A Lovely Use of RSS
My brother, Andrew, a Web developer, is a very clever guy and a fan of woot.com.
Recently, he bought a digital picture frame from Woot that can be fed photos via RSS- as a gift to my parents.
The clever bit is where each of my siblings created a Flickr or Photobucket account in which to post photos of grandchildren. The feeds from each of these accounts was combined in Yahoo Pipes so that, once the frame is set up on my folks’ WiFi network, any new photos posted appear in their digital photo frame.
What a great way for a geographically dispersed family to keep grandparents updated.
My mom called to tell me how much she liked it, and I made a point of noting it was Andrew’s clever idea. All I did was mash the feed together in Yahoo Pipes.
I love technology when it is used intelligently.
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December 26th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
kickass idea!
December 26th, 2009 at 8:24 pm
Sweet and thanks for sharing this! We may have to upgrade Grandma’s frame and do some coordination with the non-geek siblings because Grandma can’t figure out how to upload the new photos we email her.
December 26th, 2009 at 9:12 pm
Awesome!
I was thinking about something like that for my parents in Russia!
December 30th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Yes, great idea! My MIL has not yet used the digital frame my husband got her last year. Though of course she doesn’t have wifi either!
December 31st, 2009 at 6:31 am
Yahoo pipes and framechannel are two ways of combining feeds from diverse services. If people are willing to use the same service, I have a feature on http://ourdoings.com/ that lets you combine multiple families into one photo frame feed. No other photo site supports wifi photo frames anywhere near as well as mine does.
December 31st, 2009 at 7:38 am
Was there something about my comment that made it sound like I didn’t understand you had managed to combine feeds from those services?
December 31st, 2009 at 7:40 am
For a fun image, write something clever on a sign or series of signs, and hold it while emoting appropriately. Did you see the “lost camera” post where somebody did that?
December 31st, 2009 at 8:53 am
Bruce- This: “Yahoo pipes and framechannel are two ways of combining feeds from diverse services. If people are willing to use the same service, “
December 31st, 2009 at 8:54 am
I understand my misunderstanding now.
December 31st, 2009 at 10:14 am
Actually, we managed to combine feeds from Photobucket, Flickr, and Picasa without any problems in Yahoo Pipes.
December 31st, 2009 at 10:15 am
Here’s the next question: What kind of fun, subversive images should I throw into this feed to be displayed on my folks’ frame?
December 31st, 2009 at 1:11 pm
Love the idea! We just got my mom a wireless picture frame for Christmas. We three kids have access to her Flickr and we just post the pictures in there for her. She wanted something like Flickr so she could print off a picture if she wanted.
Is it possible to get your nifty Pipes thing to do the dumping for all of us into her Flickr account?
December 31st, 2009 at 1:38 pm
I don’t believe so, Michelle. Flickr doesn’t make it easy to move photos from one account to another. However, you could combine feeds from all three kids into one and set up email notification for her so she’d always be alert when there are new photos.
Another option is to use this tool to copy all your photos into her account:
http://www.callingshotgun.net/about/migratr/
…but that won’t KEEP her account updated with new photos from the Flickr accounts of the three kids.
January 11th, 2010 at 8:38 pm
Think FeedWordPress and WordPress are a good way to generate a combined photo feed, too.