DEMOfall 08: YouGotPhoto lets you send photos to digital picture frames

September 8, 2008 | Dean Takahashi | Comments | |

Ceiva has been offering the ability to send pictures to a digital picture frame for a subscription fee. But YouGotPhoto, created by Taiwan’s UGA Digital, will now do the same thing for free.

UGA has created a site that lets you take pictures from your photo sites such as Flickr and then send them to digital photo frames at your mom’s house or other places. It is working to get the technology designed into a new generation of digital photo frames. In turn, the company hopes to collect a license fee from the frame makers.

Sharing is easy via email. The pictures are delivered over the Internet via Wi-Fi connections built into the picture frames.

The Taipei-based company has 20 employees and was founded in 2007. It has raised $300,000 in seed money from Gemtek, Huveur Technologies, and RDC Semiconductor. Its competitors include Ceiva, Frame Channel, Ality, and Kodak. In contrast to Kodak or Ceiva, UGA doesn’t put its own brand on the service or frames.

Nick Fothergill, general manager, said that the company can make money from consumer frame maker license fees as well as deals with commercial display makers who run advertisements on big screens in places such as malls. Its software can also be used in cell phones as well. The software has to be embedded in chip sets used in the various digital devices to enable the service.

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About the Author, Dean Takahashi

Dean is lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He covers video games, security, chips and a variety of other subjects. Dean previously worked at the San Jose Mercury News, the Wall Street Journal, the Red Herring, the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register and the Dallas Times Herald. He is the author of two books, Opening the Xbox and the Xbox 360 Uncloaked. Follow him on Twitter at @deantak, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

  • Tracy Hall
    I'm in the CE industry - Digital picture frames are a virtually-zero-margin commodity - how do you expect to scrape license fees out of them? This feature, while "neat" is pretty much invisible... wouldn't sell more off the shelf - I really don't see a single chip or product vendor willing to give up any of their meager margin for it...
  • Ryan Chang
    well, they can license this for free. .. and get opportunity when penatration rate is high enough. .... still have to take a deep breath