I’ve recently been looking into the whole area of Digital Photo Frames. As part of my ongoing process of creating a digital hub in my house I’ve relished the idea of having a frame or series of picture frames that can receive photos on the fly wirelessy over the network. Such a frame is already being made, but at nearly $2000 it’s a tad on the pricey size. I did however find some very cool DIY projects that showed how to make your own digital frame including one that used an old Powerbook Duo. I’m sure it wouldn’t be too hard to hack in a wi-fi connection into these. But then that got me thinking. Surely right now Apple must be working on iFrame/AirFrame? I mean they’ve done it for audio with AirTunes and Airport Express, now it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the next step is to do the same with iPhoto and a digital frame. Imagine - your iFrame aware iPhoto would simply detect your iFrame which would show up as an album in iPhoto. Then you just simply drag your photos onto it and bingo - photos are shown in the iFrame! With Apple having the LCD technology and the software, together with innovations like Airport Express I reckon we’re going to see this product in less than a year. In the meantime, where’s that old Powerbook…
iFrame
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As usual a very keep observation. I am just starting to appreciate digital music as I just picked up my first iPod. I can’t put it down. As a photographer I dunno how I’d feel about frames changing like that. One hand sounds intruiging but then again there’s something about a solid, tangible print. Anyway, my two cents.
Manrilla / 17/08/2004problem is..Microsoft has a patent on these things..I believe there is a frame with linux running of a CF card and has wifi..but I’m not sure if it’s for sale or a home-grown project..
michel / 22/08/2004I think Nokia have some sort of photo frame album that can store 50 images, however, quality will depend on the phone and it’s a pretty small frame.
Anyway, the idea is there and it just needs to be expanded.
Euan / 26/08/2004this seems especially likely when you see the .mac photo slideshow/screensaver. bro comes back from vacation, you click his name in screensaver, and bam, there’s his vacation pics on your computer. pretty slick…
brian / 01/09/2004Well I guess you mean the new G5 iMac, but I think it’s probably a bit over-powered for a simple picture frame! Unless you’ve got loads of money that is.
Brendan Dawes / 04/09/2004Methinks you have been watching Hackers too many times… how old is that movie, anyway?
Diane / 20/09/2004I think you’re probably right!
Bren / 20/09/2004I’ve thought about how cool this sort of thing would be for a while now, I’d like to see some sort of device that had the flash player built in so you could run flash animations, it’d be like moving art.
I think Sony did a picture frame a few years back that used their memory stick technology. It was quite small and cost about ¢G700.
Steve Cardwell / 20/09/2004
That’s excellent… now just as soon as I am done building my stomp-pads. I’ll start working on this.
In fact… you should make some “hot” tiles on the floor in front of the picture frame so someone standing in front of the frame -or walking by- could view the previous and next photos. Hmmmm?
Stephen Barrante / 04/08/2004