The New Magic

I don’t actually have any use for this device, but I can still marvel at the amazingness of it:

Magic!

This little puppy acts just like an ordinary storage chip for your camera, except it’s also a WiFi transmitter that automatically copies your pictures to your home computer or phone and clears the space for more pictures. With the WiFi you can also have the chip guess roughly where it is in the world, and tag your photos with the location. You can even have it upload to Picasa or whatever automatically. (Though anyone who posts every picture they take to Flikr without first editing is someone who’s photos I will never view.)

Remember when we had WiFi cards that we could stick in the side of a computer with the antenna poking out? That was pretty cool. Now this tiny chip does the same thing, only it integrates with your photo software. Holey Moley.

Technical quibbles: it only works with JPEGs (even sharing on your own network, which strikes me as odd), and the SD form factor doesn’t work in all cameras. There are adapters, however.

Back when they thought we’d have atom-powered flying cars, they didn’t think of this stuff.