Rollip Turns Any Photo Into A Polaroid Look-Alike!

Rollip.com has developed a new site that lets you give any digital picture the classic look and feel of a vintage or Polaroid picture, and I am having a blast with it!

This actually is MY Christmas tree, by the way, from one of the “experiments” I was doing as I played around on the Rollip website.  It’s so easy – the website guides you through each simple step -  and such fun!

Rollip’s website gives people many more options than most similar sites, I’ve discovered.  There are many options for customization, as well as better quality effects of various kinds.  Rollip’s format – online – makes it much easier to share pictures across the social web.

Rollip is also addictive: I’ve been playing with it all evening!

You can also share your newly-made “vintage” pictures via email, as well as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and almost every other social media outlet.

Go on, click on Rollip.com and give it a try.  You’ll be hooked, too.  And just think how cool your wireless/digital picture frame will be, with all those “Polaroids” slideshowing across it!

Thai Restaurant Serves Outstanding Cuisine with a Side of FrameChannel!

The Indianapolis Examiner.com has a wonderful article about a Thai restaurant in California that really knows its social media!  Ting’s Thai Kitchen even has a wireless digital picture frame in the window, tuned in to its very own FrameChannel show!

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HIDDEN VALLEY LAKE, CA – Ting’s Thai Kitchen is not just another family-run restaurant in Lake County, CA. It is the winner of the 2008 Lake County Restaurant Challenge – a special competition put on by the county’s only TV station, Channel 8 Public Access Television.  Videographer Kit Dee organized and videotaped the competition between local restaurants. Here one restaurant challenged another with a food offering. The public was invited to visit the competing restaurants, taste the cuisine and then go online to vote for the winner. When all was said and done, one restaurant was left standing – Ting’s Thai Kitchen. Believe it or not, this little restaurant received the most favorable votes from the general public, countywide.

Whereas most restaurants focus solely on food, Ting’s Thai Kitchen focuses also on its surrounding community. It actually makes a special effort to attract more business by making its venue more beneficial to one-the-go business people. For example, shortly after the restaurant opened two years ago, it became a Wi-Fi hot spot. Now, the public could not only come into the restaurant to eat wonderful Thai cuisine, they could bring a laptop or other mobile device to check email, surf the Web and make VOIP phone calls. They could do this while waiting for their meal to be prepared. Having the restaurant be a Wi-Fi hot spot also benefited the restaurant by making daily contact with Thailand quick-and-easy.

The famous blue Twitter bird beckons the public to become Twitter followers of Ting’s Thai Kitchen for fresh seafood specials.

With Twitter.com making micro-blogging popular around the world, Ting’s owner, Charlie McFarling, decided his restaurant needed an online following for his restaurant specials – especially the seafood. Consequently, whenever McFarling gets ready to make a special trip to Santa Rosa to visit his seafood wholesaler, he first announces his intention on Twitter to his growing online following. Consequently, he can pre-sale his seafood before he even orders it.

If you visit Ting’s Thai Kitchen, you may notice a reliance on technological innovation before you even walk inside the restaurant. Occasionally, there is a digital photo frame in the window. That digital photo frame has been used to showcase pictures of various Thai food dishes as well as show off a promotional video of Thailand. What may surprise you is how this innovation works. Often the slide show you see comes from the Internet’s Frame Channel. What does that mean? It means Ting’s is actually developing its own remote network of slide show programs. How is that possible? It’s possible because the digital photo frame is Wi-Fi enabled. McFarling can actually upload slide shows remotely from any computer to his Frame Channel Site and have them showcased through that digital photo frame in his store’s window.

Indeed, reliance upon the Internet has empowered Ting’s Thai Kitchen to do some pretty clever things. Another clever idea is to offer “no-coupon” discounts on meals. The restaurant has decided to give special discounts on group gatherings for birthdays and anniversaries. Every person in the group gets a 15% discount on their meal. However, for the group to get the discount, arrangements have to be made a month in advance. To do that, customers must provide Ting’s with their name, birth or anniversary date via email. Just visit the Ting’s Thai Kitchen Squidoo lens to make that magic happen. Ting’s takes the email information and places it into it’s very own 30 Boxes Online Calendar. This amazing calendar actually notifies Ting’s via email a month in advance of the special occasion. That way, Ting’s can contact the customer and make special arrangements for a party.

Beginning in October, Ting’s will be uplifting its local community in an educational sense. The restaurant will be introducing a Social Media Sunday Brunch. Here a delicious meal will be followed by a special presentation on the benefits of the Internet’s social media space. Suzanne La Faver, a professor of Public Relations at Golden State University, will be on hand for the kick-off presentation. Ting’s is a small restaurant. The brunch itself will be limited to just 12 people for maximum educational benefit. The cost for the meal and the presentation is just $25.00. For more information and to make reservations, call CDMM – Synergistic Business Marketing at (707) 709-8605.

Wireless Picture Frame is FrameChannel’s channel of the day!

For the last month, FrameChannel has added a channel a day to it’s content library.  At over 1,000 channels, FrameChannel’s content library continues to grow! Today, the Wireless Picture Frame blog was selected and the channel of the day!

You can find it on FrameChannel by searching for “Wireless Picture Frames” or browsing the technology category.

You can follow FrameChannel’s selctions for channel of the day on their Twitter page.

If you have a blog or other content you’d like to have selected as a Channel of the Day, get in touch with FrameChannel. With the new +FrameChannel program, you can get your RSS feed customized with your logo and a special template just by providing your sites logo!

Kogan Wireless Digital Picture Frame Is Compatible with Twitter, Facebook, Photobucket, and Flickr

Kogan’s new 8-inch LCD high resolution (800 x 600) wireless digital picture frame allows you to send your pictures to almost any social media network!

According to Kogan founder Ruslan Kogan, “Social Networking has become extremely popular.  With the release of the Kogan Wi-Fi Wireless digital Photo Frame we have looked to combine photo sharing capabilities of social network websites and the digital photo frame.  The world of technology is about immediacy and through being able to rapidly upload photos to your digital photo frame, gives you the opportunity to view the latest photos of your family and friends straight away.”

Customers will also be able to upload digital pictures via email with the new Kogan frame, for each frame has its own email address.

Besides being able to get pictures from Facebook, Flickr, MySpace, and other social media sites, you can also manage your images with Kogan’s free web-hosted service for the central management of your pictures.

If you have an iPhone, you can download the FREE SeeFrame app from Kogan’s App Store, install, and send photos directly from your iPhone!

If several family members or friends have the Kogan wireless frame, these users can set up a single email aaddress that will be shared by all the frames, making photo sharing even easier and more convenient.

The Kogan wireless frame is also environmentally sound, for it can be programmed to turn off automatically at night, to save power and protect the screen.

This Kogan 8″ wireless digital photo frame will be available in July of 2009.