A Wider Net

At CES, I found eStarling, a manufacturer of digital picture frames, and to my knowledge the only one out of about 50 exhibiting manufacturers, that allows you to email a photo directly to the frame. Apparently Thinkgeek was selling the WiFi versions these puppies at one point. Regardless, you can certainly “picture” these being used to send your loved-ones photos from far-far-away-land. Would it be so wrong to give these to customers and slip them a promotional image every so often? They are, after all, premium-priced premiums, and they have to put up with corporate logos tattooed all over their other SWAG. This just feels a hundred times cooler. Digital signage to the individual desktop. Banner Ad Designers rejoice! People may be ignoring you on the web, but they can’t ignore you if they’re waiting to see pics of the grandkids.

You can also have the display automatically grab images from an RSS feed, such as a feed from a Flickr photo sharing account. It’s a pretty neat device, and I bet there are lots of clever ways to use it for marketing and signage applications. Yes, I’d like one.