Some clever detective work has unearthed this Sony patent, which seems to combine a large touchscreen (à la the Microsoft Surface or iTable) with a printer. Put your digital camera on top and, yes, your photos print out. It must be magic.

The patent’s name, “Image forming device, having an ejection tray,” and a display is mounted to a cover, or IFDHAETAADISIMTAC, is one of those rare gems that actually describes its functionality. You’re able to either view the photos on the large touchscreen, or, if you’re so inclined, can print them out the side using the device’s built-in printer. It’s like having a Kinkos from Minority Report right in your office. Well, if it were real.

That’s the new thing, right, touchscreens everywhere?

via Electronic Pulp

This is a scanner produced by someone by the name of Pandigital. It’s called the PhotoLink Handheld Scanner. It’s portable!

Right, so it’s a portable scanner with a max resolution of 1800×1200 at 300dpi. That’s roughly 60 percent of the resolution Getty—they’re like the Associated Press of photography—uses. You can scan photos up to 4×6-inches in size.

It’s got the usual bells and whistles, if you can call them that: she works with all the popular memory cards out there (SD, XD, CF, etc.) and has a mini USB 2.0 port should you want to transfer you photos that way.

It’s $99 for this, which, I think, isn’t unreasonable.

Anybody who’s had to scan a big fat pile of old photos into their computer knows that it suh-huuucks. So along comes the ingeniously named “Photograph to Digital Picture Converter” from Hammacher Schlemmer for $150.

It’s got a 5MP CMOS sensor with an 1,800 dpi resolution that basically takes a digital photo of whatever regular photo you slide down into the tray. The device plugs into your computer’s USB port (Windows only, sorry), allowing you to manipulate your now-digital photos any way you see fit.

Sure, a scanner might accomplish the same task but this doodad looks nice for whizzing through a bunch of photos in rapid succession. If Hammacher Schlemmer comes out with a 250-photo add-on tray for automating the entire process, I’m sold.

Product Page [Hammacher Schlemmer]

Mr. Pogue at the Times today has a little roundup of digital photo picture frames. He tries out the eMotion, Parrot DF7220, Kodak EasyShare EX1011, eStarling Digital Wireless, Momento 100, PanDigital WiFi Picture Frame and SmartParts SP8PRT.

The main thesis here is that all of those frames are much improved over previous years’ incarnations. For the most part, resolutions are no longer lousy and you’ll find more than one way to send pictures to them, be it with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, a USB Flash drive or memory card. Pogue was particularly impressed with the Kodak dealie (pictured)—you can set up a photo album on Kodak’s Web site and the frame will automatically grab them via Wi-Fi. He also sees the SmartParts as doing well, primarily because it incorporates a printer. That way, you can stuff your precious memories in your wallet, only to be taken out at reunions and the like.

Prices for these frames have come down, too, with most falling within a $150-$250 price range. I wonder, though, that if picture frames are about decoration as much as anything how many people can afford to line their walls with the digital ones. My house growing up had dozens of picture frames and I’m pretty sure they didn’t all cost $150 a pop.

A New Generation of Digital Picture Frames [New York Times]

Hate opening Photoshop, that resource hog, just to resize an image? Me, too! That’s why I use Picnik, an online photo editor that uses the magic of Web 2.0 to—get this—edit photos. It can grab photos from your Flickr, Facebook, Picassa, Photobucket and Webshots account, or edit photos you have on your computer. There’s a premium version, too, that, for $25 a year, gets you access to a bunch more photo filters and effects. I personally don’t use the premium, but that’s only because I rarely do anything beyond cropping, resizing, etc.

Better still, the Picnik team seems to be a fun bunch. The site is peppered with little witticisms and whatnot that make you realize the people behind the curtain aren’t total jerks. I appreciate that.

Picnik

For starters, there are slots and drives for just about every modern media type: USB flash and hard drives, CD/DVD, all manner of flash cards and floppies, and there’s a flatbed scanner. What’s more, you can send pictures from a cellphone or other mobile device by Bluetooth or IR directly to the kiosk. There are lots of options from simple prints of various sizes to collages and calendars with selectable borders to the cheesiest of greeting cards. You can do some minor edits, too (color correction, crop, brightness, contrast, etc. etc.).

So why is heading to a kiosk more fun than doing the very same thing at home? Well, I’m betting it’s the touchscreen interactivity of it all, on a system geared for easy use at a fast pace. It forces you to concentrate on working on your photos and there’s something about just tapping on a screen that made it more enjoyable. (Though I f*cked around so much that I likely would’ve angered anyone waiting to use the machine.) The Bluetooth feature alone is worth a stop at the kiosk. In a couple minutes I had a really nice collage of pictures I took with my phone on a recent trip.

The point to all this: Don’t neglect your friendly neighborhood photo kiosk. Even if you think you can do what it does at home, the kiosk experience can be more productive and ultimately more satisfying.

Find a Kodak Picture Kiosk near you

To some, Gigantor is a huge remote-controlled robot that fights crime for some reason. To others, Gigantor is a giant digital photo frame that displays images of you and your loved ones. I’m here today to talk about the second Gigantor.

ThinkGeek.com is selling a 15-inch cherry wood digital photo frame for $249.99, which I believe is a fair price for an item of this size. Photos are displayed at 1024×768 resolution in JPEG or BMP formats (up to 12-megapixel) and the frame can handle MPEG-1, -2, or -4 movie files and MP3 audio files. You can use a variety of memory card formats and control slideshows, music, and videos with the included remote.

15" Gigantor Digital Photo Frame [ThinkGeek.com]

I was at Josh’s house the other day and noticed, quietly, that he has one of those digital photo frames. I mean, he’s cool to begin with, but now I know he’s, like, Fonzie cool. So now I look at iRiver’s new Siren digital photo frame with “Be Like Mike Josh” on my mind. Its 5.6-inch QVGA display, encased in old person-friendly mahogany, should do the trick for most folks. I like to think we speak to the masses here.

But I bet you’ll want to know what type of cards work with Siren, right? Right. No surprises here: SD/MMC/MS/CF. (My favorite is CF; that’s what my digital SLR uses!) Siren has 512MB of built-in memory, or if you’re cool like us, you’ll use the built-in USB 2.0 port. Well, “cool” in the “we’re closet nerds” sense.

The viewing angles ain’t bad either: 130 degrees horizontal and 110 degrees vertical. Too bad iRiver likes to release stuff exclusively for Japan, where Siren will debut next month for around $125. That’s cool, though, since there’s plenty of these things populating your local Wal-Mart’s bargain bin.

Iriver DF150 digital photo frame [Fareastgizmos]

If you’re one of those annoying photographers who hangs around tourist spots offering to take people’s pictures for ridiculous prices, then you’ll certainly be interested in Canon’s latest portable printer. The pint-sized SELPHY CP740 printer spits out 4×6-inch lab-quality photos in less than a minute. It also includes automatic red-eye reduction, a 2-inch color LCD screen and multiple direct-printing options.

The CP740 will be available in the fall for $99.99. At least this way you can print better pictures and people will be more inclined to purchase them.

Press Release

Google rolled out two new features for its Picasa (think Flickr, only by Google) online photo sharing site yesterday, both of which are useful for showing your friends just how crazy and unpredictable your life is. The first allows you to tag your photos with the location of where they were taken. Then, when sharing the photo album online with your friends, they’ll see all the photos on a Google Map, just like this .

Google has also launched a version of Picasa specifically designed for cellphones. This version adapts itself to the small screen and uses the phone’s built-in Web browser. Apparently, BlackBerry users, soulless beings that they are, may have to adjust their browser settings to get Picasa to display properly. Serves ‘em right.

You know, as I type this, I’m using the whole gamut of Google apps: Google Docs, Gmail, Google Maps, Google Reader. I’ll be testing out the Picasa client in just a bit, expecting it to be as solid as the rest of the company’s widgets. ‘Cause if it’s not…

Put your photos on a map, and Picasa on your phone [Google Blog]

This SlickrFrame digital photo frame uses recently released open source software to display any Flickr photo tagged with the word “slickrframe.” The frame itself is made out of an old laptop and connects to the Internet with Wi-Fi. The software, Slickr, then combs Flickr for any and all images tagged with the magic word. When it finds one, the frame then displays the photo. Simple, lighthearted and fun. We could use more of that.

Its creator appears to be a humble, nice chap, so help him pass the time while at work by sending him memorable photos. Please, no upskirts, tubgirls, or lemonparties.

SlickrFrame [Fresharrival.com]