As part of the ongoing educational series presented Flash Drive Direct this week we hi-lite the basics of how a digital picture frame works.

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada -- (ReleaseWire) -- 01/14/2008 -- In North America there is a 16 Billion dollar promotional products industry. This massive industry is serviced by nearly 1000 suppliers of everything from pens to Porsches with a logo on it and is sold by over 70,000 unaligned non-exclusive sales reps referred to as promotional products distributors. Many of these promotional products distributors are unaware or do not have the resources to get product information. That is why Flash Drive Direct is presenting this on-going series.

A USB digital frame is the perfect gift for sharing photos. The device is about the size and shape of ordinary picture frames. It contains a Panasonic LCD screen, which displays multiple photos in a slideshow and other various formats. It connects to your computer, cell phone or memory stick to retrieve the pictures and then displays them. Many of the new USB Digital Frames have remote controls and are Bluetooth enabled allowing you to send pictures and files to your frame from any other Bluetooth device.

What's in a USB Digital Frame? The frame is actually a very simple computer. It has most of the same components as the computer on your desktop, but they're a lot simpler in the frame because they only have to perform a single task.

CPU. The central processing unit (CPU) in the digital picture frame is similar to the kind used in small, electronic handheld games.

Memory. The frame has some ROM memory to store the operating system. However additional memory is required (SD Cards) to run the programs. It also has some Flash memory, which is where the pictures, settings and some of the operating software live. No data is lost if the unit is unplugged.

USB Digital Frames Panasonic Display. The display is a 640x480-pixel, passive-matrix liquid crystal display (LCD). This type of display is thin enough that the digital frame isn't much thicker than an ordinary picture frame. The pictures are displayed in 12-bit color, which means that approximately 4,100 different colors can be presented on the screen.

USB Digital Frames Controls. Depending on the model the user-operated controls on the frame can operate a menu of display options, including movies, m-pegs, mp4’s, avi, and jpegs. There is a brightness of the display button that corrects the look for your environment.

USB Digital Frames Features. Some of the USB Digital Frames styles have speakers, can load and play MP3’s. There is also the ability to send (via Bluetooth) the pictures or songs back to your computer so you can email them to friends.


This simplified but concise explanation is part of the upcoming on-line seminar for the promotional products industry