See One, Do One, Teach One

Well, I guess tech-recipes has now made it to the big time.  Yesterday, we received a Christmas package from the boys who help us pay the bills.  Google sent us a present!  w00t!

Since Quinn isn’t here to share the love with me, please allow me to share the unboxen process in some detail…

I had just had a very long week of work.  This was really a wonderful surprise…

From the depths of the boring cardboard box shines the multicolored google goodness…

The top of the box.  I couldn’t been any happier if it were a major award…

Instructions?!?  We don’t need no stinking instructions.  Actually, the instructions were completely wrong and useless.  A mini-CD of software was also included.  It was even more useless than the directions…

Included with the digital video frame was the instruction manual, USB cable, power supply, batteries, and a cool little Swiss army like, around-the-world power adapter.

Here’s the layout of the entire package including the google holiday greetings card…

The frame has about 28 megs of internal memory.  Considering the small size of the frame, it is able to store a great deal of correctly converted pictures.  It also has an SD/MMC slot if more space is needed.  Out of the box, the frame plays its demo mp3s, asf video files, and pictures very efficiently.  Sadly, it goes downhill from there.

Connecting the video frame up to my computer, my XP box detected it correctly and mounted it as a hard drive.  No picture files, mp3s, or video files that I placed into the frame’s memory worked however.  I thought maybe I should actually try to use the included software…

TODO: <File description> has encountered a problem!  lol.  I am not quite sure that the included software is ready for prime time. 

By google searching around, I discovered that everybody is having the same problems.  Lucky for me, somebody posted some hints on how to get the photos working:

1. Export the picture from picasa

2. Use the photo resize powertool from Microsoft to change the resolution to 960×240.

3. Upload the pictures to the device

4. Reboot the device

 So now I have pictures working!  Woo-hoo!

The internal and external software on this frame is total crap.  Although you can not tell it from the picture above, the LCD is of much better quality than the other digital pictures frames that I have typically seen in stores.

It ran about 30-45 minutes on the included batteries.  Luckily, however, it will also run off USB power.  For now, I am leaving in a nice location on my computer desk.

I’ll keep hacking away at it, and see if I can figure out how to get videos and mp3s playing on it yet.

This is a very nice gift from google.  Who cares if the software is a little wonky; it is a very nice thought on google’s behalf.  Even more, this drove home the point to me that tech-recipes is a successful business.  Or at least so far it is.

The community that is building around tech-recipes is a wonderful, wonderful thing.  It is propelling this site into one of the most popular, most helpful websites on the net. 

You guys rock.  Google rocks.  Life is sweet.