3. Nay for NaBee?

NaBee is something else altogether: a tiny USB attachment in a camera that spreads apart (like wings: NaBee is Korean for butterfly), with one part attaching to the computer so photos can continually upload. The -Wireless USB standard’s speeds are much faster than Wi-Fi, and can be used at any time—not just when there’s Wi-Fi to be found. Its dead simple to use, too—it works just like “regular” USB without the cable.

Before CES, I reached out to every Samsung contact I could find, to ask: a) Would Samsung be launching any NaBee enabled products at the show? B) If not, could I set up an appointment to receive a demonstration of a forthcoming NaBee product? Did Samsung get back to you? Because they sure didn’t get back to me. This radio silence convinced me that something was up with Samsung’s NaBee plans announced back in September.

In the mean time, I set up an appointment with Alereon, which had a working demonstration unit of a NaBee-enabled Samsung camera at its meeting room. This lousy picture of me proves that I was there and witnessed a working NaBee unit in action (not to mention a few other neat products, including a Toshiba wireless USB docking station that could save me from dealing with my monitor’s DVI cable ever again).

But I’m starting to wonder if that’s the last I’ll see of NaBee. Back in November, Samsung announced that its camera business unit, called Samsung Techwin, would be spun off into its own business. Perhaps that power play has affected the unit’s product roadmap. Samsung, if you’re reading this, please let us know what’s going on with NaBee.

Of course, if either of these wireless standards truly takes off in the camera business, there’ll no longer be a need for EyeFi cards or NaBee dongles. Manufacturers will simply build Wi-Fi chips or dongles into their cameras, and PCs will support one or both. Sony already has committed to Wi-Fi. At CES the company launched a Cybershot G3 camera with a built-in Web browser.