Going wireless
Wireless frames, still the exception rather than the rule, started out as a way to quickly move photos from the home computer to the digital frame.

Some new services move photos from major Web social networking and sharing sites directly to wireless frames.

One of them, FrameChannel, owned by Frame Media, distributes digital content, including photos, from Facebook, Flickr, Webshots, Picasa, Photobucket and MSN to certain makes of frames, including those by Samsung, Momento, PhotoVu and Digital Spectrum.

There is no charge for the service, which does have advertising on the text-based channels of information, such as entertainment, news and sports, that it delivers to the frames if requested, said Alan Phillips, Frame Media CEO.

Mustek Mustek's 7-inch PF-i700 digital photo frame has room for an iPod, which can play music through the frame's speakers. It can be found online for about $110.

The company has 10,000 subscribers so far, and about one-third of them do not want commercial information sent to their frames, he said.

Last fall, another company, eStarling, Inc. started selling an 8-inch, Wi-Fi-enabled frame for $199.

Each frame has its own e-mail address so that photos from computers and cell phones, as well as social networking sites, can be sent directly to the frame for display.

Pandigital’s PanTouch frames are wireless and can download photos from Picasa. Users can also sync the frame with a cell phone, using Bluetooth, to offload photos to the frame.

Phillips, of Massachusetts-based Frame Media, sees the wireless digital frame as ultimately becoming the “fourth screen” for consumers, with the first being TV, the second, the computer and the third, the cell phone.

“It will be an inexpensive form for information dissemination, whether it’s for your personal content or commercial content,” he said.

eStarling, Inc. The eStarling wireless frame lets users with pictures on the Photobucket Web site send photos directly from the site to the frame.

“These devices will sell for between $100 and $200. If you want your weather forecast, your stock portfolio information, the Red Sox score from last night, you come down and grab your cup of coffee in the morning. You press one button on the frame, rather than logging onto the PC, you pull up that content, and it’s there waiting for you.”

A hands-off approach
Wireless is not for everyone, though.

“Unless you really have wireless in the home and see the advantages of it, people are still mostly wanting to take their memory cards out of the camera, put them in the frame, and immediately start viewing photos,” said Carr of Kodak.

The company does offers WiFi on some of its frames. Mass adoption of that feature, she believes, is probably “still a couple years out.”

Ceiva Ceiva is a subscription-based service. Customers can customize and personalize frames for special occasions, such as Mother's Day.

Ceiva, which charges $99 a year for its service, can be a good gift choice for those who don’t want to fool with memory cards, wireless, remote or touch controls.

Its subscription service also includes delivery of weather, news and sports on the frame — if the customer wants that information.

“Basically, you can send your photos to your grandma,” said Joslin of Ceiva.

“She doesn’t have to have a computer. All she has to have is a telephone line and an electrical outlet.

"You can send photos to her from your computer, and you can invite your brothers and sisters to do the same thing. They do it for free. They get one subscription, which is for her frame, but then everybody can send their photos her."

Grandma, said Joslin, “never touches anything. She plugs the frame into the wall and into her phone jack — using a splitter we supply — and then every night, while she sleeps, the frame automatically dials up our phone lines and gets those pictures.”

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