Eye-Fi Explore provides another in-camera geocoding option

There is a lot of interesting innovation in the camera geolocation space, trying to manage the challenges of GPS power and compute requirements.

To the Jobo and Geotate approaches, and the Airwave1, we can add the Eye-Fi Explore, which doesn't use GPS at all, instead relying on location estimated based on Wi-Fi networks.

The real magic, though, comes with the new geotagging support. It doesn't use GPS, which would be too big a battery drain on the host camera. Instead it uses WiFi triangulation, just like the iPhone and iPod Touch. In fact, it uses the same Skyhook service that Apple uses. And if the card can't connect to a WiFi access point to grab the info it needs to geotag the photos, it will store a snapshot of the access points it sees and work things out later when you get back to your PC or Mac.

Wired Gadget Lab blog - Eye-Fi Adds Geotagging And Hotspot Support - May 12, 2008

I guess this is better than nothing, but I can't imagine it works well outside of US city cores.
No sign of the Eye-Fi Explore at Amazon.com yet, just the regular Eye-Fi.

UPDATE 2008-06-13: Eye-Fi Explore is up on Amazon now for intro price of U$110.

Here's the regular Eye-Fi:

Comments

[glen wood]

i got excited when i first saw this, thinking gps, but it only uses wi-fi?

my iphone uses wi-fi AND cell towers, and is usually 0.5 to 1 mile out when geolocating, and I live in a city.

I suspect this thing, relying solely on wi-fi, will be almost accurate enough to tell which county I was in when the picture was taken.