A couple of years ago, a series of digital picture frame products appeared. Some took memory cards. One plugged into a modem so grandma could get new grandchild pictures each day without doing things. But they were all super low resolution and high priced.

Panels have come down a lot recently. I see wall mount 1280x1024 panels getting to about $350, wall mountable (though you need power.) That's a resolution I could handle.

How about throwing picture frame ability into these? Either the memory card slot as before, or perhaps 802.11? In the latter case, you could even tolerate not bothering with jpg decompression or much else on the panel, let the PC do it all over the network.

For a few extra bucks, however, a wireless, wall-mount, high-res flat panel display is something I can see people buying many of. Give them a full X server or mini-media server so you can stream mpeg video at them, and I could see a raft of applications as home display and control devices.

They could show you TV, your doorway security cam when the door rings, your caller-ID when the phone rings, weather, traffic, you name it, and be a digital picture frame when nothing else is going on.

Throw in an infrared receiver and they could work with remote controls.

Of course you could also make a mini box that has all this and a VGA output. They do make such boxes with TV output to be media servers connected to your TV and stereo. Has anybody seen one designed to mount flat on the wall behind a flat panel display?

All pointers suggest this product could be under $400 soon, then under $200 at which point you would see a lot of people buying one for each room. Right now 1280x1024 seems the hi-res sweet spot, though in fact 1280 x 854 or of course 1536x1024 to get a photographic aspect ratio woudl be even nicer.

Maybe not for grandma's baby pictures yet, but who knows? If grandma has DSL, you could buy her one of these, and a cheap wireless access point even though she doesn't have any other wireless equipment, and with proper security, let the pictures and display be controlled by you or a photo managing service.