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Sharing your family's picture-perfect moments via the Internet is a great idea--if you already have a computer, an Internet account, and a scanner or digital camera. But what about the less tech-savvy members of your family? You could keep sending snapshots to Grandma via snail mail--or you could buy her Ceiva Logic's $249 digital picture frame. With a built-in 33.6-kilobits-per-second modem, the device automatically downloads your photos from Ceiva's Web-based photo sharing service, without the assistance of a computer. Grandma, and anyone else with a Ceiva picture frame and your authorization, can then see up to ten of your pictures cycling continuously all day long. And when Grandma rises the next morning, she will find that those photos have been miraculously replaced by ten new ones.

Pretty As a Picture Frame

The Ceiva picture frame is barely distinguishable from any other 8-by-10-inch black plastic frame with a beveled black matte. The only clues that it is no traditional picture frame are the unobtrusive Ceiva insignia on the lower left and the power and phone cords trailing from behind the unit. And instead of a glossy photograph, the frame contains a color LCD screen, not unlike the ones used in notebook computers. The screen displays 5-by 7-inch, 12-bit color images at a resolution of 640 by 480 pixels.

The frame is designed to stand on a desktop or other surface in the horizontal position. There's no provision for hanging it on a wall, and even if there were, the dangling wires would be aesthetically distracting. The frame displays pictures in landscape mode; vertical images will be scaled to fit the available space, with a generous black letterbox-style border on the right and left sides. The device supports nearly 60 image formats, including .bmp, .gif, .pict, .psd, and uncompressed .tiff.

Setting up the Ceiva frame requires practically no effort; just connect the AC adapter and plug the phone line into any RJ-11 phone jack in the house. Ceiva even provides a phone wire and a splitter to share a jack with a telephone. Two large buttons, one black and the other white, are on the back of the frame; the black one adjusts the picture brightness, while the white one starts or stops the slide show, or initiates a new download, depending upon how long you depress it. That's all there is to it for the user--everything else is remotely controlled by the registered picture provider.