Video will encrypt your content and download your files to your home computer completely wirelessly. This can be especially useful during vacations or other times where you're away from home for extended periods of time. In the Eye-Fi Manager, custom notifications can also be setup to let you know by e-mail or SMS message when content downloads start and end. It should also be noted that during any download process, local or from a hotspot, the Explore Video can only download one file at a time, which can take a while if you have a lot of photos and videos. Because of this limitation, the battery life of the camera the card is inserted into is shortened by a significant amount. You may also have to adjust the camera's power-save settings to prevent the camera from turning off by itself during uploads. In all, the Eye-Fi Explore Video may seem a little much for just the average user, but for someone who wants to make the transition to wireless photo and video downloads, it's definitely worth-while. It supports connecting your content with many online sharing services, which is a real plus. With the card, you get unlimited lifetime access to Wayport's Wi-Fi hotspots, which is something that costs $14.99 a year with previous Eye-Fi cards.
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