Archive for December, 2006
Our eStarling wireless digital picture frame did arrive prior to Christmas as promised. Thanks to ThinkGeek and eStarling to making sure it arrive prior to the holidays!
Our immediate reaction to the frame is that the 7 inch screen display is impressive. Photos look crisp and clear on the frame and it’s industrial design is nice (although we could do without the large eStarling logo on the front). It did take a few hours of mucking around with the settings to get the frame connected to the wireless network but after some playing we were able to have it pull pictures from a Flickr rss feed which is pretty neat. We are working on a more thorough review of the frame now along with some tips to get it up and running quickly as we learned a lot from our first days with the frame but in general our congratulations to eStarling for launching the frame, the first wireless frame we’ve seen in the affordable price range ($249 on ThinkGeek and sure to drop in 2007 as more wireless frames emerge).
We did get this note from ThinkGeek to eStarling owners. It is early in the space so it is not surprising that there are a few issues but it is great to see companies like ThinkGeek and eStarling taking the initiative to get this right. Here is the note from ThinkGeek:
Hi Fellow Smartmass,
Thanks for your purchase of the eStarling Wi-Fi enabled photo frame. We want to make you aware of an issue with the eStarling that manufacturer PF Digital has brought to our attention. Apparently the Wi-Fi range of the eStarling is reduced due to a lower amperage power adapter that was incorrectly packaged with the unit. This causes the eStarling to only function properly when it is within 20 - 30 feet of the wireless hub. Obviously this short distance limits where you can place the eStarling in your home or office.
ThinkGeek is coordinating with PF Digital to remedy this problem and we will be mailing out replacement power adapters to everyone who ordered an eStarling at no additional charge. These new adapters will restore the range on the eStarling to that of a standard Wi-Fi enabled laptop (around 200 feet … but this of course will depend on your Wi-Fi network configuration). We hope to have these replacement power adapters shipped out to you within the next week. The replacement adapters will be sent to the same address where we originally shipped your eStarling. If you ordered more than one eStarling you will get the appropriate number of adapters. No confirmation or action is required by you to receive the replacement adapter.
In the meantime we want you to be able to experience the cool Wi-Fi enabled features the eStarling offers. You can certainly use your eStarling frame right now, but keep in mind that when you configure the eStarling for the first time it must be within 20 feet of your Wireless hub. If it is not close enough, you will get an error message about the eStarling not being able to connect to the Internet.
Please reply to this e-mail if you do not understand this notice, or have any other questions, comments or concerns. We want you to be happy geeks, not sad or angry geeks. Thanks!
Welcome to our blog Wireless Picture Frame.
Our mission is to be the leader in content, tools and community to support the emerging category of wireless digital picture frames.
Digital picture frames have been around for some time. As an early adopter, my acquisition was motivated by the desire to see a collection of family photos playing around the clock. But, and there’s always a but, not unlike the unused exercise equipment that dominates my basement, I quickly found my digital frame going the way of my rowing machine. Rather than timely, exciting pictures from last week’s soccer game, my frame became a mausoleum of images of my thirteen year old little leaguer (now eighteen) and a slope-slide picture of a guy with hair (which my mirror tells me is long gone – not the guy, the hair).
Why had this frame failed to meet the promise of dynamically delivering up to date pics of family and friends 24 x 7? Because it’s too damn difficult and time consuming to update. I’m lazy … and my guess is that I’m not alone. If there is utility and value in a technology, then more likely than not, it will eventually address the laziness issue with efficiency and ease-of-use enhancements. This is the case with digital frames.
Wireless Picture Frames will integrate with web services to enable sharing, content selection, and remote update capability. They will be inexpensive and ubiquitous in the home and in the enterprise and they will take many shapes and sizes.
This isn’t your grandma’s picture frame yet. The day will come when Grandma will see daily pictures and messages on her wireless picture frame from her thirteen grandchildren in the luxury of her nursing home room. Her content preferences will be programmed by her tech-savvy fourteen year old granddaughter three thousand miles away. Unfortunately, unlike the home market, the wireless router has yet to make its way to the nursing home. But it will!
This is my son’s picture frame now! The day has come when my eighteen old will take along a wireless picture frame for his new dorm room. The frame will connect wirelessly and allow for his sister to send pictures of her new, bigger bedroom (previously his) and his parents to post a “screen sticky” reminding him to study hard for each day of college is costing them (us) $200. He in turn will utilize a browser to program his frame content to include family photos, Red Sox headlines, a joke of the day, and the airdale photo channel.
Our goal is supply the right content at the right time: for those in the buying process, as well as provide tools and community support for those who have purchased one. Our first step is www.wirelesspictureframe.com which will combine product reviews, ratings, links, help files, and news. We hope that you will join us in this content creation and share your tricks and tips as you hang your first frame. Shortly you will see reviews on products from photoVu, eStarling, Ceiva, Chumby, and Emtrace. We are confident that these early players will be joined by a multitude of others over the next few years and we will cover each and every one.
Kicking off a startup can be something of a bipolar experience. One day you feel that your new venture is the next Google; the next you have resigned yourself to the fact that this is truly a stupid idea and your grandmother was the first to tell you. But we have a bit of a track record. The two of us have started or been integral in starting a series of companies including uLocate Communications, OpenAir , ZDNet, ontri, Nurse.com, and Instant Information, Inc. Most of these have been in advance of a technology wave (the only way small companies have an opportunity to become big) and this effort is no different. We are betting on a Wireless Picture Frame Tsunami and the corresponding wave … it’s time to wax the surfboards!
In the spring of 2004 I gave my parents a digital picture frame for their wedding anniversary. Despite being slightly technology handicapped, they love high tech gadgets as gifts and are still wowed by the “wirelessness” of the wireless mouse and keyboard from 2003. With a new digital camera in hand and the release of the The Vialta Vista digital picture frame (www.vialtastore.com/vistaframe100.htm), I figured this would be the perfect opportunity for them to show off their technology prowess and their kids and Grandkids all at once.
I loaded the frame with a bunch of family photos and set it up in their living room – it did not disappoint. They were instantly amazed by the frame and loved the idea of a steady flow of ever changing pictures on display in their condo. The problem is that despite a private lesson on how to upload pictures to the frame they have never updated it – not once. Two and a half years later, the frame, when on, still spins through the pictures we loaded that day. The perfect gift turned out to be not so perfect as the chore of taking the memory card out of the camera and using the clunky interface on the frame was too much to make the frame a useful appliance.
This year when they asked for a WIFI router for their condo, it dawned on me that we are on the cusp of the next wave of innovation. With my parents installing a wireless router that means it is official - WIFI is ubiquitous. And with the cost of a adding a WIFI chip to an electronic appliance being minimal, it became clear that a new wave of consumer electronics would start hitting the market. This wave will be a slew of non-PC devices that connect automatically to the Internet to collect, share and display digital information. For example, the digital camera that automatically sends pictures to your Flickr account, the scale that sends your body weight to your doctor’s office, the heart rate monitor that sends your workout information to www.ontri.com (a web-based fitness community I founded in Jan 2004) and of course the wireless digital picture frame that can display pictures and information delivered from the Internet right to my parent’s living room.
When I got together this fall with a friend and colleague, Alan Phillips, to discuss my next business venture, we both became excited about the wave of WIFI enabled devices and agreed there were many large market opportunities. We had both experienced the pain of the disconnected digital picture frame and knew that the day when millions of homes and businesses were displaying wireless digital picture frames was not far out. The question remained, “How could we, as Internet, software and media veterans, participate in this market opportunity?” As we researched the market, we found several hardware manufacturers working on the problem of combining flat panel displays with WIFI chips and making those in different sizes, shapes and designs. This, we decided, was great news. There will be dozens of these devices in all shapes, sizes and price ranges from a variety of manufacturers and by next Christmas they will be available at popular online and brick and mortar retail stores. And so the first piece of our mission was formed. We would launch a news and information portal to cover the wireless digital picture frame industry and we are working now to review every wireless frame that hits the market and meeting with manufacturers to cover the industry as a whole. Our site, www.wirelesspictureframe.com will become the information source for consumers looking to purchase a wireless digital picture frame.
As we continued our research and began to launch our portal we also discovered some other important information. The hardware manufacturers, as they should, were focused on hardware. But we believe there are some important missing elements on the software side to really make these devices sing and so the next phase of our mission was born. We are now developing web-based tools to support each and every wireless picture frame to hit the market. These tools will not only make it easy for a family to share photos to their frame but also will allow for news and information feeds to be displayed on the frames along with entertainment applications and image feeds. Imagine creating an online greeting card and delivering it right to grandma’s digital frame 3000 miles away. Imagine seeing the local weather flow through your photo stream along with reminders from your family, recipes and jokes of the day or feeds from popular news services such as the Red Sox channel or the People magazine channel. As we continued to grow the list of possible channels it became clear that a community would evolve where frame users could create, manage and share their own custom content channels with other members of the community.
Our mission was complete and our next company born: We would become the leader of content, tools and community to support the emerging category of wireless digital picture frames. We are working hard to fulfill this mission now. Stay tuned in Q1 of 2007 as our reviews come online along with a preview of our tools and community site. Happy New Year!
We’re heading to CES in Las Vegas (Jan 8-Jan 11) and will be meeting with several industry experts and frame manufacturers. If you are planning on being at CES next month, please drop us a note - we’d love to connect
