A cool idea for next Christmas’ wish list…

In the ‘wish I’d thought of that’ category…

T-Mobile has introduced a new type of digital picture frame, the Cameo.  It has internet-enabled wireless networking built in, able to not only accept pictures that you beam in from your computer or camera, but also pictures that others e-mail to the frame.  Friends and family can now update the photo collection with their own snapshots, and you get an ever-changing display of everyone’s updated pictures.

This is such a natural idea, especially for grandparents, vagabonds, and families like mine who are scattered everywhere as a result of maturation and my assignment.  According to the Wall Street Journal, the frame is assigned it’s own e-mail address that you give to people who you want to get pictures from.  When it receives photos for the first time, it asks for confirmation of whether you want to continue to accept photos from this source.  After that, it just updates the rotation when people send new pictures.

The gadget is competitively priced at $99 (most frames seem to be in the $70 –$ 150 range…still too high for my taste), and requires a special subscription fee of $9.99 / month.

This is the deal-breaker for me: that seems really steep for access to an e-mail server.  But I’m sure that prices will come down as more providers offer the service.  Hopefully, by next Christmas, this will be the norm for digital frames.

I enjoy looking through the postings on my blog aggregator each morning, and the notion of getting a photo aggregation is really appealing.  Can video messaging be far behind?

 

Disclaimer: I don’t own this product, and have no connection with T-Mobile.