The popular Eye-Fi wireless SD card evolves

I'm a big fan of the Eye-Fi Share, a digital-camera flash-storage card with built-in Wi-Fi capabilities.

This has allowed users to designate particular Wi-Fi networks for uploading, and then effortlessly push their just-taken photos from their cameras to blogs or photo-sharing services (and, optionally, to their PCs or Macs if those are nearby).

You'll notice one small rub: You have to use particular networks, not any Wi-Fi network. The card can't simply hop on a public Wi-Fi hotspot, for instance, without a clunky setup process on a computer first.

But a soon-to-be-released successor, called the Eye-Fi Explore, looks to be a big step forward.

In a deal with Wayport, which manages more than 10,000 hotspots, The Eye-Fi people will be giving its users a lot more flexibility in when and where they can upload their photos. If they are at a Wayport location, uploading is free even if others at that hotspot have to pay Wayport for access.

The Eye-Fi Explore will also have a form of geotagging. This means it will be able to register the geographical location of pictures it is uploading, via triangulation with nearby Wi-Fi networks. This is the Skyhook triangulation technology built into Apple's iPhone and iPod touch.

The new Eye-fi features sounds very cool and useful -- I look forward to testing these capabilities.