Digital Picture Frame

Summary: While a few major manufacturers have begun to tackle this category, none has done so in a way that captures what should be an amazingly simple approach. The digital picture frame should be well integrated into the users existing environment for storing and manipulating digital photographs.

Desired Features:
- Link to existing picture management software: This is the key that is sorely lacking in existing product offerings. Apple, Adobe and Google ought to be working furiously to get their commonly used applications (iPhoto/iTunes/.mac, Photoshop Album and Picasa/Picasa Web Albums, respectively) "embedded" in digital photo frames.
- Long battery life: OK, I agree that in many applications accepting a cord might work just fine (on a desk at work, on a kitchen countertop, on a credenza in your foyer), but how cool would it be to have a digital frame on your wall? Battery life could be maximized by an ambient light sensor that would turn off the device when there is no light in the room. This probably also forces one in the direction of LED backlighting.
- Storage: 512MB to 1 GB of storage, in the form of a CF card. How much space is enough? I'm not sure that 1 GB will do it for everybody, but you don't need room for your entire photo library. People want to select a very distinct subset of pictures for each frame. The frame should ship with a 1 GB CF card. This will work for 95% of customers. For those that it doesn't work for, it will allow them to go out and upgrade to their heart's content.
- Direct USB transfer of pictures to the device: Not a big deal for me (I have a card reader), but will just help make it simple for some customers.
- WiFi: allow pictures to be synchronized wirelessly over the user's home network. This will probably be in direct opposition to the long battery life feature mentioned above. Minimize power consumption here by limiting periods when the frame updates (like everyday at midnight). One caveat on the updates - must allow a instant WiFi update or users troubleshooting their setup will go insane (wait a day, nope didn't update, wait another day . . . )
- Subscription: allow users to subscribe to another user's picture feed. This isn't really a novel thought (I forget who did this first), but it was done in a cumbersome (phone line) and expensive way that didn't catch on. Make it painless - like photocasting on iPhoto, or subscribing to somebody's photostream on flickr right now. Obviously there are other great examples, but these two quickly come to mind.
- Size: 8x10 would be great, 11x14 better, 16x20 can wait for future releases when LCD plates are dirt cheap (you know, when the scraps of the 70" LCD TV panel can be chopped off and turned into digital picture frames).

Desired Simplifications:
- No MP3 capabilities: Please - do you really want a repeating song/slideshow with music going on your desk or your kitchen counter? No. Scrap the MP3 -- needless complexity and feature creep. Only there because it sounds cool on the box.
- No Movie capabilities: Slideshows (i.e., pictures with transitions) yes, but not movie. These are meant to fulfill the role of a picture frame. Typical settings should have them changing not more frequently than every five minutes or so. They can't be a distraction in the environment that they are placed.
- No wired ethernet: picture frames will rarely, if ever, be in a place to take advantage of this.
- No internal memory: Too inflexible. The pace of flash advancement appears to be far out pacing the other components of this. Just include a reasonably beefy CF card and given the frame the equivalent of card-reader functionality (by allowing USB downloads).

Desired Price:
- $200 for an 8x10; $300 for an 11x14

Can it work now?:
- YES! It should be. The iPhoto/.mac or iPhoto/iTunes synch'ing could be working today. Apple even has a great aluminum motif that would work for picture frames in modern environments. Replaceable frames (like on the Kodak offerings) could allow customers to make it work anywhere. I'm less familiar with other environments (Adobe products), but it could easily be working with Google's Picasa and Picasa Web Albums. iPod-like dominance is available to anyone for the taking. I believe that this product segment has the potential to explode if somebody got the product "right".
- Interesting side note - for to really work for Apple, they would have to start offering iPhoto for the Windows platform. That probably wouldn't happen until there was an Apple-only digital picture frame option that was successful and they then migrated to OSX and Windows support for iPhoto. But now that they have the iPod as an example, maybe they'd be willing to move more quickly in that direction.

Conclusion:Apple, HP, Kodak, Nikon, Canon, and Sony are all in a position to make the digital picture frame their own - or at the very least make a seemless customer experience for those in their segment of the market.


Update 2008-02-20:
David Pogue over at the New York Times spent some time discussing the state-of-the-art picture frames here and here. My only frustration with the article was that he mostly stuck to describing the good and bad aspects of the photo frames, but really failed to lay out his opinion of what would be perfect. I guess its fine, its what he gets paid to do. It would just seem that he has great perspective after spending some quality time with all of the different offerings.

An Opening, A Statement of Purpose

I've thought about making this blog for sometime. Though I've decided to go ahead and make the blog, I'm not sure how "long" its legs will be. In other words, I'm not sure how many posts will result before I run out of ideas.

My basic idea is that there are many gadgets/systems out there that come very close to ideal. But they always seem to lack for some obvious features. Sometimes there is even an obvious manufacturer that should be tackling a problem, sometimes not. If this description is not clear, I hope that my first few posts should become clear. I'm not sure what the organization of the posts will be - but expect that it will develop out of necessity.

I should be fair in noting that I read quite a bit of the popular technology press. For instance, I frequently keep up with Engadget, David Pogue and Walt Mossberg. I also check out less frequently Slashdot, Ars Technica and C|Net News.