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!

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 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!

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.

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?

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.

I’ve decided to focus first on the creation of custom Photo RSS feeds so that folks who are unable/unwilling to manipulate their DNS servers to redirect the old FramChannel URLs will be able to use FrameAlbum.

I’d like some folks to test the demo feed I’ve built using the FrameAlbum service.  This is not a hand-coded RSS feed, it was built and served completely by the new service.

To participate in the testing all you need do is enter this URL into your frame’s ‘Custom Photo URL’ feed feature:

http://rss.framealbum.com/feed.php?fid=999999&pin=1234

Please let me know if you have any issues.

Thanks!

Pre-registration is going strong; 250+ so far.  Thank you to all that have registered so far.

The web front-end is almost ready.  It’s butt-ugly but I’m a fan of the ‘make it work THEN make it pretty’ design philosophy.   I should be releasing a few pre-registrations this weekend.

So far, only public Flickr feeds are supported.  Picasa is next on my list.

What feeds would you like to see supported?

You can now follow FrameAlbum’s progress on twitter as @FrameAlbum.

I’ve also created a FaceBook page (FrameAlbum) but I need at least 25 ‘Likes’ before I can get a direct link to the page.  You can find it if you search for ‘FrameAlbum’.

Thanks for your support!

Update: So it seems that this link will get you to FrameAlbum’s page on FaceBook.

Over 200 people have pre-registered for FrameAlbum in only a few days!

This is incredible and far exceeds my expectations.

Thanks for your support and most importantly, spreading the word about FrameAlbum.   Please keep it up.

Work is progressing on FrameAlbum.  I was ‘distracted’ over the weekend by a family reunion but I’m back at it now with renewed vigor!

• The website login and registration functions are almost complete.
• Initial testing of the RSS feeds (redirected via DNS from rss.framechannel.com continues.  Discovered some interesting tidbits.
• Begun collecting data on the various digital frames supported by FrameChannel.  This is necessary to correctly format the images delivered to the various screen sizes.

If you are able to modify your DNS server to redirect rss.framechannel.com please drop me a comment.  I have something to test.

Thanks.

As most of you will already know FrameChannel turned off the frame feeds today.  I was hoping for few more days of data gathering, specifically around how it handled new frame registration, before they turned it off.  Oh well…

Pre-registrations at FrameAlbum are going strong — well over 100 so far!  I guess I’d better finish this thing or I’m going to look pretty silly.

Today was work on handling the ‘INFO’ category on Kodak frames.  The idea is to be able to pass back to the frame it’s own ID so the user can register it on FrameAlbum.  Almost there…

BTW, the initial support will be in English only — I’ll entertain other requests if folks would like to see them locallized INFO screens.

FrameAlbum is open for pre-registration!

Frankly, I’m not real keen on the name but speed was more important than polish for this round so there you have it.

After you register for the FrameAlbum beta you’ll be among the first to know when the site is open with it’s initial feature set.

As with most betas, you’ll need to have a modicum of technical prowess to utilize the service as well as a heaping portion of patience.  The initial iteration will offer Flickr feeds to custom RSS capable frames (and news readers).

So, if you’re as sad to see FrameChannel shutdown as I was, and not willing to allow your gee-whiz digital picture frame to devolve into a rather expensive paper weight head on over to FrameAlbum.com and register for the beta!

With all the excitement of the last week I almost forgot it was Fathers’ Day yesterday… almost (#sonfail). I took some time away from the development process to celebrate the day and enjoy friends and family.

I’m back at it today with renewed vigor — I’m anticipating opening the site up for pre-registrations sometime tonight (U.S. Eastern time). I’ll post an entry here and via Twitter (@streamingmeemee).

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By-the-way… If there are any web designers with idle hands and an interest in contributing PLEASE ping me. The <table> tag is the extent of my design skills (that will be VERY funny to the people I’m trying to reach here. ) so we will all be much happier with a design professional on the team.
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