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Freeing digital cameras from the fetters of cables and card readers has been a lucrative business for the makers of Eye-Fi.
Eye-Fi is a WiFi-enabled storage card that permits photos and videos to be transferred wirelessly to a computer or directly to image sharing sites on the Web.
The most recent flavor of the product, the 2GB Eye-Fi Geo (US$59.99), is being exclusively aimed at the Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) market.
"Apple users want simplicity and an effortless user experience, so it's not surprising that a significant number of our users are on Macs," Eye-Fi CEO Jef Holove maintained when the Geo was introduced at the end of July.
"The Eye-Fi Geo," he continued, "is the perfect companion for iPhoto's new Places application to pinpoint photos on a digital map so memories are displayed in a richer meaningful way."
WiFi Triangulation
The Geo uses the WiFi triangulation service offered by SkyHook Wireless to tag photos stored on the card with geographic coordinates, explained Randhir Vieira, director of product marketing 
for the Mountain View, Calif., memory card maker.
The service, which was used by the first generation of iPhones, is offered free for the life of the card.
"As long as you're in an area with some WiFi coverage, we're able to tag your location," Vieira told MacNewsWorld.
"It works great in most of the metropolitan areas where there's a lot of WiFi coverage," he added.
And where there isn't a lot of WiFi coverage?
"The Geo bit does not work that well in Australia -- not enough spots for it to pick up a location," Down Under user Tony Williams told MacNewsWorld.
"The Eye-Fi itself is the absolute bee's knees," he added. "I love the convenience of walking into the house and having the pictures go to my computer and Flickr just by turning the camera on."
Power Management
For a charge of $9.99 annually, Geo owners can subscribe to Eye-Fi's Webshare Service, which links the card to some 25 online photo-sharing sites.
One early liability with Eye-Fi cards was their power consumption. Using one had a noticeable impact on a camera's battery life.
"We've optimized and continue to optimize how we use the camera's power to minimize the amount of power that we use," Vieira asserted.
Deal Making
One way that the company is doing that is by building relationships with camera makers in order to get their cameras to work better with the Eye-Fi cards, according to Ron Glaz, director of the digital imaging research program at IDC.
"If you're not in a location where you're going to be transmitting," he told MacNewsWorld, "there's no reason to have the WiFi on at that point."
By cutting deals with manufacturers, he explained, Eye-Fi hopes the camera makers will bake power management options for its cards into their cameras.
Just about the time that the Eye-Fi was initially introduced -- 2005-2006 -- camera makers began experimenting with adding WiFi to their products. The Eye-Fi, though, seems to have plunged a stiletto into that trend.
"We anticipate that will be a thing of the past," Glaz said of the camera makers' flirtation with hard-wiring WiFi into their shooters.
Apple Exclusive
Up to now, Eye-Fi has straddled both the PC and Mac platforms with its products. The Geo departs from that M.O. and is sold only at Apple Stores and at Apple.com.
Both Apple and Eye-Fi were seeing a strong affinity with the wireless memory cards from Apple's customer base, Vieira noted, and the firm believed an Apple-only product could be beneficial for both companies.
In addition, he added, "Apple really wanted something exclusive to their user base to highlight and showcase the Places feature in iPhoto."
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