Kodak digital photo frames are going to be putting in an appearance on the next season of Celebrity Apprentice. It’s been announced that the photographic equipment manufacterer will be featuring some of its models (possibly the W820 or W1020) in the series, much as it had done in the previous season of the hit television series. It claims to have tripled their sales of inkjet printers, the product that was featured during the previous season.

I don’t think this is a coincidence – digital photo frames are starting to become increasingly popular as gifts, sales devices and a means of showing photos around the house. So it makes sense that they’re starting to appear on television. What’s the next step? A showing in a new James Bond movie?

Also, one wonders what will appear on the screen of the Kodak digital photo frames. Photos of Donald Trump’s ex-wife? Candid off-camera shots of contestants? The possibilities are endless!

digital photo frame

One of the most important factors to take into account when buying a digital photo frame is the size of the display. The size of a digital photo frame screen is measured on the diagonal, ie, from the top left hand corner to the bottom right. As technology progresses, the displays of digital photo frames are getting larger and larger, and the quality of the displays are getting better all the time, much as they are in the case of television sets as well.

Digital photo frame displays come in a range of sizes, with the most popular being 7 inch, 8 inch, 10 inch, with 15 inch displays also becoming increasingly popular.

So what digital photo frame size is best for you? Given the diverse uses of digital photo frames, there are a number of factors to take in to consideration when deciding on what digiframe to buy:

Budget: How much are you prepared to spend on a digital photo frame? Don’t be fooled in thinking that the smallest screen will be the cheapest. Shop around and compare prices, you’ll be surprised to find that sometimes you’ll find 10 inch digital photo frames available at the same price as a 8 inch one. Don’t choose the cheapest, as these displays often use older technologies that mean less-than-ideal clarity and brightness. The best option where budget is a concern is to find a late model 8 inch digital photo frame with the least amount of features. These will normally cost slightly more than the cheapest available, but will ensure that you can the best value for money. Often screens in this range are discounted as they are replaced by bigger, but more expensive screens.

If you’re buying it for home use, where will you be locating the digital photo frame? If you’re using the screen as a simple bedside photo frame, a 7 inch digital photo frame is fine. It’s also compact and doesn’t take up too much space. A new trend is to attach digital photo frames to fridge doors, in which case a small one is also sufficient. However if you’re intending to hang the frame on a wall then even an 8 inch version will look silly, even if you don’t care much about interior decorating or don’t have much of a sense of proportion. Rather go for at least a 10 inch digital photo frame that will be visible from a distance and be visually attractive. You don’t want people squinting at the pictures your frame is displaying!

Use as a sales tool, eg at an exhibition: You need to the largest, brightest display on hand. Unless you’re using the digital photo screen on a counter where clients will view it at very close range, you need at least a 10 inch digital photo frame, and preferably a 15 inch version to ensure that exhibition visitors can see and read your display from a distance. This is also important if people have to read a series of messages on the screen.

If you’re giving the screen as a gift, you need to consider the requirements of the recipient. If you’re giving the frame to an older person such as your grand parents, it makes sense to select an 8 inch digital photo frame or larger, especially if they’re visually impaired. A teenager may only require a small, 7 inch digital photo display that they’ll use on a shelf or table in their bedrooms. However if the gift is a for a colleague at work or as a prize in a competition, it makes sense to go for a 10 inch digital photo frame if you don’t want to look stingy and like you’re doing things on the cheap.

As you can see, it’s important to consider the size of the digital photo frame you intend buying. If you don’t, you may just end up purchasing a frame that is too small for the intended purpose, or overspending unnecessarily.

If you want to give your desk that little bit of techno-wiz look without taking away the smart and polished look, this is a perfect combination of style and functionality. The Tao desktop pen holder and digital photo frame combination is low-key enough to not clash with your mahogany writing desk, yet will attract attention to the fact that you’re a member of the techno-literati.

This elegant piece features a 3.5 inch digital photo frame and 128Mb of internal memory, enough to store a hundred or more photos, depending on the file sizes. You hook it up to your computer to upload photos via the frame’s own software included in the package. Naturally there’s an elegant silver pen included, should you wish to computer-weary fingers a rest and write something by hand instead.

The only pity is that it’s not battery operated, but requires an external electrical source, which could mean an unsightly cable snaking underneath the desk.

The set comes in a choice of matt black or wooden finishes, with the latter’s metal parts and pen being gold instead of silver.

This is an ideal gift for a special occasion where a person is deserving of something quite sophisticated without being outrageously expensive. The price tag is quite reasonable and fall within the range one would expect to pay for an executive style gift.

Looking for fresh and original Mothers Day gift ideas? If there’s one special thing that’s close to a mother’s heart (and even more to to a grandmother’s heart!) then it’s photos of the kids. A reasonably technically proficient mother normally has a never-ending collection of photos on her computer, prints on the walls, and always has a digital camera ready to take more.

So why not give a mothers day gift with a difference this year: A digital photo frame preloaded with her favourite pics of the family. It doesn’t have to be a super-large or expensive frame, a simple 7 or 8 inch digital photo frame will do. And these day’s they’re really cheap as well, so it this is one mothers day gift that won’t set up back too much.

And if you have mothers day pictures from last year, why not put them on as well, just to remind her how much the family cares about and appreciates her.

So here’s how you do it: Choose a frame that also runs on batteries, so you don’t have to worry about cords and wires. On Mothers Day, make her breakfast in bed, fire up the frame with the pre-loaded photos and put it together with the food on the tray. Imagine her face as the family walks in with the frame showing photos of everyone!

If you want to do something even more special, design a graphic with a special Mothers Day poem ior a Mothers Day quote, save as a JPG file, and load it on together with the other photos. It’ll be a nice touch for the poem to appear on the screen after two or three photos.

A mother living far away from her grandkids will appreciate it even more. Just pick a frame that’s simple to operate, because she’s bound to want to show off slide shows of them to all her friends!

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The problem with most digital photo frames is that, well, they look like digital photo frames. Most of the time the frames are tacky, plastic molds in colours that look more like they belong in an adolescent bedroom than hanging from your living room wall. ‘Interior design’ doesn’t seem to fit well into the vocabulary of most digital photo frame manufacturers.

Fortunately digital photo frame manufacturers PhotoVu is distinguishing them from the rest of the pack by producing frames that you’ll be proud to display in your home. And they’re not your average-sized, every-day eight inch frames either; they start at an eye-pleasing nineteen inches in diameter, so there’s no squinting at those magnificent wildlife photos you took on your last safari trip in Africa.

But here’s the best thing about PhotoVu frames – you design the actual frame yourself! Using an interactive tool on their website you can select your wall colour, and then select one of dozens of types of frames to see what will look best on your wall. It’s like visiting a digital photo framing shop! The frames are all great-looking ones that won’t look out of place in an interior decorating magazine, with the style of frames varying from elegant wood finishes to antique and post-modern.

If you’re a Rolls-Royce person who’ve not considered a digital photo frame because they’re oh-so-Ford, then PhotoVu frames are the once to consider. It’s the closest I’ve seen a digital photo frame come to the ambience that a conventional frame gives to a framed photograph. Using it to display the kids-in-the-backyard-pool pics will be a waste of the $800 or so a PhotoVu frame will set up back, but those black and white portrait studies you have lying around on a hard drive somewhere will look splendid.

Here’s a handy, simple piece of software to help you make the most of your digital photo frame. Think of those black areas appearing on the screen when a photo shows that’s not the same ratio as the screen. Yucky and distracting, right? I’ve just tried out FrameSize 2.0, a simple solution for resizing and cropping your pics to the required aspect ratio of your digital photo frame. You simply preset the ratio of your screen in pixels, and load a photo. A frame overlay will appear on your photo that you can move up and down, and when you’re happy with the crop, click Save and a copy of the crop will be saved.

You can also load more than one pic at a time and crop them one of the other, saving a bit of time.

As is the case with most freeware the interface won’t win any awards for user-friendliness and outstanding features, but FrameSize does what it’s supposed to do. Sure, you can do the same in any of a dozen other graphics and photo manipulation packages, but if you don’t already have your fancy shortcuts set up in Photoshop to crop your photos destined for your digital photo frame, give Framesize a try.