Unwanted Intrusions?
Once you’ve spent a little time thinking about WiFi digital picture frames, the possibilities for just how cool they can be quickly become apparent: sending greeting cards to your friend’s frame on his birthday, subscribing your mother in California to an RSS feed of photos of her granddaughter in North Carolina, automatically downloading a photo from your favorite sports team to your frame every morning.
It’s clear that if this space takes off, these uses – and ones that haven’t even been thought of yet – will change how we interact with each other and share photos, making these interactions richer.
If you’ve got a digital frame, though, wait until the sun goes down and another thing – this one less exciting, less welcome – quickly becomes clear: digital frames are not passive objects. They intrude on the room they’re in.
Traditional picture frames are passive. They recede smoothly into the background of a room unless attention is called to them. Digital frames can’t do this because they emit light.
Since digital frames are active sources of light, once the sun goes down they illuminate a room, giving it the same glow that a television does. Thanks to emitting light (to say nothing of photo-show transitions), they also draw the eye to them in a way that a traditional frame doesn’t.
This is a problem. Imagine trying to strike a mood with your significant other while the bright light of your digital frame illuminates the room. A traditional picture frame never interrupts your groove.
More mundanely, a digital frame could impact DVD-watching: that movie’s not so scary when the frame keeps the room from being too dark.
Some manufacturers, such as PhotoVu, are addressing this issue by giving users an option to automatically shut down their frames at appointed times on weeknights and weekends. This is a good idea. Other options could involve screens that can adapt to ambient light and adjust their output accordingly, or blank RSS feeds that can be scheduled for given times.
The light-emitting nature of the current crop of wireless frames is intrusive. If wireless frames are going to gain mass acceptance, and maybe even replace traditional frames, it’s this kind of small detail that will have to be addressed. It will be interesting to see what manufacturers come up with to solve the problem.
