Things should be made easier.

I absolutely hate taking photos all night and then coming home, having to either put the SD card into my computer, or I have to plug it in and upload them. Yes, it’s silly, and it doesn’t take much time, but it is time that I really don’t want to spend right after an awesome event. The problem is, if I don’t do it right away, I forget and then it’s weeks before I actually do it! Or worse, I will never get them printed and they will sit on the card forever. Cameras are awesome – but their main fault is the fact that you have to do something after you take the photos – which can waste a lot of time.

So, last week I got the new Sanyo Dual Camera* and an 8GB Eye-Fi SD card*. The camera is awesome, takes both photos and videos and sits in the palm of my hand. It is actually smaller than my DroidX, and only a little thicker. But what was even more awesome than the camera was the Eye-Fi card. When I got it, I didn’t really understand it – it says it has a wireless photo and video uploader built in. Not being hugely tech savvy about cameras, I had no idea what that meant. So, of course, I read the back. and basically it means that once you’ve set ut up to a computer, facebook, flickr, whatever, you can take pictures, come home, and it will automatically send the pictures to the chosen destination. It also said you could set up 32 wifi locations – so  you could use your camera in those places and it would send from there directly to your home computer or your online sharing? Yeah right. I was seriously doubtful – not because I didn’t think the technology was there but because it would make life way to easy. And companies rarely ever do that. So I decided to test it out and was shocked at (again) the simplicity. It was plug-install-and go. And so was taking the pictures. Snapped a couple of the dog outside, and came home…opened the camera, and it did the work. All uploaded into my folder, no buttons, nothing.

It just worked. And was simple. And removed all the headache.

There are tons of other products that have problems like this – they may be great to use, but there is some area where they fall apart. With DVD’s, it’s the packaging. Really, that huge packaging for such a small disk? Why not use CD packaging – it holds the same size disk, yet takes up so much less space. People could buy more of them and not need as much room. With computers, it is the set up time. Yes, you can hire someone to set everything up for you, but that has a high price tag and time away from the computer. It would be great if there was a way to order your computer with just the programs that you want, pre-installed. Like the app market on a phone, you would select the programs you want prior to the purchase. It would take away a ton of set up time and headaches. Or what about laundry? There are so few companies that have started making washer/dryers in one it is shocking – it just makes sense to me. Less space taken up, less issues with machines. Why do in two what you can in one? Email is also difficult – you go through them in the order received, and have to judge importance quickly or you will waste time. But if you mis-judge, you could miss an important email. What if there were a program that searched all incoming email for specific phrases and keywords and then organized based on your settings? This would allow you to know what was the most important before you started reading them!

The list could go one and on of products that waste time, energy or space and could be seriously streamlined. Which was why this product impressed me so much – and why I wrote a promotion-esque post.

What tools do you see that could be streamlined to be more effective? What about your daily activities?

*Full Disclosure* I was given the Sanyo camera and an Eye-Fi card for tweeting/managing Sanyo’s Twitter and Facebook page. For those who missed my tweets on Thursday and Friday, I am working with Social Rewards and Sanyo Dual Camera on Sanyo’s release of a new dual camera line – and a rewards program that is giving away cameras, a trip to the Palazzo Las Vegas and Eye-Fi video cards.

BUT!! (and this is a big one) They are not compensating me for this post – in fact, I wasn’t even asked to write it. I wrote this on my own accord, because I was so impressed with the Eye-Fi card and the built-in wireless uploading capabilities and how businesses could learn from this. As you have read in the past, I am not a huge fan of promotional posts – in fact, I often despise them. So, if you buy the eye-fi, awesome. If not, no big deal. I am not an affiliate and make no money should you choose to buy it (or the camera). But I was honestly so blown away by the coolness of the abilities of this eye-fi card – and how what they are doing can relate to other industries – that I felt it really necessary to talk about it.

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