Contact Me(eMee)

@Michael: The short answer is ‘yes’. The somewhat longer answer is ‘picture feeds have first priority’ so it may be a bit before things like weather and news make it into the feeds.

@Todd: You’re welcome! Believe it or not this kinda thing is fun for me. I was looking for something to re-energize me and this is certainly doing it.

@Jim: Picasa support is #2 after Flickr. I see that you have already pre-registered at FrameAlbum — thanks!

@david_g: How are you at manipulating DNS?

@David: Thanks for your support!

@Todd — Small world, eh?

There are two ways in which you can use your Toshiba frames with FrameAlbum:
- If you run a DNS server (some home routers have this feature) you can configure it to redirect the framechannel.com domain to framealbum.com

- You can configure your frames to use my DNS server which will redirect the requests automatically.

Unfortunately, both of these solutions require a bit of geekery. I’ve, so far, been unsuccessful in my attempts to get (whats left of) the FrameChannel folks to redirect the domain to me.

@Tina It’s under ‘Photo RSS’. However, you can’t enter it on the frame itself, you have to use the frame’s web interface. You can either use the Kodak software that came with the frame, or, as I do, use standard Windows 7 features.

Open up ‘My Computer’ and then click on ‘Network’. You should see your frame listed under ‘Media Devices’. Right click on the icon, click ‘Properties’ and get the IP address. Enter that IP address into the browser of your choice. You may also want to take note of the ‘MAC address’ entry. This is used as the ‘FrameID’ if you ever choose to use the FrameChannel emulation feature of FrameAlbum.

Once you are on the web interface, select the ‘Photo RSS’ entry on the left and click ‘Add..’. Chose ‘Other’ for the site and it will have a field for the feed URL. You can also name the feed.

Once that has been saved, go back to the frame, hit the ‘Home’ button, and chose ‘Photo RSS’ on the bottom.

Let me know how it works for you.

@Ian: Welcome to the party! I’ve sent invites to folks that pre-registered before 4-July. If you signed up before that and have not yet received your invitation email please let me know.

What types of RSS feeds did you view on your frame? News? Sports? Weather? Blog entries? Something else?

Thanks for contributing!

@cmtm: I’ve re-sent your registration email. If you do not receive it soon please let me know and I’ll get it to you another way. Also, please be sure to check your spam folder.

@Schulzh: I just released your invite — please look in your email. Let me know if you don’t see it within a few hours.

@cd: 9 monitors, eh? Impressive! I like to see that bad-boy in action. Was this a custom build or a out-of-the-box Motorola product. Thanks for your support!

@Robert: All comments on this site are moderated — it may take me a while to approve posts. To your question, if you registered before 4-July then you should have received your invite by now. I’ll have a look in the database for your email address and resend it if it has already gone out. I plan on releasing the next batch of pre-registrations tonight so keep your eyes on your inbox!

@Rob: Hmm…. I had not considered that use-case. Live video from a webcam is pretty much out — none of the frames I’ve looked at support that. However, most webcams offer the ability to save images to a file (usually a JPEG) at some pre-defined interval. That image could then be downloaded and displayed on the frame. Do you have a particular webcam view in mind?

@Michael: Thanks for the feedback! I’m very glad to hear that FrameAlbum is working on your Brightsign players. I just made a new post that outlines the short term development plan; information channels such as news and weather are on there but they are down the list a bit. As a short-term solution, would it be useful to add a ‘custom RSS feed’ channel? This would allow you to enter any image based RSS feed URL and it would be added to your frame’s (or in your case digital signage player) feed.

Thanks for your feedback.

@Mandy, Thanks for the generous offer! I would gladly accept gifts to my PayPal account, framealbum@gmail.com. Anything I receive I’ll use to offset the cost of hosting FrameAlbum or to purchase tools to build new features.

@Till: FrameChannel compatible feeds do not include any real security; if someone knows the MAC address of your frame and it’s associated ‘ProductId’ they can view your feed. ProductIds designate the Manufacturer & Model of your frame; chances are if someone knows the MAC address of your frame then they also know the make and model number. This is an example of ‘security by obscurity’.

However, the Custom RSS feeds provided by FrameAlbum (and were also supplied by FrameChannel) do include a randomly assigned PIN in addition to the frame’s MAC address. This is a very week form of security that will at least slow down the bad guys.

You can read more of the FrameChannel protocol

I also just released your beta invite — you should see an email shortly.