7 ms·

Picwing (YC Summer 08) Debuts Their Social Digital Picture Frame

61 points by fallentimes 18y ago

fallentimes 18y ago
Once they get their hardware prices down I think these guys will be rocking. My Mom would love me for a million years if I got her one of these.
- tdavis 18y ago
  I could get one for my mom too, then take pictures and have them show up there so she will bug me about my life less often ;)
  - deleted 18y ago
    [deleted]
  - brlewis 18y ago
    If that's all you want to do, you can just use any MRSS-capable frame with OurDoings. http://ourdoings.com/2008-03-01 http://ourdoings.com/2008-03-01 It sounds like PicWing has a lot more ambitious things in mind.
jmorin007 18y ago
Congrats guys! Great idea. Looking forward to getting one for the fam for the holidays!
gojomo 18y ago
These should really have a webcam and mic, too -- albeit with a physical shutter/switch for total confidence in its on/off status. Then it'd be the ultimate for keeping-in-touch-with-distant-relatives.
- edawerd 18y ago
  Thats exactly the long-term direction that we want Picwing to go. Pictures are really just the beginning for us: We would love to enable applications like email, video conferencing, and more that your Grandma would be able to use in a really non-intimidating way.
  - brlewis 18y ago
    Interesting. It looks like you're going after "2. Simplified Browsing" (but not just browsing) as well as "27. Hardware/software hybrids" plus at least one of the 30 different subtypes of "9. Photo/video sharing services" http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html
    - edawerd 18y ago
      number 27 definitely matched what we are doing. The beauty of hardware these days is that its not as scary as most software people thing. Hardware these days really just means low-level software.
wallflower 18y ago
Six words: Automatically updated photos of their grandkids Picwing's potential target market: Grandparents. Go after it! My brother-in-law and myself did this (for my parents) with the then best-of-class Digital Spectrum MemoryFrame. Once we saw that a Wi-fi picture frame supported RSS feeds we were hooked - despite the high cost and painful configuration (RSS + picture frame). I am hopeful that Picwing will make the picture frame grandparent friendly and not try to extort annual subscription fees.
- edawerd 18y ago
  Wallflower, Grandparents or even parents are exactly who we had in mind when we built this!
  - brfox 18y ago
    If there is any way you could do this with a dialup connection, then you have yourself a real golden opportunity... especially if there was no monthly fee for 5 pics/month or something. I would buy one right now if it did this. My recently widowed grandmother doesn't have a computer, let alone a wi-fi connection...
    - edawerd 18y ago
      We realize that there is sort of a disconnect between the people who buy this thing, and the people who this is intended for (i.e. grandma with no wifi). We're exploring possible avenues for this, including having low cost GSM connectivity so you can send upto a certain number of pictures w/o a fee
      - joshwa 18y ago
        You should talk to Amazon-- they cut a similar deal for Kindle.
      - mattmaroon 18y ago
        I wouldn't worry too much about the subset of people who presumably have broadband (since they know what flickr/facebook, etc are in the first place) but not wifi. You could just sell a cheap router with it in a bundle for that. Grandma's have wifi these days too.
edawerd 18y ago
Thanks guys! I'm Edward, one of the founders of Picwing, and we're really excited about finally telling the world about the product! Judging from the number of orders we've been getting, it seems like people have been waiting for something like this for a while. While there are other wireless digital photo frame products out there, we really feel that we've been the first company to tackle it from the software perspective. Thanks again!
- utnick 18y ago
  Looks cool! Are you assembling and soldering these frames from scratch? Would love to hear more tech details on this..
- mattmaroon 18y ago
  That's pretty awesome. Is there a priority waitlist for YC alummns :)
- immad 18y ago
  This is absolutely awesome guys. Congrats. Great idea.
- edawerd 18y ago
  Thanks! We are actually hand-building these things right now, which is why it's taking so long to ship these out to people. They're very far from perfect, and most of our hardware will probably change in the future, but we wanted to get them out to people as soon as possible to get some feedback on them.
- rantfoil 18y ago
  Congrats to the PicWing team. They're building the true next generation of the digital connected home. It's rare to get a team together that is so talented both on software user experience and hardware design.
- babul 18y ago
  Congrats on the launch guys! Awesome product. One simple suggestion that seems to be missing and can add a lot of value for very little cost... Allow the frames to be personalised with custom messages engraved on the wood/glass. Finding a good engraving service is easy enough, but if you had a web-form for personalised messages (with preview), these would make excellent presents for weddings/birthdays/anniversaries/etc. Everyone loves personalisation, and the sentimental value add-in is immense. Just ordered mine. Look forward to getting it soon(ish).
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
davidw 18y ago
Cool! I worked on these a while ago, but then we moved back to Italy... http://www.mobilemag.com/content/100/336/C2154/ http://www.mobilemag.com/content/100/336/C2154/ It was pretty cool - the guy running it scored a deal on a bunch of old HP laptops that he took apart and reassembled into frames.
luccastera 18y ago
Wow! I really like that idea. Now what would be great is if I could hook it up to my Facebook account so that as my friends are adding pictures on Facebook, they show up on my Picwing frame sitting at home automatically.
- edawerd 18y ago
  This is a really cool idea too, and it's def on our feature list. We would also keep in mind that all your pictures on facebook are not necessarily the pictures you want on your grandmas photo frame =)
auston 18y ago
Dude holy crap! I was totally thinking of this! I'm definitely going to get a few!
ericwan 18y ago
this one is awesome. I'd get one for my mom when it gets cheaper. =) Have you guys thought of sync-ing them with flickr and facebook pictures? Or you guys are already working on it?
zkinion 18y ago
Please put something more into it to make it different than d-link's or any other wireless picture frame that can also pull stuff from facebook/etc. Is there an ease of use advantage? Just saying its "social" is played out and only works in the valley. Everybody is doing that these days. Hardware is normally a different game than software and is played by different rules. The marketing is totally different as well. That's awesome that you guys have been able to put a solid piece of hardware together. Don't let all that work, and all that future work, go to waste by falling into a web 2.0 trap. :)
hooande 18y ago
When is Mother's Day again? One less holiday present I have to worry about.
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
Baltropreneur 18y ago
Cool stuff! I wonder how many times Paul Graham saw this idea mentioned in applications before picking the right team to implement it? Overall exciting to see these devices slowly becoming popular (Chumby). There is a ton of innovation to occur here.
- marketer 18y ago
  That's probably a compliment to the picwing guys :) An idea that seems obvious in retrospect is probably a good idea. But I'm betting it wasn't obvious to a lot of people before the TC article. If you said, four months ago, that you wanted to "view your photostream across any medium", you'd get plenty of blank stares :)
  - Baltropreneur 18y ago
    Yeah it was a 2ndary idea we mentioned in sept 2007 application. Like do you have any other ideas we may find of interest. Though we were not looking at it from a hardware standpoint, but social photo software. Either way its great to see these devices start catching on and congrats to these guys!
maxklein 18y ago
Too expensive. For $50 you'll have me, till then, no deal.
- axod 18y ago
  For $249 you could just buy a mini laptop :/
axod 18y ago
It's sort of funny seeing this, after CO2Stats. Surely electronic picture frames are sort of bad in terms of using energy needlessly? Is there technology yet that only uses power when the display changes, and not all the time?
- vlad 18y ago
  "Electronic paper" is designed this way.
  - axod 18y ago
    In production and cheap yet?
    - nick5768 18y ago
      It's the stuff that is used in the Kindle and Sony Reader displays (also in that upcoming Esquire magazine cover http://www.hackaday.com/2008/07/30/esquires-hackable-e-paper-display/ http://www.hackaday.com/2008/07/30/esquires-hackable-e-paper... ). I know the refresh rates are still very "1st generation", but have no idea about how far along color displays are though.
- brlewis 18y ago
  My wireless digital frame (reviewed at the link below) draws only 9 watts: http://ourdoings.com/2008-03-01 http://ourdoings.com/2008-03-01
terpua 18y ago
http://www.picwing.com/about http://www.picwing.com/about Just like jobsyndicate and startuply, nice copy. Perhaps PG looks for hackers, who are also writers :)
whalesalad 18y ago
Pricey but I bought one. Mom's birthday is right around the corner and I love supporting a small and new startup.
khill 18y ago
When I see something like this, my first thought is, "I wonder how easily this could be hacked so I could display whatever picture I wanted on random people's photo frames?"
Tichy 18y ago
Why do digital picture frames always have such broad borders? I'd really like one that is more elegant, that is, with less wasted "screen estate". But never mind, I won't buy one anyway - I am waiting for digital ink to catch up...

61 points by fallentimes 18y ago

Once they get their hardware prices down I think these guys will be rocking. My Mom would love me for a million years if I got her one of these.

tdavis 18y ago
I could get one for my mom too, then take pictures and have them show up there so she will bug me about my life less often ;)
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
- brlewis 18y ago
  If that's all you want to do, you can just use any MRSS-capable frame with OurDoings. http://ourdoings.com/2008-03-01 http://ourdoings.com/2008-03-01 It sounds like PicWing has a lot more ambitious things in mind.

jmorin007 18y ago

Congrats guys! Great idea. Looking forward to getting one for the fam for the holidays!

gojomo 18y ago

These should really have a webcam and mic, too -- albeit with a physical shutter/switch for total confidence in its on/off status. Then it'd be the ultimate for keeping-in-touch-with-distant-relatives.

edawerd 18y ago
Thats exactly the long-term direction that we want Picwing to go. Pictures are really just the beginning for us: We would love to enable applications like email, video conferencing, and more that your Grandma would be able to use in a really non-intimidating way.
- brlewis 18y ago
  Interesting. It looks like you're going after "2. Simplified Browsing" (but not just browsing) as well as "27. Hardware/software hybrids" plus at least one of the 30 different subtypes of "9. Photo/video sharing services" http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html
  - edawerd 18y ago
    number 27 definitely matched what we are doing. The beauty of hardware these days is that its not as scary as most software people thing. Hardware these days really just means low-level software.

wallflower 18y ago

Six words: Automatically updated photos of their grandkids Picwing's potential target market: Grandparents. Go after it! My brother-in-law and myself did this (for my parents) with the then best-of-class Digital Spectrum MemoryFrame. Once we saw that a Wi-fi picture frame supported RSS feeds we were hooked - despite the high cost and painful configuration (RSS + picture frame). I am hopeful that Picwing will make the picture frame grandparent friendly and not try to extort annual subscription fees.

edawerd 18y ago
Wallflower, Grandparents or even parents are exactly who we had in mind when we built this!
- brfox 18y ago
  If there is any way you could do this with a dialup connection, then you have yourself a real golden opportunity... especially if there was no monthly fee for 5 pics/month or something. I would buy one right now if it did this. My recently widowed grandmother doesn't have a computer, let alone a wi-fi connection...
  - edawerd 18y ago
    We realize that there is sort of a disconnect between the people who buy this thing, and the people who this is intended for (i.e. grandma with no wifi). We're exploring possible avenues for this, including having low cost GSM connectivity so you can send upto a certain number of pictures w/o a fee
    - joshwa 18y ago
      You should talk to Amazon-- they cut a similar deal for Kindle.
    - mattmaroon 18y ago
      I wouldn't worry too much about the subset of people who presumably have broadband (since they know what flickr/facebook, etc are in the first place) but not wifi. You could just sell a cheap router with it in a bundle for that. Grandma's have wifi these days too.

edawerd 18y ago

Thanks guys! I'm Edward, one of the founders of Picwing, and we're really excited about finally telling the world about the product! Judging from the number of orders we've been getting, it seems like people have been waiting for something like this for a while. While there are other wireless digital photo frame products out there, we really feel that we've been the first company to tackle it from the software perspective. Thanks again!

utnick 18y ago
Looks cool! Are you assembling and soldering these frames from scratch? Would love to hear more tech details on this..
mattmaroon 18y ago
That's pretty awesome. Is there a priority waitlist for YC alummns :)
immad 18y ago
This is absolutely awesome guys. Congrats. Great idea.
edawerd 18y ago
Thanks! We are actually hand-building these things right now, which is why it's taking so long to ship these out to people. They're very far from perfect, and most of our hardware will probably change in the future, but we wanted to get them out to people as soon as possible to get some feedback on them.
rantfoil 18y ago
Congrats to the PicWing team. They're building the true next generation of the digital connected home. It's rare to get a team together that is so talented both on software user experience and hardware design.
babul 18y ago
Congrats on the launch guys! Awesome product. One simple suggestion that seems to be missing and can add a lot of value for very little cost... Allow the frames to be personalised with custom messages engraved on the wood/glass. Finding a good engraving service is easy enough, but if you had a web-form for personalised messages (with preview), these would make excellent presents for weddings/birthdays/anniversaries/etc. Everyone loves personalisation, and the sentimental value add-in is immense. Just ordered mine. Look forward to getting it soon(ish).

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

davidw 18y ago

Cool! I worked on these a while ago, but then we moved back to Italy... http://www.mobilemag.com/content/100/336/C2154/ http://www.mobilemag.com/content/100/336/C2154/ It was pretty cool - the guy running it scored a deal on a bunch of old HP laptops that he took apart and reassembled into frames.

luccastera 18y ago

Wow! I really like that idea. Now what would be great is if I could hook it up to my Facebook account so that as my friends are adding pictures on Facebook, they show up on my Picwing frame sitting at home automatically.

edawerd 18y ago
This is a really cool idea too, and it's def on our feature list. We would also keep in mind that all your pictures on facebook are not necessarily the pictures you want on your grandmas photo frame =)

auston 18y ago

Dude holy crap! I was totally thinking of this! I'm definitely going to get a few!

ericwan 18y ago

this one is awesome. I'd get one for my mom when it gets cheaper. =) Have you guys thought of sync-ing them with flickr and facebook pictures? Or you guys are already working on it?

zkinion 18y ago

Please put something more into it to make it different than d-link's or any other wireless picture frame that can also pull stuff from facebook/etc. Is there an ease of use advantage? Just saying its "social" is played out and only works in the valley. Everybody is doing that these days. Hardware is normally a different game than software and is played by different rules. The marketing is totally different as well. That's awesome that you guys have been able to put a solid piece of hardware together. Don't let all that work, and all that future work, go to waste by falling into a web 2.0 trap. :)

hooande 18y ago

When is Mother's Day again? One less holiday present I have to worry about.

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

Baltropreneur 18y ago

Cool stuff! I wonder how many times Paul Graham saw this idea mentioned in applications before picking the right team to implement it? Overall exciting to see these devices slowly becoming popular (Chumby). There is a ton of innovation to occur here.

marketer 18y ago
That's probably a compliment to the picwing guys :) An idea that seems obvious in retrospect is probably a good idea. But I'm betting it wasn't obvious to a lot of people before the TC article. If you said, four months ago, that you wanted to "view your photostream across any medium", you'd get plenty of blank stares :)
- Baltropreneur 18y ago
  Yeah it was a 2ndary idea we mentioned in sept 2007 application. Like do you have any other ideas we may find of interest. Though we were not looking at it from a hardware standpoint, but social photo software. Either way its great to see these devices start catching on and congrats to these guys!

maxklein 18y ago

Too expensive. For $50 you'll have me, till then, no deal.

axod 18y ago
For $249 you could just buy a mini laptop :/

axod 18y ago

It's sort of funny seeing this, after CO2Stats. Surely electronic picture frames are sort of bad in terms of using energy needlessly? Is there technology yet that only uses power when the display changes, and not all the time?

vlad 18y ago
"Electronic paper" is designed this way.
- axod 18y ago
  In production and cheap yet?
  - nick5768 18y ago
    It's the stuff that is used in the Kindle and Sony Reader displays (also in that upcoming Esquire magazine cover http://www.hackaday.com/2008/07/30/esquires-hackable-e-paper-display/ http://www.hackaday.com/2008/07/30/esquires-hackable-e-paper... ). I know the refresh rates are still very "1st generation", but have no idea about how far along color displays are though.
brlewis 18y ago
My wireless digital frame (reviewed at the link below) draws only 9 watts: http://ourdoings.com/2008-03-01 http://ourdoings.com/2008-03-01

terpua 18y ago

http://www.picwing.com/about http://www.picwing.com/about Just like jobsyndicate and startuply, nice copy. Perhaps PG looks for hackers, who are also writers :)

whalesalad 18y ago

Pricey but I bought one. Mom's birthday is right around the corner and I love supporting a small and new startup.

khill 18y ago

When I see something like this, my first thought is, "I wonder how easily this could be hacked so I could display whatever picture I wanted on random people's photo frames?"

Tichy 18y ago

Why do digital picture frames always have such broad borders? I'd really like one that is more elegant, that is, with less wasted "screen estate". But never mind, I won't buy one anyway - I am waiting for digital ink to catch up...