Digital Media and whatever else flows through my head…
Digital Media
Customized, pre-filled photo frame memory cards from FrameAlbum?
Aug 13th
I’ve been noodling on the problem of how to get photos on frames. FrameAlbum fills the need for folks with internet capable frames (and a little tech knowledge). What about all the folks without internet capable frames, or, don’t have the skills to adjust their frame (or Grandma’s frame 1,200 miles away) to use the FrameAlbum service?
Replace the internet connection with a memory card
Any digital photo frame will have at least one memory card slot. What if you could setup Grandma’s frame with your Flickr/Picasa/other photos on FrameAlbum and then have a memory card sent directly to Grandma! If your Grandma is anything like mine was she has mad cookie baking skillz but was stumped by pretty much anything with more than one knob. This method would not require internet,, wifi, or any other wizardry beyond pushing a memory card into a slot.
Time to pay the piper
This would not be a free service. There would be a fee to cover the cost of the memory card, shipping and a little something for the gnomes that will fill the cards with your photos. This could work as a subscription with a regular update card sent out monthly/quarterly, or a one-shot deal.
Thoughts?
I haven’t built any of this yet. Before I go down this road I’d like to see if there is any interest in such a service. Please share your thoughts in the comments below, or contact me directly.
Thanks for your support of FrameAlbum!
Netflix, or, “How not to change your business model.”
Jul 23rd
TechCrunch published a piece yesterday about the backlash to Netflix’s recent pricing changes. This chart really brought it home for me.
With that single act, Netfix’s management brought the public’s perception of their company from rating higher than the next two competitors combined down to parity with the lowest sludge filled sub-basement level occupied by DirecTV. DirecTV was formally owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation; <cough> a model of management efficiency and ethics if ever there was one <cough>.
Personally, Netflix is hanging by a thread in our household. Their support for Windows Media Center, tenuous as it may be, is enough for me to keep the service for now. If they should ever drop support for MCE I would drop Netflix quicker than you can say ‘cracked DVD’.
The first round of FrameAlbum invites are going out NOW!
Jul 13th
The oft delayed release of the first round of beta registrations is in progress now! It’s a small set and it’s based on first-come, first-served method. If all goes well with this group I’ll release a larger group on the next round.
You will receive an email from ‘framealbum@gmail.com’ that contains a link that will take you to a registration page. You will be prompted for a password and your home ZIP code. You may also change your username if you wish. The ZIP code information will be used on future features such as weather updates, local news, traffic, etc. None of this information is shared with third parties.
Once you are logged into the service you will be presented with options to ‘Add a Frame’ or ‘Add a Channel’. You may have multiple frames and multiple channels. A frame may have multiple channels and a channel may be assigned to multiple frames.
Your first step should be to Add a Frame. You will be asked for a nickname, a Frame ID and to select the model of your frame. The FrameID is a unique identifier assigned to your frame by it’s manufacturer. You may leave it blank if you do now know it. If your frame model is not listed, or you simply don’t know it just choose the ‘Unknown’ option.
You should make note of the ‘Feed URL’ of your frame. For now this will be the primary method of getting the feed onto your frame. I’ll try to put together some documentation on the various frames but for now please review your frame’s user manual. It is commonly referred to as a ‘Custom RSS’ or ‘Custom Photo’ feed.
Once your frame is created, you can add channels. Channels are what contain the content that is displayed on your frame. At present only Flickr feeds are supported. More are under development.
When creating a new Flickr channel it will prompt you for a nickname and the Flickr username of the photostream to view. Only ‘public’ photostream photos are supported at present.
As always, questions are invited.
Thanks for the help / Status Update / Demo Feed
Jul 10th
Thanks!
Just a quick post to recognize RobF’s help sorting out some issues; with his help FrameAlbum now supports Toshiba frames! Rob, Thanks for your time and your patience.
Status Update:
I’m putting the finishing touches on the channel programming and selection routines today. I will be releasing some of the beta registrations tonight — watch your email.
If you haven’t done so already, you can register now for the FrameAlbum beta at www.framealbum.com.
Demo Feed:
For those of you that have asked, the demo feed is from my Flickr photostream. Yes, I do shoot a fair bit of live music. 
Breakdown of a FrameChannel request…. Well Helloooooo iPad!
Jul 5th
So I was reviewing my server logs this morning (Yes, I’m a geek — it’s what I do.) and I noticed an interesting entry…
GET /productId=IP14882/frameId=184820da466bcc29ccc5da3620389a26933950e3/sk1=DB7B067C7B8BC66FE49A67DE8D268183D867DA5CF0376662F62CDD5FCA5A0D1B/channellist HTTP/1.1" 404 356 "-" "TTCatalog-iPad/3.0 CFNetwork/485.13.9 Darwin/11.0.0"
There are several interesting bits here…
productId=IP14882
The product ID field is used to communicate what make/model photo frame is trying to connect with the service; In this case it is ‘IP14882′. I use this information to determine the native screen size of the frame and to track if it supports custom Photo RSS feeds. So far I have 14 unique productIDs in the database.
frameId=184820da466bcc29ccc5da3620389a26933950e3
FrameId is used to unqiuely identify individual photo frames. Some manufactures use the MAC address of the frame, others use a simple numeric serial number. This one is larger than most.
sk1=DB7B067C7B8BC66FE49A67DE8D268183D867DA5CF0376662F62CDD5FCA5A0D1B
Huh… I don’t know where to begin on this bit. First time I’ve seen it in a frame request. Anyone?
Update: I’ve re-read the FrameChannel Integration Guide and discovered that this is the SecurityKey. It is described as:
SECURITYKEY is an encrypted string used to validate that the URL is coming from a genuine partner device. The security key is an HMACSHA256 digest (as defined in RFC 2104) of the combination of PRODUCTID-FRAMEID (exactly in that order separated by a single hyphen character), using a secret 32-character key provided by Thinking Screen Media for each productId supplied. IMPORTANT: the secret key should be considered confidential information, and should not be shared or exposed to the public. A leak of the security key will require an Frame Media, Inc. Page 2 of 4 Company Confidentialimmediate firmware update by the device partner.
channellist
I’m assuming that this bit indicates that the frame is looking for a list of channels available (Thank you Dr. Obvious). However, I have no notion of the format it is expecting in return. Anyone?
And now for the really interesting bit…
"TTCatalog-iPad/3.0 CFNetwork/485.13.9 Darwin/11.0.0"
Well Hellllooooo iPad! I knew that FrameChannel had an iPad application/widget/thingy but this is my first example request. Many thanks to the intrepid soul who fiddled with their DNS and sent in this request.
Now… If I could just figure out how to respond to a channelList request… Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?
Anyone from Toshiba engineering? (what the frack is a ‘channelList’)
Jul 5th
I’ve hit a bit of a hurdle with the Toshiba frames. When they first contact the FrameChannel service they request a ‘channelList’. Frankly, the Toshiba frames are not the only ones that do this but since there are large number of Toshiba frame owners pre-registered for the service I’m focusing on them first.
If anyone here has in-depth knowledge of, or access to, the technical details of the FrameChannel support within the Toshiba digital frames I would be VERY grateful for a bit of guidance.
