Related Resources • Digital Photo Techniques • Dating Old Photos

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As genealogists we love to share pictures - old and new - with family members. And in this day of personal computers and the Internet it is so easy to instantly send photos via email or by posting to a personal Web page that many of us do it on a regular basis. But what do you do about the technology challenged relatives - the ones who want nothing to do with a computer, let alone the Internet?

Enter the digital picture frame, the perfect gadget for sharing photos with the computerless. Essentially an LCD monitor surrounded by a traditional-looking wood frame, a digital picture frame can display just one photo or multiple photos in a slideshow format. One popular frame, the Ceiva digital picture frame, automatically connects to the Internet using a local dial-up phone number and your existing phone line and downloads pictures once a night. In order to receive photos, the frame requires a subscription to the Ceiva network, but anyone (if included on the 'buddy list' by the frame owner) can send photos for free, whether or not they have a frame. The Ceiva digital picture frame is super simple to use, even for the technology phobic - just plug in the power, plug in the telephone line, push the white button on the back of the frame, and you're in business. Just think - you can take a picture of the family today, and have it automatically appear on your parent's or grandparents digital picture frame tomorrow!

The Ceiva frame currently (as of May 2002) retails for $199, not including a $100 rebate good through June 2002. The subscription fee is extra and runs about $5-7 per month. The frame can currently only dial-in from within the United States, but relatives and friends in any country can send photos to a Ceiva frame within the U.S. For those looking for digital picture frames in other countries, the Kodak Smart Picture Frame and the Digi Frame both allow you to display digital pictures via a CompactFlash™ or SmartMedia™ memory card, though neither offer Internet capabilities.