Category Archives: Digital Media

Digital Media, FrameAlbum, FrameChannel

Thanks for the help / Status Update / Demo Feed

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Thanks!

Just a quick post to recognize RobF’s help sorting out some issues; with his help FrameAlbum now supports Toshiba frames!  Rob, Thanks for your time and your patience.

 

Status Update:

I’m putting the finishing touches on the channel programming and selection routines today.  I will be releasing some of the beta registrations tonight — watch your email.

If you haven’t done so already, you can register now for the FrameAlbum beta at www.framealbum.com.

 

Demo Feed:

For those of you that have asked, the demo feed is from my Flickr photostream.  Yes, I do shoot a fair bit of live music. 😉

Digital Media, FrameAlbum, FrameChannel, Photos

Breakdown of a FrameChannel request…. Well Helloooooo iPad!

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So I was reviewing my server logs this morning (Yes, I’m a geek — it’s what I do.) and I noticed an interesting entry…

GET /productId=IP14882/frameId=184820da466bcc29ccc5da3620389a26933950e3/sk1=DB7B067C7B8BC66FE49A67DE8D268183D867DA5CF0376662F62CDD5FCA5A0D1B/channellist HTTP/1.1" 404 356 "-" "TTCatalog-iPad/3.0 CFNetwork/485.13.9 Darwin/11.0.0"

There are several interesting bits here…

productId=IP14882

The product ID field is used to communicate what make/model photo frame is trying to connect with the service; In this case it is ‘IP14882’.  I use this information to determine the native screen size of the frame and to track if it supports custom Photo RSS feeds.  So far I have 14 unique productIDs in the database.

frameId=184820da466bcc29ccc5da3620389a26933950e3

FrameId is used to unqiuely identify individual photo frames. Some manufactures use the MAC address of the frame, others use a simple numeric serial number.  This one is larger than most.

sk1=DB7B067C7B8BC66FE49A67DE8D268183D867DA5CF0376662F62CDD5FCA5A0D1B

Huh… I don’t know where to begin on this bit. First time I’ve seen it in a frame request. Anyone?

Update: I’ve re-read the FrameChannel Integration Guide and discovered that this is the SecurityKey.  It is described as:

SECURITYKEY is an encrypted string used to validate that the URL is coming from a genuine partner device.  The security key is an HMACSHA256 digest (as defined in RFC 2104) of the combination of PRODUCTID-FRAMEID  (exactly in that order separated by a single hyphen character), using a secret 32-character key provided by Thinking Screen Media for each productId supplied.  IMPORTANT: the secret key should be considered confidential information, and should not be shared or exposed to the public.  A leak of the security key will require an Frame Media, Inc. Page 2 of 4 Company Confidentialimmediate firmware update by the device partner.

channellist

I’m assuming that this bit indicates that the frame is looking for a list of channels available (Thank you Dr. Obvious). However, I have no notion of the format it is expecting in return. Anyone?
And now for the really interesting bit…

"TTCatalog-iPad/3.0 CFNetwork/485.13.9 Darwin/11.0.0"

Well Hellllooooo iPad! I knew that FrameChannel had an iPad application/widget/thingy but this is my first example request. Many thanks to the intrepid soul who fiddled with their DNS and sent in this request.

Now… If I could just figure out how to respond to a channelList request…  Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?

Digital Media, FrameAlbum, FrameChannel, Photos

Anyone from Toshiba engineering? (what the frack is a ‘channelList’)

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I’ve hit a bit of a hurdle with the Toshiba frames.  When they first contact the FrameChannel service they request a ‘channelList’.  Frankly, the Toshiba frames are not the only ones that do this but since there are large number of Toshiba frame owners pre-registered for the service I’m focusing on them first.

If anyone here has in-depth knowledge of, or access to, the technical details of the FrameChannel support within the Toshiba digital frames I would be VERY grateful for a bit of guidance.

Digital Media, FrameAlbum, FrameChannel, Photos

Wanna see some pictures? FrameAlbum ready for feed testing!

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I’ve decided to focus first on the creation of custom Photo RSS feeds so that folks who are unable/unwilling to manipulate their DNS servers to redirect the old FramChannel URLs will be able to use FrameAlbum.

I’d like some folks to test the demo feed I’ve built using the FrameAlbum service.  This is not a hand-coded RSS feed, it was built and served completely by the new service.

To participate in the testing all you need do is enter this URL into your frame’s ‘Custom Photo URL’ feed feature:

http://rss.framealbum.com/feed.php?fid=999999&pin=1234

Please let me know if you have any issues.

Thanks!

Digital Media, FrameAlbum, FrameChannel, Photos

FrameAlbum, Allllmooooost ready….

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Pre-registration is going strong; 250+ so far.  Thank you to all that have registered so far.

The web front-end is almost ready.  It’s butt-ugly but I’m a fan of the ‘make it work THEN make it pretty’ design philosophy. 😉  I should be releasing a few pre-registrations this weekend.

So far, only public Flickr feeds are supported.  Picasa is next on my list.

What feeds would you like to see supported?

Digital Media, FrameAlbum, FrameChannel, Photos

FrameAlbum now on Facebook and Twitter

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You can now follow FrameAlbum’s progress on twitter as @FrameAlbum.

I’ve also created a FaceBook page (FrameAlbum) but I need at least 25 ‘Likes’ before I can get a direct link to the page.  You can find it if you search for ‘FrameAlbum’.

Thanks for your support!

 

Update: So it seems that this link will get you to FrameAlbum’s page on FaceBook.