2008-12-01

On Eye-Fi


A lot of people seem to think you need to create new better technology in order to revolutionize the way things are done (or at least make them slightly better) but this is actually false. All you need is a creative combination of existing tech. Take for example the eye-fi.

Consider the lowly digital camera (a tech wonder in its own right). It can capture content, but sadly is crippled because you must connect it to a computer in order to distribute said content. Now this media is (normally) stored on SD cards. What eye-fi did that was ingenious, was to include a simple 802.11 b wireless module onto an SD card so that the content could be uploaded right away. Nothing (really) new was done, they just combined two old technologies to make a much more interesting one. With this card (which works on 90% of the world's cameras) you can upload your picture automatically to the web! Imagine documenting a party and as you take a picture, it uploads it as soon as you've taken it. Amazing isn't it?

Don't take this as a sales pitch. I'm not actually working for them, but rather as demonstration of an interesting fact. Innovation only requires you to combine things no one has ever combined before.

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