Bound by a natural link, the popularity of digital photography has shadowed the Web's ever since mainstream consumers began to recognise the power of the Internet as a social and business communication tool. The manner in which Ricoh is seeking to exploit and strengthen that link with its RDC-i500 digital camera is so obvious, its odd that it hasn't been done before. The RDC-i500 lets you email your images or upload them to the Web directly from the camera, eliminating the need to transfer them to a PC or laptop first. If only the camera shipped as a network-capable package...
How does it work?
The RDC-i500 doesn't have any in-built communication hardware; it depends on third-party devices for network connectivity. Differentiating itself from other digital cameras, the RDC-i500's CompactFlash slot supports a CF communication card and sophisticated TCP/IP network connectivity tools have been integrated into the camera's user-interface to exploit the add-in. In this sense it would be more accurate to say that the RDC-i500 is Internet-ready than Internet-enabled, but it's still the camera's most dominant advantage over competing products.
Connect a digital camera to the Internet via a dial-up connection, or an intermediate network that has access to it, brings its own unique set of problems. The most obvious challenge is making a small device with limited input capabilities amenable to sophisticated dial-in and network set-ups.
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