If you've been following the saga of Eye-Fi turned Keenai turned nothing. We have reached the nothing stage.

Eye-Fi came before cameras had built in wi-fi and allowed you to send to your phone, computer, and would automatically upload to a cloud service with unlimited space for jpg and RAW photos. They partnered with companies like Olympus where the packaging advertised their compatibility and it tried to be clever and ID the subjects in your photos. Though it wasn't quite as refined as the services we use now, it lead the industry at the time.

The website is still up with just a small text at the top. Reminding you of the glory days of Eye-Fi

The technology was a little buggy but ultimately so fantastic there is still a big market for them on Amazon where new cards will set you back $250 (and they aren't UHS II) and EBay where used cards still sell for a couple hundred dollars. Photographers who work for MLB social still use these unsupported cards because there is not yet a better alternative (Flash Air seems to best, and significantly less expensive option, you'll see why in next paragraph).

What happened? Eye-Fi sold to Ricoh who licensed the Eye-fi technology to Toshiba aka Flash Air (recognize the name?), stopped producing the cards and focused on the cloud platform they rebranded to Keenai.

But yesterday they announced they'd be shutting down the Keenai service.

There's a lot of talk about how you shouldn't rely on google photos or other free services to store your images because terms and services could change at any time. But let this be a reminder to you that even paid for services are not necessarily reliable. If you are entrusting your data to a private company, they are just that, a private company that can be sold, re-organized, or just fold completely. Cloud services are great for quickly accessing your archive especially if you are offsite. But if you really want to ensure your image, you'll need some sort of external drive and better yet, a tangible print.

Keenai has given users until the end of November to move their data before the service is shut down entirely even though I was paid through 2021. Thankfully, I wasn't using it as a back-up method (I saw the writing on the wall) so it doesn't affect me but good luck to anyone who had GBs upon GBs of photos stored there.