DIGITAL MEDIA FRAME

• US 20120170869A1
• Filed: 01/11/2012
• Published: 07/05/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 11/18/1998
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Monument Peak Ventures, LLC (Dominion Harbor Enterprises, LLC)
• Original Assignee: Intellectual Ventures Fund 83 LLC (Intellectual Ventures LLC)
• Inventors: Bandaru, M. Krishna, Sieget, Robert E.
• Granted Patent: US 9,135,276 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 382/305
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/54 Browsing; Visualisation therefor
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/58 Retrieval characterised by using metadata, e.g. metadata not derived from the content or metadata generated manually
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0484 for the control of specific functions or operations, e.g. selecting or manipulating an object, an image or a displayed text element, setting a parameter value or selecting a range
• CPC Class Codes: G09G 2380/16 Digital picture frames
• CPC Class Codes: G09G 5/003 Details of a display terminal, the details relating to the control arrangement of the display terminal and to the interfaces thereto specific for a CRT G09G1/165; for a flat panel G09G3/2092
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 17/22 Interactive procedures; Man-machine interfaces
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 1/00198 Creation of a soft photo presentation, e.g. digital slide-show
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 1/00204 with a digital computer or a digital computer system, e.g. an internet server programmed control between transmitter and receiver or between image input and image output device H04N1/32561
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 1/00244 with a server, e.g. an internet server fax-servers or the like for store and forward H04N1/324
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 1/00347 with another still picture apparatus, e.g. hybrid still picture apparatus circuits or arrangements for control or supervision between image input and image output device H04N1/32
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 1/32128 attached to the image data, e.g. file header, transmitted message header, information on the same page or in the same computer file as the image for information embedded in the image H04N1/32144
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 2201/0027 Adapting to communicate with plural different types of apparatus
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 2201/0084 Digital still camera
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 2201/0087 Image storage device
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 2201/0089 Image display device
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 2201/3266 of text or character information, e.g. text accompanying an image H04N2201/3226 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 2201/3273 Display
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 5/77 between a recording apparatus and a television camera
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 9/641 Multi-purpose receivers, e.g. for auxiliary information H04N9/642 takes precedence

Abstract

A method and a device for displaying images on a digital media frame is disclosed. In one embodiment, the device includes a memory, a processing unit, a display, an interface circuit, and a display circuit. The interface circuit has at least one receiving port capable of identifying various types of networking protocols that are used to transfer the image data. The processing unit attaches auxiliary information to each image before images are stored in a memory. The display circuit displays images according to the image data received. The digital media frame further contains a user input device, which allows a user to alter the image display sequence. The user input device is an input device other than a keyboard or a cursor control device.

Claims

1. A method for providing images or information to a plurality of digital media frames over a communication network by a network service provider, the method comprising:

providing at least one service by said network service provider to said plurality of digital media frames, wherein said at least one service includes providing categories of images and categories of commercially available content viewable on said digital media frames;

providing by said network service provider a means for selecting one or more services from said at least one service to be transmitted to a respective digital media frame over said communication network;

associating each digital media frame with an account associated with said network service provider, wherein each account includes a user profile that includes the selected one or more services;

based on the user profiles, transmitting by said service provider the selected one or more services included in said user profiles to the digital media frame associated with each respective user profile;

receiving by said network service provider a share list from respective digital media frames and storing said share lists in the user profiles associated with the respective digital media frames, wherein each share list includes identifiers for other digital media frames;

receiving by said network service provider a share operation indicator from a digital media frame; and

based on the share list included in the user profile associated with said digital media frame indicating the share operation, transmitting by said service provider selected share objects to the digital media frames identified in the share list.

2. The method as in claim 1, wherein said commercially available content comprises:

financial news;

shopping;

weather news;

sports news;

advertisements; and

interactive messages.

3. The method as in claim 1, wherein at least one of said commercially available content and said images includes audio.

4. The method as in claim 1 wherein said network service provider receives said user profile from said respective user.

5. The method as in claim 1 wherein said plurality of digital media frames comprises a defined group of respective users.

6. The method as in claim 1 wherein providing by said network service provider a means for selecting one or more services from the at least one service to be transmitted to a respective digital media frame over said communication network comprises providing by said network service provider a web page for selecting one or more services from the at least one service to be transmitted to a respective digital media frame over said communication network.

7. The method as in claim 1 further comprising creating by said network service provider said user profiles.

8. The method as in claim 7 further comprising storing by said network service provider said user profiles in a user profile database.

9. The method as in claim 1 further comprising using by said network service provider said user profiles as default configurations for respective digital media frames.

10. The method as in claim 1, wherein transmitting by the service provider selected share objects to the digital media frames identified in the share list comprises transmitting by the service provider selected share objects comprising at least one of an image, a video, audio, and text to the digital media frames identified in the share list.