A piano black rectangular hole in your personal space that, with a tap of the remote button:
-- plays music from the internet, including Pandora,
-- shows off pictures from your home network,
-- displays updates from Facebook friends.
HP has rolled out what seems to be a true internet appliance. A cool luxury gizmo called "DreamScreen" that does all of the above in two sizes, 10- and 13-inches and rolls in at around $250 and $300 per.
It starts with the concept of a digital picture frame done well, then adds layers of function. It has slots for memory cards and flash drives and will load photos from there, of course. But then it adds networking toget more pictures from your connected computers. WiFi naturally.
Next; add software and circuitry to find and play music from your locally networked computers. Select by song or artist or genre or just randomly play from your libraries. Album art can be displayed too.
Now add connecting to the internet to expand your music horizons. Now we start to see an internet radio that also show pictures. Hmmm.
Next step; let Pandora do the playlist. Sweet. The product blurbs don't say, but can Last.FM and etc. be far behind?
And then, now that they've gone all this way to connecting our picture frame to the internet, HP has added some fun by making the frame go out and check and display whatever's going on, on your Facebook wall.
Then finally, sort of looping back around to the basics, our picture frame can now use its connections to provide a few useful utility features: a clock, a calendar and the local weather.
A little pricy, but not out of line with some popular internet radios; and this gadget does a whole lot more.
Sweet. And pretty.
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