This is the only way I would mount a frame on the wall, wires must be hidden.  Keep in mind that this is a fairly permanent solution; if you move it, there will be a nice gaping whole right at eye level.  It’s not that hard to cover it up with another frame, but, still, something to think about.

The writer used Irfanview, a great simple photo editor and slideshow software, to run the photo slideshow.  He also remotes to the laptop using the built in windows tool and a shared folder over his network.

Oh yea, the frame itself is obviously not a self contained computer. It’s actually just an older monitor mounted to a frame.  This helps tremendously with heat since there is no motherboard or CPU.  This also makes repairs or upgrades to the PC less of a hassle since you don’t have to take down and open up your frame.

Very clean install and a seamless software solution, great solution overall.

Wall Mounted DIY Digital Photo Frame | Shuttertalk.

Really good post on using an old P3 PC to build a DIY photo frame.  The writer’s method for building his mother’s unit is a Flickr slideshow script called Slickr.  There’s link to the software and easy to follow directions.  My biggest concern is heat, as usual, but, as he explains, punched holes in the foamcore to help with that.

The polished frame looks really nice. I’ve always thought of mounting mine to a wall, but the power cable dangling down the wall is discouraging.  I think the preferred use for many DPF’s is on a table top.

The DIY Digital Photo Frame | Popular Science.

This post got me thinking about what makes a nice looking frame.  After some pondering, I derived two requirements: a beautiful presentation and a dynamic platform.

The frames shown on this post by one of my favorite blogs, Unplggd, are examples of beautiful presentations.  I noticed that many store bought frames are geared more towards presentation than platform options.  Although, this is starting to shift a bit – it’s this trend that drove me to DIY.

The platform should let you do what you want.  Just pictures? Ok, no problem. How about some weather widget? Yup, we can do that too.  RSS feeds? Of course!  The trick is getting all this to work seamlessly and functionally.  Maybe that’s why many frames adopt a basic approach the frames software.

Nevertheless, if you’re looking for some nice frames, the post illustrates a few great options.  If you’re looking for a software with options, well, stick around. I’ll learn ya’.

If we set aside a workstation and turn into a photo frame, other possibilited begin to open up.  Music server, web server, email server, and, of course, photo frame.  That’s why I like this post.  The writer explains how to configure his Debian install to his specific needs.

He mention Qiv, which I haven’t heard of but will research more.  It sounds like a possible replacement to FEH on my laptop.

My only concern is presentation.  I prefer clean and minimal.  The computer shown in the post could easily be hidden or maybe mounted to the screen itself. Mounting wouldn’t be very “clean” but a small PC sitting on a table is distracting anyway.

Then again, to each his own.  I’m open to new and different ways of DIYing a photo frame.

DIY: Digital Photo Frame on Linux at Black God.

Hack-A-Day has some amazing articles, ideas, and projects.  This guide is not for the newbie, they have some complex instructions that are, at the very least, for electronics hobbyists.

That said, it looks great!  I’d love to make a small frame that can go on my desk or nightstand.

How-to: Digital picture frame, 100% DIY – Hack a Day.

Online News Screensaver RSS, ATOM, RDF, HTML, weather, stock quotes – rss screensaver description.

I am now in the middle of saving my data off the hard drive. It finally failed today. This is Murphy’s Law. I just started this site and, of course, the laptop dies on me. Great.

There is actually nothing on that hard drive that I don’t already have on my external drive. The operating system, on the other hand, is not backed up. I like the setup I have and my hope is to run the iFrame off a spare flash drive until I can afford a new hard drive.

So, that’s what I am up to right now and hopefullly it works, otherwise I’ll have to reinstall it from scratch. If that happens, it’s not all that bad since I kept detailed notes on everything I did. It’s just tedious.

If you want to hear the hard drive for yourself, there is an audio clip on my site, I Am Juan.

I actually found a PDF that shows how to break down the iBook dual USB down the individual parts. I just can’t find it right now.

This post, though, is still very helpful for anyone else that wants to convert their old iBook to a digital frame.

Replacement of the hard disk from an ibook dual usb 500 MHz.

FEH is pretty basic and easy to use – important for me since I have little Linux experience.  It does stop when it finds random Picasa files that copied over by accident but that’s my fault.  FEH does have some display options as well as some, well, I guess they’re called plugins, like unclutter – which removes the mouse from your screen.

Installing Linux can be a bit of a pain, but once it’s working – it really is fire and forget.  Occasional software updates aside, you will almost never have to break the slideshow (using a shared folder and uploading via Wi-Fi), ever.

Using Linux and FEH is probably the best way to show images in a local environment.  Don’t have wireless? Just upload via USB and you’re good to go.

In my research, I did find other scripts that allow you to get real fancy. Like overlay an RSS feed on top of your images. Or auto rotate images from those pesky orientation sensing cameras. I’ll pull them in as I find them.

I’ll go into Linux some more later, but if you’re already on it, give FEH a go. If anything, it will be your default image slideshow app while you find something that works better for you.