Add $10 if you want a wood frame.

When we attended CES earlier this year we crossed paths with a product called the Movit Mini from GiiNii.  At the time its launch window was pegged for summer of this year.  Now the company anticipates an October 1st launch and plans to roll out a home based version, the Movit Maxx, January 1st of 2010.  Check the specs below for a break down of the devices:

Movit Mini:

• 4.3-inch touchscreen with 480 x 272 pixels of resolution
• .3MP front facing camera
• Bluetooth
• WiFI
• Android OS with Skype preloaded
• Lithium-ion battery
• 256MB of flash memory (presumably expandable via microSD)

Movit Maxx

• 7-inch touchscreen
• Camera for teleconferencing
• Bluetooth
• Compatible with a variety of picture and video formats

Read

Half the fun of capturing pictures on a digital camera is sharing them with others or looking at them yourself. When you find a group of particularly interesting images, you could print them out and frame them, but then you would need a separate frame for each picture. A better solution is to store and display all your images in a digital picture frame.

Like other digital picture frames, the GiiNii GN-711W 7-inch Wedge Digital Picture Frame lets you store images on a variety of memory cards (SD, MMC, xD, and MS) or transfer images directly from a computer to the built-in 512Mb memory. Oddly, the GiiNii picture frame includes a USB port but does not include a USB cable, which you’ll have to buy separately.

While most picture frames let you create visual transition effects or play movie files (AVI) or audio files (MP3 and WMA), the GiiNii frame also provides a limited number of editing tools for changing the brightness, ratio, contrast, or color of your photos. If your pictures need drastic corrections, you’ll need to rely on Photoshop or other photo editing tools, but the GiiNii’s simple tools can make a good picture look even better.

To access these various effects, the picture frame displays four buttons on the side of its triangular base. This base makes the picture frame sturdy and compact, but its four control buttons on the side all look alike with no identifying labels to be found. You’ll constantly need to refer back to the manual to figure out which button does what, and if you lose the manual, you’ll just be forced to stare at four identical buttons and left to press each one to figure out what it really does.

One added bonus of this picture frame is its inclusion of a clock, calendar, and alarm. Instead of just displaying pictures one after another, it displays a clock and calendar in between images. Now you can check the time and look at your pictures.

Perhaps the most interesting feature has little to do with displaying images at all. You can program the picture frame to lower its power consumption by a fixed percentage that you choose. This helps save power at certain times of the day, such as at night when nobody will likely be looking at your pictures anyway.
If you just want a digital picture frame, you can find that anywhere, but if you want a power-saving, alarm clock picture frame, you should definitely look at the GiiNii Wedge picture frame.

Pros:

• Built-in 512Mb of memory for storing pictures
• Accepts SD, MMC, xD, and MS media cards
• 800×480 resolution
• Includes a clock, calendar, and alarm
• Works with MP3, WMA, ABI, JPEG, TIF, and GIF
• Offers energy-saving feature

Cons:

• Does not include a USB cable for connecting and transferring files from a computer
• Cryptic control buttons

The GiiNii GN-711W Wedge Digital Picture Frame is available here for $80

Features:

• 800×600 resolution with 250 cd/m2 brightness
• USB, SD, xD, MS, MMC cards compatible

By: Wallace Wang

Most people capture pictures using digital cameras, yet they often print their images and store them in frames to hang on a wall or prop on a desk. Rather than waste time printing out an image on paper, use a digital picture frame instead, such as the Giinii Ultra-Thin Digital Picture Frame.

The Giinii Digital Picture Frame is essentially a monitor with its own memory, USB port, and flash card reader. Using a USB cable, you can transfer images from a computer into the Ginii Digital Picture Frame built-in memory. As an alternative, you can also store images on a USB flashdrive and plug it into the picture frame’s USB port, or you can store images on a flash card (Secure Digital, Memory Stick, xD, Compact Flash, or MultiMedia Card) and plug the flash card into the built-in card reader.

No matter how you get images into the picture frame, you’ll need to save those images as JPEG, GIF, or TIF file formats. Now you can play a slideshow of your images with random transition effects, essentially displaying you a new image every few seconds. If viewing your images one at a time seems too boring, the picture frame offers a collage feature so you can view multiple images at once.

Besides viewing digital images, the picture frame can also play audio (MP3 and WMA) and video (AVI and MOV) files so you can watch video clips or listen to music. You can even tilt the frame sideways (landscape mode) or vertically (portrait mode).

The picture frame’s 8-inch screen displays images in 800 x 600 resolution, which is adequate, but you may notice that images may not appear as sharp as they do when viewed on your computer or digital camera. The frame itself is remarkably thin at 0.78 inches thick, which makes it easy to hang on a wall.

Although the frame itself is encased in white plastic, the front of the frame sports a metallic finish. If you don’t like this metallic frame, you can use the optional wooden frame to create a more traditional picture frame appearance. Wherever you place your picture frame, you’ll need to put it near an electrical wall outlet so you can plug it in.

For added versatility, this picture frame also includes a clock so you can set alarms and wake to music and pictures or video. Put the picture frame in sleep mode and it will dim its screen and mute any audio files you might normally have playing. Then at a designated time, the alarm will go off, play your music and display your images to wake you up each morning.

To control the picture frame, you can use the built-in controls hidden in its back, or use the included remote control so you can program your picture frame from across the room. Put in images that represent the goals you want to achieve and every morning, your picture frame can remind you of your dreams by showing you pictures of what you want.

If you’re learning a foreign language, create images that display a foreign word followed by its English translation. Now place the picture frame by your desk and glance at it for a quick refresher on your foreign language vocabulary.

By exercising your creativity, you can turn the Giinii Digital Picture Frame into something more than just a way to display your pictures. However you decide to use this product, you’ll find that storing your digital pictures on it can be as simple as plugging in a USB flash drive or flash card and pressing the on button. With the added versatility of its clock and ability to play audio and video files, the $120 Giinii Digital Picture Frame is a handy way to show off and view your digital images.

The 8-inch Giinii Digital Picture Frame is available here for $129

Pros:

• Easy to set up
• Offers multiple ways to transfer images from a computer or digital camera
• Supports JPEG, GIF, and TIF file formats
• Plays audio (MP3 and WMA) and video (AVI and MOV) files
• Built-in speakers and alarm clock

Cons

• 800 x 600 resolution degrades the appearance of high resolution pictures
• Must be plugged into an electrical wall outlet, can’t run off batteries