Tag Archives: open source

Digital Media, FrameChannel, Photos

What frame do you have?

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Work is progressing on FrameAlbum.  I was ‘distracted’ over the weekend by a family reunion but I’m back at it now with renewed vigor!

  • The website login and registration functions are almost complete.
  • Initial testing of the RSS feeds (redirected via DNS from rss.framechannel.com continues.  Discovered some interesting tidbits.
  • Begun collecting data on the various digital frames supported by FrameChannel.  This is necessary to correctly format the images delivered to the various screen sizes.
On that last point I need a bit of help.  I need a list of manufacturers and model numbers of the frames that folks would like to see supported.  Please contact me directly or post a comment below.  I’ll add those to the the list for initial support.

Digital Media, FrameAlbum, FrameChannel, Photos

FrameAlbum progress report & FrameChannel halts feeds

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As most of you will already know FrameChannel turned off the frame feeds today.  I was hoping for few more days of data gathering, specifically around how it handled new frame registration, before they turned it off.  Oh well…

Pre-registrations at FrameAlbum are going strong — well over 100 so far!  I guess I’d better finish this thing or I’m going to look pretty silly. 😉

Today was work on handling the ‘INFO’ category on Kodak frames.  The idea is to be able to pass back to the frame it’s own ID so the user can register it on FrameAlbum.  Almost there…

BTW, the initial support will be in English only — I’ll entertain other requests if folks would like to see them locallized INFO screens.

Digital Media, FrameAlbum, FrameChannel, Photos

FrameAlbum is ready for pre-registration!

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FrameAlbum site thumbnailFrameAlbum is open for pre-registration!

Frankly, I’m not real keen on the name but speed was more important than polish for this round so there you have it.

After you register for the FrameAlbum beta you’ll be among the first to know when the site is open with it’s initial feature set.

As with most betas, you’ll need to have a modicum of technical prowess to utilize the service as well as a heaping portion of patience.  The initial iteration will offer Flickr feeds to custom RSS capable frames (and news readers).

So, if you’re as sad to see FrameChannel shutdown as I was, and not willing to allow your gee-whiz digital picture frame to devolve into a rather expensive paper weight head on over to FrameAlbum.com and register for the beta!

Digital Media, FrameAlbum, FrameChannel, Photos

Progress update — almost there… and a bit of begging.

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With all the excitement of the last week I almost forgot it was Fathers’ Day yesterday… almost (#sonfail). I took some time away from the development process to celebrate the day and enjoy friends and family.

I’m back at it today with renewed vigor — I’m anticipating opening the site up for pre-registrations sometime tonight (U.S. Eastern time). I’ll post an entry here and via Twitter (@streamingmeemee).

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By-the-way… If there are any web designers with idle hands and an interest in contributing PLEASE ping me. The <table> tag is the extent of my design skills (that will be VERY funny to the people I’m trying to reach here. 😉 ) so we will all be much happier with a design professional on the team.
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Digital Media, FrameChannel, Photos

Sample FrameChannel RSS feed

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As part of my effort to build a replacement for the FrameChannel service I captured a sample of the existing RSS feed my frame receives.

sample-frame-feed.rss

Fundamentally it is an implementation of the Yahoo MRSS (Media RSS) specification.  You can find details here and here.

If you are interested in grabbing a copy of your frame’s feed you’ll need the custom URL for your frame and to set the USER-AGENT header to ‘AVOS/1.1 libhttp/1.1’ (without the quote marks of course).

My frame requested this URL:

http://rss.framechannel.com/productId=KDxxxx/language=en/frameId=xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx

I’ve removed some of the details so as not to tempt the nefarous among us.  The ‘frameId’ field is obviously the MAC address of my frame.  I’ve not yet figured out how productId is derived.