RCA Small Wonder syncs to Box.net

I’ve recently played with the RCA Small Wonder and checked its claim of being super-easy to use for non-techies who want to share photos and videos with their families. I tested it with the box.net online storage service that is new to me as well.

And in fact, it’s easy to use. Upon the first USB connection, the camera will install the driver itself and run the sync application. There’s no need to insert a CD, the driver is already stored on the camera internal memory – nice! Then assuming that you shot a few movies/photos, the sync application will ask you to choose which files you want to share (with thumbnails). Once your box.net account information is entered (it can be memorized too), the upload/sync is fast and makes the files immediately available for share/download on the box.net service.

While the principle is very attractive, the camera itself is unfortunately cheap-looking and of low-quality in my opinion. I have hopes that other manufacturers, with beefier cameras would jump on-board and propose sync mechanisms that are that simple and efficient.

The box.net is most interesting, and overshadows the RCA camera, as it allows fast file uploads and easy public or private (via password) sharing. The upload user interface works with a simple drag-and-drop mechanism (yes, multiple files allowed) that YouTube should look at. In fact it would be great if box.net was to license their interface to consumer-level Network Attached Storage devices like the Maxtor Fusion… Box have a free 1GB storage account, if you want to try it for yourself.

(I’ll upload a video later…)

Hubert Nguyen
Categories: Computers, Gadgets, Photo-Video