Fujitsu and Macnica embed Android into digital photo frames -- WalMart, you listening?

Hey, if you can take Google's open source OS for mobile telephones and chunk it into a netbook, then why not digital photo frames? Fujitsu and Japan's Macnica have teamed up on what they're calling a "Software Platform for Home Network Digital Photo Frames" based on Google's Android. In other words, it's a software platform for home network digital photo frames based on Google's Android. Uh, riiight. The prototype frame above was on display in Japan yesterday running slideshows off a standard DLNA network. Honestly, we don't care what OS is running at the core of those cheap, off-brand digital photo frames cluttering big box shelves every holiday -- just make the navigation intuitive and we're happy. Android seems like a good (and free!) start along the road to standardization.

[bdav @ May 14th 2009 6:07AM]

Quite.

[Drew Green @ May 14th 2009 6:08AM]

But how is Android going to accidentally infect users with viruses? This will NEV4R work!

[superhobo @ May 14th 2009 6:30AM]

...

Might as well stick a phone on the wall.

[superhobo @ May 14th 2009 6:34AM]

Or a netbook.

[dj-kenpo @ May 14th 2009 9:23AM]

if I can pick up a $69.99 digi frame running android and then install whatever the hell mini linux widgets I want. then that's far better than a $300 netbook duct taped to the wall, and clearly far better than showing photos of my dog in a slideshow.

a networked frame than can be programmed to display emails, weather, etc for cheap.

you people should be all over this.

[superhobo @ May 14th 2009 9:32AM]

Digital frames are for total noobs. For whom double clicking on a picture is too complicated or too much work.

[HereAndNow @ May 14th 2009 6:31AM]

Hopefully, it has a touch screen & can run most/all of the apps in the Android Market. THAT would be cool!

[Nick @ May 14th 2009 6:48AM]

Hopefully this will mean that more photo frames will support the feature of being able to email images to them (without having to sign up to any $10/mth service!). That's the key thing I'd like to see so that I can simply send pictures to my relatives and have them pop up on the display without the need to transfer them across from a computer.

[Bjarte @ May 20th 2009 6:50AM]

You can. FrameChannel.com is free, and works as far as I know at least with Kodak WiFi frames, probably others too. I send photos as an attachment to an e-mail and they pop up 2 seconds later on my mums frame.

[Bruce Lewis @ May 21st 2009 10:31AM]

You can do that today with any frame that supports Media RSS. See http://ourdoings.com/

[TomStrummer @ May 14th 2009 8:59AM]

Uhmm, you might be missing the point here. Having the photo frame run Android suddenly means you could have a web browser and installable apps on a touchscreen computer sitting in your living room coffee table or your kitchen counter. Way better than a plain-ol' photo frame? Methinks so.

[john @ May 14th 2009 10:17AM]

If it can run all Android apps, I could:

put one in my kitchen for reading recipes off of the web, or off of my food related RSS feeds.

put one in my room, to use as a Google Calendar sync'ed alarm clock

put one next to my couch for quick/dirty IMDB lookups, product lookups, etc., while I'm watching TV/movies/etc.

Hopefully it'll have decent physical UI elements (touchscreen for use with cupcake's virtual keyboard; dpad, menu button, back button, and home button for basic android navigation).