Digital Trends

Wi-Fi is all the rage. It’s moved from geeks to mainstream—especially when a hardly cutting-edge company like Kodak introduces a Wi-Fi- enabled digital camera. The EasyShare One lets you email pictures from the camera and connect to the Kodak EasyShare Gallery (formerly Ofoto) using the 802.11b protocol. Once on the site you can alert folks that you have images to share and access all of your images. Kodak is working with T-Mobile so you have 6,000 hotspots across the U.S. to choose from to beam your images to the outside world. Or if that’s not your cup of latte you can simply beam photos to your Wi-Fi enabled laptop or printer. The new 4-megapixel digicam goes beyond offering wireless connectivity. The camera has 256MB of internal memory so it holds up to 1,500 images, making it a portable digital photo album. It also has a huge swiveling 3-inch touch-screen LCD for framing and reviewing your Kodak moments.

A seeming avalanche of Wi-Fi cameras has hit recently. That may be an exaggeration since Nikon has two (CoolPix P1/P2) and Canon will introduce the SD430 in January for $499. Oh, and let’s not forget that great camera maker Concord introduced one several years ago (the 2MP Go Wireless). Still it’s definitely a trend as printers such as the Kodak Photo Printer 500 and Printer Dock Plus Series 3 become Wi-Fi enabled as well. And most decent laptops have built-in Wi-Fi capabilities. Now is it worth almost 600 clams to throw away your USB cables and send photos from Starbucks to the Internet? That’s the $599 question…