Frame brings digital pictures alive

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If you were nice rather than naughty this year, maybe Santa left you a digital camera. But even if you didn't get to unwrap a megapixel marvel this holiday season, there's a good chance you've already got one, possibly as part of your cell phone.

InfoTrends Research Group says sales of camera phones worldwide will approach 150 million units in 2004 and reach 656 million by 2008. Whether the camera is built into a cell phone or it's a more conventional point-andshoot design, digital imaging is turning film-based photography on its head.

Alas, those of us who tool around with digital imaging know that sharing photos is still sometimes more burdensome than it should be. You can e-mail pictures and upload them to the Web. But the fact is, I want to enjoy images the way I always have — not on a computer, but in a photo album or a picture frame.

(I'm like most folks: The bulk of my traditionally produced photos end up in the clichéd shoebox, while my digital output stays on hard drives.)

The beauty of the digital age, though, is that even picture frames can come alive. In January 2000, I reviewed the first high-tech picture frame, from a Burbank, Calif., company named Ceiva Logic. It looked pretty similar to a regular wood-and-glass frame — except that you plugged it in.

Ceiva's frame didn't just display a single photo, as with old-fashioned frames. It was able to rotate up to 10 pictures, slide-show style, culled from up to 250 images you could store at the Ceiva.com Web site.

Some five years later, Ceiva has unveiled a model that adds a few innovations. The frame can now scroll up to 30 pictures at a time, in a continuous digital slide show, fetched from among thousands of photos. And Ceiva claims its latest frame, dubbed the Digital Photo Receiver, is the first to accept pictures from camera phones.

At $150 (cheaper after rebates), Ceiva's frame is modestly priced, though there's an excessive ongoing service fee. Customers pay $10 a month to store, retrieve and display photos, or the equivalent of $7 a month if you pay in full over three years. You can bail out of this arrangement — but if you do, Ceiva ties your hands: Your frame will be able to show only the last 30 pictures that have been loaded on the device.

Ceiva's package comes with an 8-by-10-inch digital receiver and two interchangeable frames to dress up the thing, in black or silverstone gray. Ceiva sells other frame colors and mattes separately.

The image size displayed on the device's liquid crystal display is closer to 5-by-7. Pictures looked decent enough (resolution: 640 by 480 pixels) viewed up close and head-on, which is probably how most of us view frames. At other viewing angles, though, images quickly washed away.

Setting up the receiver is a breeze, though there's a big aesthetic challenge. You can place an ordinary frame anywhere. But Ceiva demands a spot near enough to standard phone and AC power outlets. A 15-foot phone cord is connected to the back of the frame.

The latest frame comes with a dual phone jack, so you can continue to use an existing phone. But be aware: The frame works only on analog, not digital, phone lines, which rules out its use in some offices.

In the middle of the night, the frame automatically and silently dials a local phone number to snag pictures from Ceiva's site. (If there's no local number available, Ceiva can dial out toll-free, as part of an even higher-priced subscription plan.)

Regular phone service is not interrupted. And it takes about five minutes to download pictures onto the device. The idea is that you're greeted with a fresh set of photos in the morning.

Unfortunately, you can't customize the time when the frame dials out. But you can designate whether you want a new batch of photos automatically captured every night, every other night, once a week, every two weeks or once a month.

You can also give priorities to the photos you want the frame to display first. And you can press a "lock" button to keep certain pictures on the Ceiva permanently, once they're stored on the display.

If you don't want to wait to see new images, you can manually make the unit dial out by pressing and holding a button on the back of the receiver.

The operation isn't always seamless. One recent evening, I was told that Ceiva could not download pictures just then because of network congestion. The frame did try again without my intervention. Eventually, the latest pictures came through.

I encountered other snags. Thumbing through the manual to learn how to zap pictures straight from a camera phone to the Ceiva, I was directed to a Web site. But I couldn't access the site. Then I had to endure a 20-minute wait before reaching a customer service rep on the phone, before being told the Web site was down because of holiday traffic.

Still, the camera-phone feature worked as advertised. Each frame has a dedicated e-mail address. That way, I could send pictures from a Motorola Razr camera phone to Ceiva.

Be careful about giving out the address. You wouldn't want inappropriate images to turn up on the frame.

You can also create buddy lists to let friends and relatives dispatch images to your frame.

They must register with Ceiva to send pictures to you and store their own. It doesn't cost them anything, but it's a smart way for Ceiva marketers to gain new prospects.

Alternatively, you can send pictures to the Ceiva frame you bought Grandma, so she won't have to fuss with a computer.

On your own frame, you can also display daily content from ESPN, the Weather Channel and other Ceiva partners, but those screens count against your 30-pictures-at-a-time limit. You can also order prints or create mugs and T-shirts from favorite images.

Several other digital-frame brands compete with Ceiva, offering products with varying prices and capabilities. They may include slots for common memory cards or let you back up your pictures with an audio soundtrack.

Ceiva founder and CEO Dean Schiller says he avoids such extra features to keep it all simple. For the most part, the Ceiva frame is indeed uncomplicated. But it could be even more so — and cheaper.

Let me take a moment to wish readers a Happy New Year.

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