Archive for the ‘wireless’ Category
Phanfare for the iPhone
We are happy to announce that we have developed a camera application for the new iPhone store that allows users to share iPhone photos on the web with a single click. The photos are moved wirelessly to the internet where they are immediately visible to friends and family and archivally stored.
We have also released a new mobile viewing experience that targets the Safari web browser built into the iPhone.
Here is a demo of the new Phanfare iPhone application and the mobile viewing experience.
http://albums.phanfare.com/video/4;1003289;2080668;28510947;1309f95956457154c514d89a2c1b4cdd
The Phanfare camera application turns the iPhone into a connected digital camera that takes the PC out of the loop for uploading and sharing. Users enjoy the convenience and portability of the iPhone with all the benefits of cloud-based storage and sharing. After you take a picture, you can instantly add a caption, add the photo to an existing album or create a new album without ever leaving the application. Here is a demonstration of the new iPhone app.
For consumers, digital photography was a huge step forward over film, but uploading digital photos to a computer is just too complicated. The Phanfare iPhone app gets the computer out of the uploading loop and makes digital photography significantly more convenient.
Show Phanfare Slideshows on your Living Room TV
I am excited to announce the availability of the Phanfare Media Server for Phanfare 2.0, a small program that runs on your PC to publish your Phanfare photos within your home network. The new Playstation III supports UPnP viewing of your photos, as does the Xbox 360. There is also a digital picture frame on the market from Digital Spectrum that supports the protocol. TVs will also support the protocol directly within the next 12 months. Here is a demonstration of a Playstation III playing Phanfare photos in the office. We installed the media server on a PC on the office network and then browsed to our photos on a TV connected to a Playstation III.
We wrote the media server program using the Phanfare API. The UPnP protocol is similar to the Bonjour protocol that Apple uses to allow iTunes to share music and Apple TV to show content. If there is someone out there who knows how Bonjour works and wants to write a version of our media server for the Mac, please let us know.
The new media server joins a growing list of ways to access your photos and videos whenever and wherever you want. We call this “inputs and outputs.”
- Screensavers for the Mac and PC that can turn any computer into a digital picture frame. You login with your Phanfare 2.0 credentials and choose your content, or content of friends and family.
- The Phanfare facebook app that can show your Phanfare photos and videos to your facebook friends.
- John’s background switcher will refresh your windows wallpaper periodically with a Phanfare image.
- The Phanfare Aperture plugin will allow you directly export photos from Apple’s Aperture program to Phanfare.
- The Eye-fi wifi SD memory card will wirelessly upload photos from your digital camera to your Phanfare account.
Many of these programs were written by the Phanfare community. If you write something useful with the Phanfare API, let us know. If we like it we will promote it for you and provide you with a free lifetime Phanfare account.
At Phanfare, we want to enable you to access your photos and videos from any device you want, whenever you want. We will never hold your content hostage.
The Eye-Fi wireless SD memory card is a huge step forward
We all know that in the future you will take photos and videos and they will wirelessly float up to the net, but camera manufacturers have failed to deliver a compelling product in the category that works with a wide variety of online services.
I have been using the recently announced Eye-Fi card on and off for a while now (beta and gamma programs). Overall it works very well and increases the convenience of digital photography a lot.
In my mode of use, I shoot with it around the house and then the let the photos float up wirelessly to phanfare. With Phanfare it works especially well because I can still get to the fullsize original images from the desktop client and from my Phanfare website.
You configure the card in two places. First, you have to configure it communicate with wireless networks you trust. Second, you need to configure your account at Eye-fi to transmit to the online service of your choice. That means telling Eye-fi your username and password, for example, for Phanfare. You do this once.
After the initial provisioning, which is the most difficult step, the card just works. Because the camera sees the card as a standard SD card there is absolutely no increase in complexity from the camera side. You shoot and the images show up in your online account. The good folks at Eye-Fi set an option for Phanfare to allow you to suppress publication of new images by default. That way I can shoot, and then go into Phanfare and choose what to publish, shoeboxing the rest.
Because there is no way to see what the card is doing from the camera side, you need to have the camera on long enough to transfer the images. That is why I said I mostly use it when shooting around the house, because there the camera gets enough on-time within my wireless network that the images float up without my thinking about it. Also, the eye-fi card uses more battery power than a standard card and it is around the house that I worry least about that.
I own a DSLR and a point and shoot. It is with the DSLR that I find the card most useful (Canon EOD-5D with compact flash adapter for Eye-fi SD card). I rarely shoot raw and the the DSLR only shoots images. With my point and shoot, I almost always take one video along with the photos and Eye-Fi won’t move that up to Phanfare. Hence, I still need to tether the card to get the video, and that is tedious. Plus Phanfare has no built-in de-dupe to figure out what is already on the service versus on the card.
Note that the Eye-Fi card can also be used in studio mode where it just moves images to your PC. That is not interesting to me and I don’t use it that way.
I am far from unbiased, but for Internet mode, the Eye-Fi card works especially well with Phanfare because it meshes so well with out vision for merging the desktop and Internet. Our desktop client automatically synchronizes with the network cloud, showing you your whole collection (unlike a Picasa for eg. which just gives you a view of your local disk). Hence, even when I use the Eye-Fi card, the images I take feel like they are locally accessible on my PC, even though they really live on the net.
the pros on this product are:
- moves images in the background to internet without USB acquire wizard.
- greatly enhances the convenience of still image photography
- works with all cameras
- works with 17 online services
the cons are
- reduced battery life
- no way to see what the card is doing or control the card from the camera
- does not handle video
- does not handle raw
- does not automatically connect to open public access points
All in all, this is a very innovative product and a great gift, especially for a parent who is challenged by their camera. You buy it, provision it, and then they have a magic camera. I love mine. When you get it, you will just stare it and wonder how they packed a full wifi implementation plus memory card into the diminutive form factor of the SD card.
An Engineer 