Oh! Gizmo

By Luke Anderson

Digital picture frames are nothing new, however, the guys over at RedPost are taking the idea a little bit further than most companies. Rather than selling a puny 7-inch screen with an SD card slot, they’ve got their RedPost Sign (beta) which has a lot more to offer. First, it has a nice 19-inch screen, which not only is great for viewing pictures but also makes it great as signage for business purposes. On the inside you’ll find a tiny PC with a 1.5GHz VIA C7 CPU and 1GB of RAM running a custom Linux distro. Now that’s my kind of picture frame.

I’ve actually had the opportunity to test out one of these Signs, and I must say that I never actually thought about purchasing a digital frame until I saw this. One of the first things you have to get past is the fact that it is big and heavy. The frame itself is around 3.5” thick, (4.5” if you count the Wi-Fi antenna sticking out the back) and while I didn’t have a scale handy, I would guess that it would take more than two swallows to carry one of these (even if they were African swallows). The size and weight are due to the fact that they are building them by hand out of industrial materials, and they’re packing a small computer on the inside.

If you’re the kind of person that loves Linux, you’ll love the Sign. Your storage device is actually a flash drive, which not only makes it easy to upgrade, but it makes installing a new OS quite simple. Just pop it into your desktop and install. If you’re more into Windows, you could always put on a copy of TinyXP or something similar to suit your needs. You can read my entire review after the jump.

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By Luke Anderson

I’m something of an animal lover. No, not the “save the whales” or “carry my dog in a purse” kind of guy (or a guy that carries anything in a purse for that matter), but the kind that enjoys seeing animals and loves his pets. That being said, I’m completely creeped out by this digital picture frame. Why? Because it holds the ashes of your dead pet.

I get that some people really love their animals, but holding onto their ashes is just a bit weird in my eyes. Then to take things a step further and enclose the remains in a digital frame is just too much for me. For those interested, you’ll be able to hold 256MB worth of pictures (I’m sure you’ll have no problem filling it up) and view them on a 7-inch screen. The price is a bit salty at $249, but who cares? Nothing but the best for your pet, right?

[ Pet-Urns ] VIA [ UberGizmo ]

By Luke Anderson

If you’ve ever purchased a digital picture frame for someone, chances are that you went ahead and opened it to upload some photos for them. If you don’t do this and you’re giving it as a gift to someone that isn’t very tech-savvy, then they won’t likely know what to do with it. Well Kodak is now giving you the option to pre-load the pictures before it is even shipped out of the factory, how handy is that?

While some people might want to actually upload the pictures themselves, this sounds like a pretty handy option. All you need to do is upload 100 pictures to a Kodak Gallery account, and they’ll stick them on an SD card, which will be shipped along with the frame. While I’m not sure that it will be widely used, I think it’s awesome that Kodak is giving us the option. Mind you, this service isn’t free, it’ll set you back $20, but at least that includes the price of the SD card.

[ Kodak ] VIA [ UberGizmo ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Pandigital primarily makes digital photo frames, so it’s not surprising to see the company doing all it can to get you to buy one for everyone room in your house. Their latest effort is the Pandigital Kitchen HDTV/Digital Cookbook/Digital Photo Frame which could probably have been shortened into a more marketing-friendly name. It’s a 1280×720 15-inch LCD display that includes ATSC & NTSC tuners as well as s-video, component and HDMI inputs allowing it to be used as a TV. But it also comes pre-loaded with a large collection of recipes that are stored in its 512MB of internal memory. More recipes can be added by the user, though I have no idea what format they’re in. Not surprisingly it also serves as a digital photo frame and has an integrated 6-in-1 card reader supporting SD, XD, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro/Duo, CF and MMC cards.

Because it’s designed to be used in the kitchen, the display is sealed in glass protecting it from splattered ingredients and making it particularly easy to clean. It includes a remote control that can be safely tucked away when the food starts flying and has a touch screen interface that can be used even when your fingers are dirty.

It should be available sometime in June with an MSRP of $399.99.

[ Pandigital Kitchen HDTV/Digital Cookbook/Digital Photo Frame (PDF) ] VIA [ Digital Trends ]

By Luke Anderson

If you didn’t know, Polaroid recently announced that they will no longer be producing the instant film that made the company a household name. However, someone has created a concept gadget that would keep it alive forever.

This may look like an unusually thick Polaroid, which is exactly how it is meant to look. However, it is a digital picture frame with a small whiteboard underneath. It would have a built-in stand in the back and a memory card reader in the bottom for loading pics. If this were priced reasonably enough, I think it could sell well, if only for nostalgic reasons.

VIA [ Ironic Sans ]

By Andrew Liszewski

As digital photo frames become larger, at what point do you draw the line between a dedicated photo viewer and an LCD TV/monitor? I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure there’s a technical standard somewhere that says once you put a tacky faux-wood frame around the outside edge, the LCD has to be sold as a digital photo frame. And that’s how you end up with this huge 32-inch model from Smartparts (which I’ve typed as Smartpants at least 10 times now.)

Besides the size, there’s unfortunately not much else to be impressed with. It has a resolution of 1366×768, which is perfect for displaying your 1 megapixel photos, and includes just 256MB of internal memory. As for file support, it can load JPG files off of an MS, SD or CF card, and also supports various video formats like MPEG, MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, WMA and AVIs. I will give it credit for also supporting PDF and PowerPoint files, making the display a bit more useful for office environments.

I’m not sure when the SP3200 will be available (it could be already) but it will supposedly come with an $899 price tag.

[ Smartparts SP3200 ] VIA [ I4U News ]

By Luke Anderson

Digital picture frames were cool when they first came out, unfortunately they never seem to have a great resolution, and they are dime a dozen these days. It would be nice if someone would actually put in some features (other than playing MP3s, because no one really cares). Thankfully Polaroid has decided to do just that.

Their latest digital frame will actually let you zoom in on a particular area of the picture at either 2x, 4x, 8x or 16x. Unfortunately, that’s all that’s interesting about this frame. It’s only going to display at 480 x 234, and like so many others plays MP3s. If they could have put in a better screen I might be a little more interested.

[ Polaroid ] VIA [ Fareastgizmos ]

By Andrew Liszewski

This is exactly the type of crap holiday-themed novelty gadget that inspired me to start the Christmas Countdown in the first place. Because the only thing better than a keychain-sized digital photo frame with a miniscule display, is one that looks like Santa which you can only carry around for a couple months out of the year.

Of course the website actually refers to the 1.1 inch LCD screen as “good sized” but since most people wouldn’t even settle for a digital watch with a display that small, I can’t imagine they’d be happy looking at their photos on this thing. The 8MB of internal memory is pretty typical for these types of devices, but since your photos automatically get resized to 96×64 when uploaded, you can probably fit quite a few on. Other features include date and time display, brightness and contrast adjustments as well as a manual or auto slideshow option.

It’s available from Chinavasion for just $15.16, but the price actually gets cheaper the more you buy. So if you grab 200 you’ll save a few bucks and won’t have to worry about Christmas shopping for the next 10 years. (Depending on the size of your family.)

[ Christmas Digital Photo Frame ] VIA [ GeekAlerts ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Digital photo frames were probably one of the more popular gifts last Christmas, and based on what I see in stores, this year isn’t going to be any different. But why buy a cheap model with a crappy resolution, when your digital camera is probably taking 7MP+ photos? I recently stumbled across a line of digital photo frames from a company called Ality, and while I haven’t seen one in person yet, they’ve sold me on features alone.

The Pictura Mirror PC019M model has a whopping 19-inch LCD screen and a half-decent resolution of 1280×1024. The frame also includes other basic features like support for BMP and JPG files, a high-speed USB port, slots for CF, SD, MMC and MS cards and will play back both MPEG and AVI video files. But it’s the frame’s other features that really set it apart.

First off, instead of showing a black empty frame when not in use, the PC019M actually has a mirror finish so it not only looks good, but can ensure you do too. It also has a built-in photo scheduler so you can load up specific pictures when friends or family stop by. (Or ensure that other pictures don’t get loaded into the slideshow.) But the biggest feature in my opinion is that it has a touch-screen interface! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to choose a menu option on a regular digital photo frame by touching the screen, only to remember I have to use a set of small annoying buttons instead. Unfortunately though the frame seems to be hard to come by if you’re looking to pick one up. I managed to find a price for the 17-inch version, about $350, so you can expect the 19-inch model to be even more expensive.

[ Ality Pictura Mirror Digital Photo Frame ]

By Andrew Liszewski

We’re slowly starting to see these miniature digital picture frames making their way into everything from keychains to wallets to plush toys now. Photokinz are billed as ‘huggable digital photo frames’ and while technically there’s nothing stopping you from hugging a regular picture frame, this one appears to have fewer sharp corners, and would make the experience far more pleasant.

Unfortunately Percy the Penguin only has enough storage on board for about 64 lo-res photos, and there’s no way to increase that with an external memory card. (Where would you even stick one?) He’s also apparently compatible with over 104 million photo-sharing websites, as well as all digital cameras and cameraphones which basically means it supports JPEGs.

The Photokinz are available from Amazon for $59.99 in a wide variety of animals including dogs, cows, frogs and penguins.

[ Photokinz - Percy The Penguin ] VIA [ Popgadget ]