Wi-Fi Photo Frame the New Trojan Horse?

Photo courtesy of the Kodak PluggedIn Blog

While gaming consoles are still attempting to make good on their role as Trojan Horse in the living room , I have a new candidate for the job: Wi-Fi photo frames. As ridiculous as that sounds, a WI-Fi photo frame is really nothing more than an IP-based display, capable of receiving IP-based content. This year at CES I saw at least two digital frames (Kodak and GiiNii) drawing content from Web sources. Once Mom buys one of these frames to show off photos of little Jimmy, it’s only a short, logical step to using it for convenient weather updates, tips, horoscopes, sports scores, and more. Yes, we’re back to my favorite topic: the widget station.

Many companies are attempting to break open the widget-station market, from the Chumby makers, to Verizon and AT&T, to Logitech with its Harmony remotes (sort of) and even the Squeezebox. However, two things are clear to me. First, widget stations are only going to be successful if they are first embedded in households for another purpose. And second, the best widget station will be one that is already designed to act as a visual display.

TVs/set-tops have already pushed their way into the widget market, and we’ll see more from that direction in the near future, but I believe there’s room for another device in the home that gives access to quick, visual, Web-based information. The question is, how far will Wi-Fi photo frames go? Will they become a regular source of video in addition to static content? Will they eventually act as touch-screen, home controllers? I don’t know, but I bet we’ll see the next iteration by CES 2010.

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