Tech Tuesday: Instant Art

Digital picture frames have been out there for a while.  If you're unfamiliar, its basically an LCD screen and memory card reader with a frame around it.  Its a nice way to display a slide show of pictures in your living room without having to tie up the TV.  But most of the time you have to take the memory card out of your camera or plug the frame into your computer via USB to load the pictures.  Not really an inconvience, but T-Mobile is soon to release the first GPRS enabled digital picture frame.  Basically the Parrot DF7700 branded under the T-Mobile name, you can send a picture message (MMS) to the frame and it automatically downloads the photo and displays it.  The price point is on the higher end of the average for normal digital picture frames (~$100 at release), but where TMo is going to try and stick it to you is the $10 per month fee to use the GPRS function.  Granted you get a new SIM card and "phone" number for the frame,  but I'm not sure its actually worth $120 a year to have that capability.  If you like the idea of a digital picture frame, my suggestion is purchase a digital picture frame with Wi-Fi capabilities (assuming you have wireless internet where the frame will be displayed).  You can have it sync to your Picasa Web Albums or any other photo hosting site as well as using your memory cards (and the best part is there are no additional subscription fees).