Eye-Fi Selects Sibers to Develop Wireless Photo Sharing Service

Sibers and Eye-Fi announce of its collaboration on development of the first wireless photo sharing service. Wi-Fi-enabled SD cards allow instant uploading of just taken photographs to a number of photo sharing sites and blogs.

Novosibirsk, Russia, November 16, 2007 – Sibers Group LTD, a Russia-based software outsourcing company, announces that its development center in Novosibirsk has been chosen by Eye-Fi, Inc. to develop the Eye-Fi Service, the first photo sharing service based on Wi-Fi technology. The service works with the Eye-Fi Card, a standard-sized SD memory card that is designed to universalize and simplify the process of uploading pictures from users' digital cameras to the PC or Internet. With just an active Wi-Fi access point and no wires, the Eye-Fi card automatically transfers all photos on the card to one of many popular photo sharing and printing services, blogs and social networking sites. First beta-testers and customers have already confirmed that this new gadget will certainly overthrow the whole concept of digital freedom and mobility.

"Working on such innovation in digital world as Eye-Fi, you should be ready to take up a challenge," said Serge Markov, Sibers CEO. "Our startup-optimized technological and business processes were tested to support time-dependent know-how development. Of course, as any IT geeks, our developers were excited about realization of a project that will make our lives easier. Moreover, working on innovative projects, we become even more flexible and open-minded."

Eye-Fi first contacted Sibers through Elance, a popular online marketplace for offshore developers. Initially, the collaboration began with investigating possible ways to handle Wi-Fi in Microsoft Windows. Once the concept was proved, Eye-Fi and Sibers started working on a service enabling the SD card to upload to Flickr and Wal-Mart.com. Lately, the list of photo sharing, printing, blogging and social networking websites was supplemented with Phanfare, Shutterfly, Picasa Web Albums, Fotki, SmugMug, Facebook, dotPhoto, Gallery2, Kodak Gallery, Photobucket, Vox, and TypePad.

"It was a difficult decision to go offshore for the development of the Eye-Fi Service," said Kim Gustafson, Web Services and Applications Lead at Eye-Fi. "We were afraid of misunderstandings, missed deadlines, and out-of-sync development environments. Now we can say with certainty that we made the right decision. Sibers helped turn our vision into reality. While there are always stumbling blocks working with offshore companies, the advantages far outweighed the disadvantages, especially having a 24 hour workday cycle with daily turnarounds."

Eye-Fi Card first announced by Eye-Fi, Inc. at the end of October, 2007. For further information see www.eye.fi.