Adam Balkin, Your Technology
The perfect companion for all of us who go snap happy with their digital cameras is the digital photo frame.
They have already progressed past the point of merely showing off our latest pictures. Many now are wireless -- as in they connect wirelessly to the Internet -- allowing you to change photos from a computer anywhere in the world.
If you know someone with a Kodak Wi-Fi frame, now you can send them pictures and entire albums uploaded to the online Kodak gallery.
"We have a new feature on our Wi-Fi picture frames, called picture mail, and what that means is if you send a new frame, and you want to send them photos, you send them an e-mail with photos attached, and it goes right to their frame," said Annabelle Freeman of Kodak. "So all they do is turn on their frame, and they'll get a notification right on the front of their frame."
The Shogo frame, billed as the first touch-screen photo frame, also goes online, but uses Wi-Fi for pictures.
"First of all, it allows you to share easily over the Internet -- content from all the popular sites, like Flickr, Picasa, Google and so on -- but also, because it's an IP device connected to the Internet, we also use it to start providing other digital content. So we have Weather Channel, we have Internet radio capability," said Daniel Schneersohn of RealEase.
The SmartParts digital photo frame is one you keep in your house, and when your friends and family say, "Ahh, what a cute picture!" you can actually give them that picture, because it has a built-in printer.
"It's an eight-inch digital picture frame, has a built-in printer, so you can print immediately after you see a picture you like," said Stefan Guelpen of SmartParts. "Just push print, and you get a 4x6 print. It's photo quality, archival, lasts forever."
Finally, a company called Mustek has decided, why have a frame that just displays content from one of your favorite devices, when it can show off content from two?
Their frame has a built-in dock for your iPod.
If you can bear the moment of guilt, you may feel taking a break from your kids in order to take in your favorite movie or pop star.
To see more Your Technology stories, go to News 13 On Demand, Digital Cable Channel 313.
Click here to comment on this story.