Digital Picture Frames Stink.

I know I’ve talked on and on about how cool it would be to have a digital picture frame that could display hundreds of pictures. Even with my cheap portable DVD Player solution, it still costs around $90 (US). Well, for $90, you could get a ton of pictures printed and a some frames if you shop around.

Why use regular pictures and frames? Well, regular pictures in frames don’t create any increases in your electric bill. Also, you don’t have to figure out a way for the frames to turn off when the lights are off. With old-school low-tech pictures in frames, when the lights turn off the pictures don’t let off any light – these pictures don’t require any special light-sensitive sensors to turn off automatically. They don’t create a problem. Spending some cash and a great amount of time to recreate something that is so simple can be pointless.

There’s no real need for digital picture frames. While they are a cool idea – the item they replace are amazingly efficient and simple. After all, regular pictures in picture frames are wireless – they’re not that bad.

WMP 11 Looks Good

Windows Media Player (“WMP”) 11 has made the rounds on the tech sites. I’ve taken a look at it and it looks good. I’m a Mac user and Microsoft has dropped WMP support with WMP 9 (which is terrible compared to 10 and 11). After seeing WMP 11 with its slick interface and organization of all kinds of files. If you haven’t seen the screenshots, WMP organizes pictures, CDs (I’m not sure about video organization) into stacks. You’ve got slideshows, music and video playlist management in a free piece of software.

I really want WMP 11 on Mac OS X. Hopefully, Mac OS X 10.6 – Leopard will have virtualization built in so I can run a Windows program on my Mac. I just haven’t found a true replacement for WMP since switching to OS X. iTunes is great for music management – it’s crap for video (it handles like 2 file formats) and iPhoto is a separate application. I would rather there was an all-in-one app for the Mac.

Video Lan Client (“VLC”) can handle everything great on any OS. But there just isn’t true playlist management like WMP. One of these days, I’m going to have to quit my complaining that VLC is not WMP by taking the open source VLC and giving it the functionality I miss. In the alternative, any one else can take my idea and feel free to implement full playlist management (maybe even smart playlist management like iTunes too while we’re at it).

The Decine of cnet.com

A couple of years ago, when I wanted cutting edge news, I would go to cnet.com. Now, it’s lagging behind. It’s like a newspaper – it’s got good stories, but they cover yesterday’s news. Don’t get me wrong, I still like the site. They have great reviews and I think they’re moving away from standard news, instead focusing on video content. I wish they could refocus themselves on tech news again, but that may not happen with the rise of sites like digg.com.