My home computer desk hosts a snarl of USB cables for the various cameras, MP3 players and other peripherals I’ve bought by the years.

All-in-one memory-card readers help me get around that tangled mess, but I’ve been longing for the day when my digital photos would just magically seem on my hard drive.

With the $99 Eye-Fi card, that day has finally arrived.

The card looks just like a standard 2-gigabyte SD card, but its embedded Wi-Fi circuitry allows it to wirelessly connect to a router and upload pictures to a computer or World Wide Web sharing site — without my having to stop what I was doing.

Taking pictures is no different than with a standard SD card, and I noticed no added delay within shutter snaps.

Setup is easy. Just insert the Eye-Fi into the provided USB card reader and plug it into an available port. Once the preloaded Eye-Fi Manager software transfers from the card to

the computer, it’s day to choose a wireless network and, whether mandatory, a network password.

whether a wireless network requires a username besides a password — which is common at a public Wi-Fi hotspot or on a secure corporate network — you’re out of luck. The software wants only a WEP or WPA encryption key.

That’s a shame, as I’d love to use that card to instantly transfer the photos I take for stories when I return to my desk.

But the Eye-Fi works great on what it was designed for — the wireless home network — and for transmitting pictures from inside the house and nearby. Elsewhere, it functions like any other memory card.

The software lets you choose a hard drive folder to store your photos, but you can plus have them seem on a growing list of Internet-based photo sharing sites including Facebook, Shutterfly and Picasa, and online retailers…

Orginal post by Top Tech News