My Wireless Digital Picture Frames Helps Me Contemplate Mortality

I don’t lecture at the college today until 1:30,  and I could have slept in. Sleeping in is the very essence of “weekend” to me, and I usually make use of every opportunity that comes my way. I am a night person to the extreme, and I am at my most alert in the wee sma’s. I would have been an excellent vampire; the hours are ideal, and the thought of being empowered to suck the very lifeblood out of anybody who wronged me is most appealing.

It worries me, those thoughts. I’d stop having them if I could, but since it’s obvious to anybody who knows me even a little bit that I really like them they are beyond my control, I just have to live with them. It’s a condition. I can’t help it. I should be getting guv’ment money because I have a condition. Everybody else who has a condition is getting money for it.

It’s not my fault that I have a condition. I should be monetarily compensated for having a condition. Gone are the days when vampires were labeled “monsters” and sold in plastic pieces by Aurora Models along with Frankenstein (which is NOT the monster’s name) Wolfman, and the Mummy.

Whatever. I couldn’t sleep in this morning, and it’s my mother’s fault. I gave her a Kodak S510 digital picture frame for Mother’s Day (I’m early, but I couldn’t wait to give it to her) (If you search carefully, you can find one for under forty bucks now!) and she let me take her old photo albums home to scan the best pictures so I can put them on the digital frame. (Digital picture frames are AWESOME. And wireless digital picture frames are even better!) (Mine has its own email address; let me know if you’d like to send me some pics.) (Seriously, I absolutely adore my beautiful, wonderful wireless picture frame.) (I’d love to get pictures from you!)

So, until almost 5 a.m., I was turning pages, scanning old photographs (some taken with a Brownie Starmite; some were taken with a little square brown plastic camera my mother had in high school; there were even a few tintypes!) People I’ve known all my life danced through those photo albums. My parents, aunts, uncles, neighbors. . . people I thought were OLD when they were actually in their twenties and thirties. . . and they were all so beautiful. My siblings, from birth to yesterday, changing so subtly year after year until finally they looked as they look today. The house where we all grew up: it was so TINY! I never noticed until last night just how small that house really was. My mother and father, interacting with us, in color and in black-and-white. . . somehow, the black-and-white photographs were far more beautiful and telling.

I finished scanning the stack of albums, but haven’t trimmed and cleaned up all the pictures yet. And when I take this stack of albums back, I’ll take home yet another stack.

It’s a good thing I bought a 2-gig flash drive last night; the 512MB drive that’s in her frame now would never be able to handle this kind of picture load. The new drive is a Lexar and it’s only about an inch long. If you have a digital picture frame and want to use a flash drive with it, I highly recommend this tiny Lexar. It doesn’t even show when it’s plugged into the frame!

Buy it at WalMart or K-Mart, though. It’s wayyyy cheaper there. Considerably. Isn’t technology amazing? Who could ever imagine that something an inch long could hold thousands of pictures?

Anyway, back to my original point: I couldn’t sleep in this morning because my dreams kept waking me up. Where did all of these young, beautiful people go?

Then I looked in the mirror and thought, “Yes, where indeed?” Sigh.

Fortunately, on my Digital Spectrum MF 8104 wireless digital picture frame, everybody in the world whom I love is forever young, and alive, and full of life.  And yes, I am putting all of Mom’s newly-scanned photographs right straight into my FrameChannel account.  Already they’re in the slideshow.  It’s wonderful.

And in Mom’s new Kodak S510 digital frame, everyone is forever young, alive, and full of life, too, thanks to that Lexar flash drive.

All four thousand pictures’ worth of people.

Wireless/Digital Frame Shipments To Reach 5.6 Million!

Over on Twice, reporter Greg Scoblete tells us that, according to digital imaging solutions program director, IDC, Ron Glaz, “6 percent of digital-camera-owning households own a digital frame. Unit shipments in the United States will reach 5.6 million this year, up from 1.6 million in 2006.”

“Digital frames will penetrate the market quickly,” Glaz said. By 2008, IDC expects 9.3 million digital frames to ship, ballooning to 23 million in the United States and 42.3 million worldwide by 2011.

“Twelve percent of digital frames shipped worldwide this year will include built-in wireless connectivity, up from 4 percent last year, Glaz noted.”

I find these statistics very easy to believe, because you all know by now that a wireless digital picture frame is NUMBER ONE on my list of “Please, Santa, Please” requests.

Besides which, tonight I bought a Kodak Easy-Share S510 digital photo frame for my sweet mother-in-law’s Christmas gift. It’s not wireless, but neither is she, and I’ve been experimenting with it for hours. I’m not sure I can part with it, actually.

I know it’s hard to believe that something as cool as a digital picture frame could also be so absolutely EASY to use. I’m telling you truthfully, the Kodak Easy-Share is a cinch!

I’m filling a thumb drive with pictures right now - just sliding them over from the desktop file where I keep my digital pics. After while I’ll take the memory card out of my little camera and use that, too. When my husband gets home tonight, I can guarantee that he’ll be looking this digital frame over VERY carefully. He’s a sucker for electronic gadgets, as who isn’t. Then we’ll repack the frame in its box, wrap it for Christmas, and take it over to her house on Christmas Eve. When she opens it, it will be ready to plug in and give her a show! I’m even scanning really old snapshots and putting them in my thumb drive. I want her whole life in there. And yes, it’s easy to get old non-digital photos in your digital frame if you have a scanner. We’re talking some old black-and-white Brownie Starmite pictures, folks. And they look great as part of the digital frame slideshow. I even scanned a few tintypes and they look great, too.

Whatta you want to bet that my husband will secretly unwrap and play with the frame whenever I’m not home. I know I’d be surprised if he didn’t.

Now, if only this frame were wireless, I’d be in hog heaven. As it is, it’s pretty darn awesome.

P.S.  WalMart has the Kodak Easy-Share S510 for five dollars less than the online price.