Eye-Fi launches video cards that upload directly from camera to YouTube

March 3, 2009 | Dean Takahashi | Comments | |

Eye-Fi has made a big splash with its camera memory chips, which can upload images directly to the web. Today, it’s expanding its product line to launch four-gigabyte flash memory cards that can upload video directly to YouTube and Flickr.

It’s a milestone for the Mountain View, Calif.-based company, which keeps on making it easier to move pictures and videos from cameras to the Internet, where they are far more likely to be viewed. According to comScore, consumers viewed more than 144 million videos online in 2008. More often than not, consumers are using digital cameras, rather than video cameras, to shoot their videos.

The new 4 gigabyte Eye-Fi Share Video ($79) and Eye-Fi Explore Video cards ($99) can upload photos and videos directly to any of 20 online photo sharing and social networking sites. The Eye-Fi Explore Video card can automatically tag photos with locations based on global positioning system (GPS) data. There are more than 10,000 Wi-Fi hot spots where you can upload. The new cards will be in stores later this month.

Eye-Fi already has its Eye-Fi Home card ($49, down from $79 earlier), Eye-Fi Share card ($59, down from $99). The photo-only Eye-Fi Explore card is being discontinued in favor of the video and photo combo version.

The company was founded in 2005 and its investors include LMS Capital, Opus Capital, Shasta Ventures and Translink Capital.

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About the Author, Dean Takahashi

Dean is lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He covers video games, security, chips and a variety of other subjects. Dean previously worked at the San Jose Mercury News, the Wall Street Journal, the Red Herring, the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register and the Dallas Times Herald. He is the author of two books, Opening the Xbox and the Xbox 360 Uncloaked. Follow him on Twitter at @deantak, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

  • At first I read this and got pretty excited thinking Eye-Fi had changed over to using actual GPS to geotag photos (as it seems to indicate in this article). However, I checked over on Eye-Fi's site (http://www.eye.fi/services/geotagging/) and it seems like the new batch of cards still uses Wi-Fi triangulation to guess your approximate location (which is fine when you're in an area that has a wireless access point). I guess I'll have to wait a bit longer before I can take one of these cards to the Amazon and automatically geotag my photos.