Flickr on my photo frame Part 3

The long running saga of getting my Flickr photos on my photo frame finally leads to a result.

As I predicted in ‘Flickr on my photo frame Part 2’ the Google Nexus 7 tablet has proved to be a stunner and all for £159.

So I didn’t need to buy another photo frame or subscribe to another service to replace the defunct framechannel.com I now have a superb screen on which to display my photos – when it’s not in use as my news reader and video player.

I also predicted there would be an Android photo app that I could use to to slideshow a selection of my Flickr photos. Well there is. I am now using FlickFolio. It allows me to select by collection, set, tag, gallery, favourites, groups, contacts and bingo its sits there pretending to be a photo frame.

 

All I need now is a upright stand that also acts as my Nexus 7 protective cover when moving it around. There is an ideal one available from Amazon the G-HUB PropUp case

 

 

In addition to all this convenient functionality it turns out that the authors of FlickFolio, Snapwood Apps, also have apps for Facebook photos, Picasa, Photobucket, SkyDrive and others – bargain.

DLNA

Furthermore with the correct app loaded the Nexus 7 will be DLNA compatible.  I will then be able to show photos off my network and/ or ‘throw’ photos at my TV for big screen viewing.  I have been using Bubble UPnP on my Android mobile so will experiment with it on my Nexus 7 for a while.

Note: There always seem to be some issues with DLNA so it’s a case of trying several apps to see which one best suits the devices on your LAN and the formats of the media you want to share (throw around).

Related items

Flickr on my photo frame 2

My Flickr photos on my WiFi photo frame

Flickr on my photo frame Part 2

Everything was going so well.  I could view a sequence of my photos from flickr and from my friends on Facebook interspersed with National Geographic photos, the Weather and Clock/ Calendar – see my earlier blog. Then Framehannel withdrew from the market and not only Framechannel but Frameit.livecom as well.

So all of a sudden I was left with whatever Kodak had to offer.  OK so they have a site at which I could store my photos and view them on my photo frame, but who uses Kodak’s site for storing and displaying their photos. Friends could still email my photo frame directly but none could be bothered. I had to resort to viewing my photos stored on my NAS drive my LaCie LaCinema – see my blog item My multi-room media shifting set-up

Thus began my search for another cloud service or suitable wifi photoframe.  Toshiba, Kodak and Samsung all had photo frames which could use the now defunct Framechannel. So what’s left:

• Kodak Pulse and Sony W frames use Facebook
• Samsung frames use Windows Live & RSS feed

But no-one was offering Flickr

MeeChannel with MeeFrame

However I have discovered another service that although not directly similar to Framechannel would allow me to access a whole load of my social network content on a photo frame.  That service is Meechannel.com It’s a Dutch service (use Google Translate in Google Chrome to read it) and is in Beta, but looks very promising.

It gathers together all your Photo, Video, RSS streams and makes them accessible from one stream.  What’s more is that they even have a photo frame the Looqs MeeFrame specifically to stream content from MeeChannel. It can be bought in the UK from Langton Info Services

So with this service I could stream my Flickr (or Picasa) photos, the weather and clock/ calendar but not photos from my Facebook or my friends’ Facebook.

Top Ten Reviews of WiFi photo frames for 2012 puts the Kodak Pulse at No3 and Meeframe at No 4

What about a Tablet

What I would prefer is to be able to access MeeChannel from my Kodak Easyshare photo frame.  It would seem a shame to have to buy another one.

Would you want to spend about £200 on a touch screen photo frame when there rumours that there could soon be a cheap Android tablet on the market. I could  then use the tablet  as a photo frame when not using it for surfing the web and accessing my emails and social networks.  I would need an app that could run a stream of photos.

Note

Note that this blog is UK based so the content is directed at services that are accessible from UK or products that can be bought in the UK. There are other photo frames that can access Flickr but they are not available in the UK.  The comparison site Top Ten Reviews puts Ceiva Share and Pix-Star FotoConnect at No1 and No 2. Both can access Facebook, Flickr and Picasa but neither can be bought in the UK.

My Flickr Photos on my WiFi Photo Frame

I really enjoy devices that use my home wireless LAN and Internet gateway .

Not so long ago I bought a WiFi Radio which receives internet radio, podcasts and music from my PC media server. All our household mobile phones have WiFi and can therefore access the internet and Skype and, depending on the software, media from home PC. My TV can also access by home LAN and the internet.

Now I have acquired a WiFi photoframe a Kodak W1020 which can take feeds from the Internet, from my home LAN or from its own internal storage.

Like my WiFi radio (see my earlier blog Internet Radio) you need to link your device, wifi radio or wifi photoframe, to an online service. This is usually done by registering your devices ID with the online service . My Revo Blik Radio Station uses Frontier Silicon Radio Portal . My Kodak W1020 wifi photoframe can take feeds from FrameChannel wireless frame portal or from Kodak’s own portal.  FrameChannel can also feed photo frames from other manufacturers.

I prefer FrameChannel because it gives me access to my own Flickr photos. FrameChannel also provides access to a number of online photo services including its own. You can choose from

 

Framechannel photos	Photobucket
My Friends Photos	Windows Live Photos
Flickr	.mac web galleries
Facebook photos	Webshots
Picasa	any RSS photo feed

My Friends Photos is an interesting one as its basically an email address to which your friends and family can send photos, or messages as pictures,  which will then appear on your photo frame.

I use Flickr for my photos and this service allows you filter your flickr photos by tags. And of course you can regularly change your tags to show an alternative set of your photos.

In addition you can select from a range of other services such as news, sports and weather. I have chosen:

• National Geographic – Shorelines & Islands
• Reuters UK Domestic News  (or choose your own RSS feeds)
• Frame Media Calendar
• Three Day Weather Forecast

All these ‘channels’ appear intermingled on your connected photoframe.  You can also set the duration by channel and the time of day by channel.

Other Features

The Kodak frames also have a really good way of configuring the frame through touch strips down the right hand side and along the bottom.  I like this approach as the screen does get covered in greasing finger prints.

In the evening I sometimes sit down to watch the picture frame rather that the TV.  Which reminds me this Kodak frame can also show videos but at the moment only those from its internal memory or off the home LAN and you can accompany your pictures with music.

As with most frames you can plug your camera into the frame and use the frame as a large viewer for the pictures in your camera (stills or movies).

More to come

What is coming along though are TVs with internet access through widgets loaded directly into you TV. More fun gadgets to play with and blog about.

I am also investigating a Freeview box with wifi called FetchTV which, unlike BT Vision or TiscaliTV, does not require a subscription.

Update April 2012

Please note that Framechannel has now closed. To see the consequences of this and what alternative are now available see “Flickr on my photo frame Pt2”

Joining Up My Web Spaces 3

At last Linkedin has begun to catch up with the rest of the social networking sites and has introduced applications. The most interesting to me is the ability to feed in my WordPress blog and to be able to see the blogs of my contacts. It even appears that my Twitter entries ared fed as well. 

 This now means that all my social network sites – Facebook, LinkedIn, ecademy and Plaxo can receive feeds from my Twitter and from my WordPress Blog. So I only need to author my status using Twitter or blog using Worpress once for each of my social networks to be updated.These social networks can also receive content from other services such as my photos from Flckr and my shared news stories from Google Reader and SocialMedian (only ecademy at the moment. So again I only need to author this content once and all my social network sites are updated. Below I have a diagram which services update which networks. There are also a number of other content authoring services that I have not taken up yet such as video, music, wish lists, bookmarks etc that could feed my networks.

The social network sites, of course, host my profile, my contacts and my career history. They cannot pass these details across to each other so I still have to enter the same details into each one. However it looks like the protective walls may be starting to come down. They are each looking at how they will accept each others signon through the use of OpenID or Facebook Connect. Now wouldn’t that be good to only have to update my profile, conatacts and career history once for all my networks to be updated!

This is the third update to ‘Joining Up My Web Spaces’ you might like to take a look at:

Joining Up My Web Spaces 2 and Joining Up My Web Spaces

you might also like to view a related post ‘My location aware mobile phone’

 

My Web Spaces Matrix

 

 

 

 

 

Joining Up My Web Spaces

The explosion of social networking spaces on the internet has been exciting but also confusing.  The beauty of what is happening now is that many ‘space’ providers have recognised they are not going to provide everything and have everybody join them and have made it possible for developers to create the joins.  Now many of your spaces can be linked together.

Having joined a number of spaces I have now tried to work out how they link together, how they ‘feed’ one another.  I have produced a daigram which shows all my spaces and the links between them.  My Rummble can update my Twitter and include my location. My Twitter updates both ecademy and Facebook.  I can create a blog entry containing a phograph or video with Flickr and post it to my Blog in WordPress which then sends the blog to ecademy and Facebook.  The diagram does show that WordPress creates a Twitter every time I publish a blog, but I haven’t set this up. I can view my Flickr content from within Facebook and Rummble.  I can show my Google Reader Shares in my blog.  All the spaces in the big box update my FriendFeed.

The other great development is having versions of these spaces in PDA (small screen) format.  I can run all the spaces in green boxes on my windows mobile phone.  Rummble uses Google Gears on my mobile to link to my embedded GPS to capture my location.  Twibble also uses my embedded GPS to capture my location.

This is just the start, no doubt, of even more interlinking. It does show though how isolated LinkedIn has become.

 

My Social Network