(Bruce Lewis)Today only: Save $100 on a Kodak W820 WiFi frame! That means $119 for a 800x480-resolution WiFi frame without lock-in. Most Kodak frames lock you into their service, but not this one. They advertise FrameChannel support, and from their documentation it looks like they support any Media RSS feed. That means you could bypass FrameChannel and their 99-picture limit and get up to 360 pictures rotating through your frame from OurDoings. Other great OurDoings photo frame features work fine even when routed through FrameChannel.
My previously reviewed SPF-83V recently dropped to $149 on Amazon, but it looks like they're out of stock now. That's 800x600 resolution for a great price if they get more.
If you're running WPA2 on your wireless network you might be better off with the D-Link DSM-210 Internet Photo Frame for $212.76 (list $299.99) since according to some reviewers the SPF-83V doesn't support WPA2. (I haven't tested it myself.) Resolution is 800x480.
(Bruce Lewis)Edit 2008-12-18: This frame has better RSS support than I thought when I wrote the original post, below:
When they had the one day special for $119 I went ahead and ordered a Kodak W820. Having just tried it out, I wasn't impressed. The touch feature where you run your finger along the outside edge to scroll didn't work well for me. The difficulty I had with it reminded me of a computer mouse with dust stuck around the ball.
Worse is its limited support for RSS feeds. The first picture below shows the frame successfully reading from a test feed that has 9 photos. But when I switched to another feed with 360 photos, the frame got stuck with an endless hourglass, as shown in the second picture below. Why boast on the box that the internal memory can hold 4000 photos if RSS feeds are limited to something less than 360? I'm sticking with my SPF-83V.
(Bruce Lewis) At the end of 2007 did you have a big pile of unsorted photos sitting on your computer? You resolved to get them organized and shared in 2008. It didn't happen, and now you have an even bigger pile of photos.
That doesn't matter. You can get all of them organized and shared in minutes no matter how many there are. You don't believe me yet, but if you just try it you will. Sign up on OurDoings and just upload them all.
But then won't I just have a bunch of unorganized photos on a web site?
No! As soon as you upload them they're organized. Click on a photo and you'll see links at the top of that photo's page (called breadcrumbs) that show how it's organized:
It's organized by year, month, day and photo. Each level of organization has its own page. The day page shows full-size photos. The month page shows thumbnail images and presents each day in forward chronological order. When you have month pages you don't need albums.
The year page lists any headlines you've put on days within that year. The home page shows your latest photos, most recent days first.
But there were days where I took way too many photos!
That's OK. On any day with more than 12 photos, all but the first 6 get hidden behind a "More photos" link on the home page and month pages. Click on any photo and use the circles in the sidebar to choose whether it's "featured" or "more" (i.e. hidden behind the "More photos" link). That way you can quickly get the best set of photos featured for that day.
A fun way to sort them out quickly is to install Cooliris, a great slideshow program. Go to a day page, start Cooliris, and use the arrow icon when you're looking at a photo to go to its page where you can select featured/more. It's fast and fun.
And you know what's great? Anybody who can look at your photos can select featured/more. They're probably already thinking about which ones they like best. Why not have them take that one tiny additional step and mark the best ones. That helps you get organized, and helps them find those best ones when they come back. Everybody's happy!
Is that really all I have to do?
Yes, that's really all you have to do. There's a lot more you can do, but I'll save that for another post. You know enough already. Get started!
Today only: Save $100 on a Kodak W820 WiFi frame! That means $119 for a 800x480-resolution WiFi frame without lock-in. Most Kodak frames lock you into their service, but not this one. They advertise FrameChannel support, and from their documentation it looks like they support any Media RSS feed. That means you could bypass FrameChannel and their 99-picture limit and get up to 360 pictures rotating through your frame from OurDoings. Other great OurDoings photo frame features work fine even when routed through FrameChannel.
