Some of you may recall (with some palpable amount of discontent I might add) when earlier this year Eye-Fi was bought up by Ricoh, who promptly decided as if some ill-suited decision-maker-elect, to prematurely kill functionality of much of the Eye-Fi SD card line, only to capitulate on that decision shortly after.
The problem was that it created a level of distrust within the market with its first move, and the pivot to backpedal was a step in the right direction but not a big enough step, nor entirely in the the best direction. What they did was offer a patch rather than a fix; throwing buyers a bone but stripped of meat. The real question was, why?
Well, we may have been provided an answer as of yesterday as Ricoh launched KEENAI, which they are advertising as an ‘elegant and effortless service – keeping memories safe and organized.’ While that could be correct, and it looks good thus far, is that it also happens to look just like Eye-Fi’s Cloud. Have a look at the screen captures below:
[REWIND: The News | Eye-Fi Bricks Your Cards]
KEENAI Main Features:
- Automatic cloud backup of unlimited, original-resolution photos and videos. Users can store an unlimited number of original photos (including RAW) and up to 300 15-minute videos per month in the Keenai service.
- Syncs collections of photos and videos so they can be enjoyed on all your devices. Keenai lets you bring your entire photo collection with you, wherever you go — online or offline. Keenai’s smart syncing keeps the originals safe in the cloud, and stores only device-friendly resolutions on your local device.
- Bring your adventures to life as mixed-media experiences for family and friends. Keenai provides sharing of stories as gorgeous albums that combine photos, videos and even 360° images. Albums can be privately shared with friends and family via email or shared links, and accessed via any web browser.
- Automatic image recognition and smart tagging for fast photo search. Keenai’s intelligent suite of applications does all the tedious tagging work for you, and makes enjoying and sharing your memories a simple and pleasant experience, every step of the way.
There are more similarities to Eye-Fi Cloud too that are beyond the layout and the user interface, including how it works, what it essentially does, and the cost; a year of KEENAI will be $50 annually or $5 a month – the only difference here is you used to get some time if you purchased an Eye-Fi card, and now that’s not an option. Still, the service looks good as was Eye-Fi’s, so if you’re looking for a solution to keep your media managed and cloud-based, this could be it. Provided, of course, you can let go of the bad-faith and you feel they deserve your loyalty.
Check it out here.
