tech: Ceiva Wireless Photo Frame

The CEIVA digital photo frame might look like a standard fairly average digital photo frame, but the plain facade actually hides a rather cool bit of technology - wireless.

Yes, rather than plugging this into your computer or inserting a memory card, you can beam photos directly to this frame, cutting out the cable. What’s even cooler is that you can hook this to the internet and beam them remotely too, meaning that if you put one of these on your parents mantlepiece, you can send them photos of your holiday as they happen.

You can even deliver photos back from an iphone, using the ceiva iphone snaps application. This allows you to take a photo with your iphone, upload it to the net and have it immediately sent to the frame. Very useful for those spur of the moment photos!

Now the actual screen quality on this is not bad. It’s got a really nice viewing angle so you don’t have to be looking absolutely straight on to get a decent view of your snaps. It looks pretty sleek, and you can change out the plastic frame for any one of a number of designs - some of more taste than others. You can also create your own skins online and have them posted.

The frame costs ¬£88 from PCWorld here in the UK which is definitely on the expensive side when you consider the price of standard 8″ photo frames is more like ¬£40 or ¬£50. but the wireless feature is really pretty cool and certainly makes a unique christmas present. Just make sure that the pictures you’re beaming back to your frame are really suitable for where it’s displayed because we can foresee some definite taste issues arising. 4*s.

For the best of the rest:

CNET:
Ceiva’s redesigned 8-inch diagonal digital photo frame has an attractive, modern look, 640×480 resolution, slots for most memory card types, as well as USB connectivity for thumbdrives, and interchangeable faceplates. Optional accessories allow you to connect your frame to Ceiva’s convenient web-based PicturePlan service via a corded Ethernet connection (Ceiva Broadband adapter) or a wireless network (Ceiva Wireless adapter).

ZDNet:
Ceiva’s redesigned 8-inch diagonal digital photo frame has an attractive, modern look, 640×480 resolution, slots for most memory card types, as well as USB connectivity for thumbdrives, and interchangeable faceplates. Optional accessories allow you to connect your frame to Ceiva’s convenient web-based PicturePlan service via a corded Ethernet connection (Ceiva Broadband adapter) or a wireless network (Ceiva Wireless adapter).

O Reilly:
I’ve been a Ceiva digital photo frame user for several years now, and consider it a useful part of my extended digital home. I own two of their original units, one for my place and one that resides at my in-law’s home in Florida. LCD frames that display digital images are very common now, but the models you see in your local department store almost certainly require locally-stored images. That is, you insert a memory card that is pre-loaded with images and that’s what the frame displays, in slideshow fashion.