Update to Wired Frame Draws Images From Web

Ceiva's frame now displays custom Web content in addition to your personal photos.

Liane Gouthro, special to PCWorld.com

If you're searching for the perfect holiday gift for the perpetually Web-connected, consider this wired picture frame for the viewer with a short attention span.

The frame from Ceiva Logic displays a changing selection of digital images, which it obtains by dialing in to the Internet every night. Your friends and family can send new images to your Ceiva frame, and you can add photos from your own collection. (See " High-Tech Frames for High-Tech Photos.")

And with its recent update, Ceiva's frame shows more than photographs. The frame now displays artwork, personal postcards and greeting cards, and custom Web content updated every day.

"We were focused on creating technology for nontechnological people," says Paul Yanover, who cofounded Ceiva with Dean Schiller. "It looks and feels exactly like a traditional picture frame. There's complex technology at work, but it doesn't intimidate people."

The Ceiva frame does look like any other frame that you may have on your mantle. The 8-by-10-inch frame is a bit heavier than the average frame, but it has the same wooden edges, black matte, and cardboard backing that most frames have. At $249.95, it costs more than a bit more, and you'll incur a service charge for the Internet connection, which adds $49.95 per year to the price. It is available in retail outlets and at Ceiva's Web site.

But the big difference between an average picture frame and a Ceiva is the 5-by-7-inch LCD screen it sports in the center and the wires and buttons it has hidden in the back. (See " The Wired Picture Frame.")

Shifting Pictures

The frame has a phone cord to connect to the Internet and a power cord in the back. (It does not run on batteries.) It also has two control buttons: a black button that adjusts the brightness and a white button that allows you to scan through the different images in your frame, start or stop a slide show display, and connect to the Internet. The frame will connect on its own each night, dialing in to download new pictures sometime between midnight and 5 a.m. If you want to connect at any other time, you simply press and hold the white button on the back, and the frame will retrieve new images.

It can display up to 20 images at a time; in order to download new images, the frame randomly removes some older images. You can still view those at Ceiva's Web site, and you can lock pictures from being removed.

The Web site also lets you adjust your frame's settings. You can change time intervals of the slide show, and you can choose other content that you would like your frame to display. If you don't have Internet access, you can call a toll-free number to make the changes.

In addition to pictures, the Ceiva frame can also display daily forecasts from the Weather Channel, winning lottery numbers from Lottery.com, comics from Ziggy and Bizzaro, daily horoscopes, and artwork from the collections of Corbis and Getty. You customize the automated browsing by entering your preferences at the Ceiva site. You can also add captions to photos that you send, and create digital postcards for special occasions.

While this may make the frame seem a lot more like an Internet appliance and a lot less like your average picture frame, Yanover says Ceiva is not building a mini-PC.

"The device itself is not interactive. It's not our goal that you will browse the Web on your frame. It's designed as a means of displaying interesting visual content, content that can change very day," he says.