Mother's Day

Walk into any large retail store before Mother's Day and chances are you’ll find a display chock full of digital frames. Walk into the back room of any large retail store and chances are you’ll find a bin chock full of returned digital frames.

Of all the cool gifts  you can buy for Mother’s Day, a digital frame require a bit of foresight. Before you drop your hard-earned cash on a feature rich photo frame, ask yourself if the mom in question is up for managing it, or whether it’s something she’d rather not be bothered with.

If “mom” also happens to be “wife” you can opt for something more robust and manage it yourself (so long as it doesn’t look like a gift that was really for you). If “mom” is also “grandma” you can go for a frame that’s more straightforward, and less expensive to boot.

The High Tech
Pandigital’s Kitchen Technology Center ($379) is an intriguing spin on the photo frame. It’s a 15.6-inch frame with wireless connectivity. It’s a digital cookbook, preloaded with recipes from Bon Appetite magazine (but please, for your own safety, don’t present her with it and demand a gourmet meal ten minutes later). It’s an HDTV (720p), with a built-in tuner.

With 1GB of internal memory, 5-in-1 card reader and touch-screen interface, you have yourself a very functional photo frame. It can also access photos wirelessly from photo websites such as Google’s Picassa. You can mount it under the cabinet or stand it up right on the counter.

eStarling’s family of Wi-Fi photo frames are a perfect gift for the mom that just happens to be your wife. Here’s why: the frames come with their own unique email address. Rather than drop memory cards into it, you can simply fire off an email with a photo attached and watch it appear moments later on the frame. You can also manage it completely from the PC – loading your own personal photos or subscribing to a number of RSS feeds from sources such as National Geographic.

The Elegant (And Still High Tech)
Philips’ 8-inch photo frame (the catchy named 8FF3WMI) has one of the classier designs on the market, with a very vibrant LCD display. This model offers Wi-Fi connectivity and is DLNA certified, which provides an easier Wi-Fi setup with other DLNA certified devices.
You can load photos onto internal memory or stream them wirelessly from a PC. Even better, you can add photos to the frame’s internal memory wirelessly, by simply dragging and dropping them using included software.
The frame packs a few image enhancement technologies as well. It can automatically correct both the contrast and color of the images it’s displaying. The frame can also automatically rotate photos to properly align them with the frame and can automatically build collages of multiple photos in the event that an image is too low resolution for the frame (say, one snapped with a camera phone).

The Easy
If mom wants little or nothing to do with the frame other than turning it on and watching the kids or grandkids, consider these choices.
The Kodak M820 ($129) is an 8-inch model with a “Quick Touch” border. Think of it as a touch screen without actually getting your greasy mitts directly on the screen. Instead, you touch the border of the frame and the screen will display menu functions.
Though it has a rather skimpy 128MB of internal memory, it incorporates a pair of SD card slots for expanding its capacity. You can swap out cards whenever you show up to visit dear old mom. You can also drop $18 for accessory faceplates to match décor.
HP’s 10-inch frame ($199) is another straightforward frame, with few features to get lost in. It’s housed in a Mahogany exterior with 512MB of internal memory and an automatic on/off feature for energy savings.
Carry Anywhere
Photo frames aren’t just for the mantle. Coby’s DP151 Digital Photo Keychain is a 1.5-inch display with enough internal memory for about 60 low resolution photos. You can load photos, and recharge the battery, through a USB connection. Expect to pay about $30.

Caveat Emptor
When out digital frame shopping for Mother's Day, keep a few other things in mind.

Be Wary of Widescreen: Like TVs, frames have an aspect ratio. And, like TVs, you’ve got two choices – 16:9 (or widescreen) and 4:3. When TV shopping, you want widescreen – as the 16:9 aspect ratio conforms closely to the original aspect ratio your movie was filmed in.

With frames, it’s the reverse. Most digital photos are captured in a ratio much closer to 4:3 than 16:9. Fitting those photos into a widescreen frame means they’ll either be cropped (potentially severing heads and feet), stretched (often unflatteringly at the midsection) or reverse letterboxed, with black bars running along the right and left sides of the image. Take two 8-inch frames side by side – one widescreen, the other 4:3 – and the 4:3 frame will actually have a larger LCD panel.

Widescreen frames are not without merit. All things being equal, they can often be cheaper than 4:3 frames, and some people do prefer the widescreen look. On larger screen sizes, 8-inches and up, the letter boxing effect is not as noticeable.

Go Green: If you’re frugal or environmentally conscious, the thought of leaving your digital frame turned on all night might be a turn off. Look for these three energy-saving features:

• Programmable On/Off – Much like an alarm, you can program your frame to turn on and off at specific times. At night when you’re asleep, your frame can be too.
• Ambient Light Sensor – Not as efficient as an on/off mode, a frame with a built-in light sensor will nonetheless help you reduce energy use by automatically dimming the LCD when the lights go down. However, the sensor will boost LCD brightness the room gets very bright. That improves the viewing experience, but it diminishes energy savings.
• LED Backlighting – Most LCD panels use less efficient Cold Flourescent bulbs for lighting. Frames that use LED (light emitting diodes) for their light source will suck fewer electrons.

Above all: happy Mother’s Day!