TUAW Tip: Turn your iPhone into a digital picture frame

You probably thought exactly the same thing I did when I first saw Piet Jonas' tip: the iPhone as a digital picture frame? That's a pretty darn expensive digital picture frame. And his tip is pretty simple-- all he suggests is to turn off the AutoLock feature on the iPhone, thus leaving the screen on to display a slideshow. At first glance, it's not that big a deal.

But the more I thought about it, the more genius it was. I've been pining after a Nabaztag lately, and an always-on iPhone just sitting there on the charging dock could serve exactly the same purpose-- you could have it spit out the time, constantly updated stock info, or even watch your email come in. With Piet's suggestion of webcams, the iPhone could work as a little monitor right there on your desk. And if Apple ever gets this rumored RSS reader off the ground, you could watch RSS headlines fly by on that screen. When you think of all the things you could display on an iPhone sitting in the dock, it's not a bad picture frame at all.

Any other ideas of constantly updated information you could put on your always-on iPhone?

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Source: http://pietjonas.blogspot.com/2007/12/how-to-turn-your-iphon…

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You probably thought exactly the same thing I did when I first saw Piet Jonas' tip: the iPhone as a digital picture frame? That's a pretty...

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drcshine

Nice iPhone guide, it's interesting.
I found many free iPhone games from here, so share it here
http://www.aimersoft.com/iphonegames/freeiphonegames.html

December 18 2007 at 8:38 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

DVD to iPhone

Good idea

http://www.iskysoft.com

December 17 2007 at 7:54 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Matt Harlum

Well another use I've found is to dock the iPhone as you go to bed
playing some music that will help you to sleep, and set the countdown
timer for 30 minutes and set the action to "sleep iPod"

That way you can get the help of some soothing music, charge your
iPhone and not have it wasting energy by playing all night!

December 16 2007 at 7:55 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Dan

i use my iPhone as a flashlight when rummaging for my keys or to read by in a dark symphony hall

December 16 2007 at 3:06 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

2 replies to Dan's comment

Graham Forden

People who use cell phones (for ANY purpose) in performance venues are incosiderate and should have their phones confiscated. It is disrespectiful to fellow audience members, performers, and technical staff. If it is dark, it's dark for a reason. Gadgets should be OFF- not just on silent or airplane mode.

December 16 2007 at 4:09 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Dan

Graham, happy holidays! I'll accept your reply in the spirit of the holidays and not those of a blogtard. My post was supposed to make you smile. My wife is a symphony performer and I cool my heels quite often at Benaroya Hall in Seattle; you're absolutely right about disruptive cell phone activity in public venues; it is totally rude. However, the iPhone is a neat substitute or aid for reading the symphony magazine before the performance and at intermission. We all appreciate your taking the time to bloviate though.

December 16 2007 at 7:10 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

pozzy

Try Tapsnaps (www.tapsnaps.com). It lets you run Flickr slide shows - designed for iphone. No jailbreak required.

December 16 2007 at 12:08 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Derek F.

How about running VNsea while you're at work to keep track of what websites your kids are surfing at home?

December 16 2007 at 8:12 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Justin

That's what Dashboard is for ;)

December 16 2007 at 5:52 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

bsvec

If you play a photo slideshow while docked you don't need to turn off auto lock. Playing a video works this way, too. It seems a few apps override auto lock by design.

December 15 2007 at 11:07 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Wesley

Good idea.

I keep my iPod Touch on a cradle right in front of my monitor when I'm using the desktop, and there are a number of things that could be done in a connected environment. It would be great to use it as an extra screen for things running on my desktop Mac -- CPU usage, top processes (maybe with a kill option), etc.

Or, let the iPod/iPhone screen reflect the contents of what's currently playing on iTunes.

Also, how about solving some distributed cracking problem with the unused CPU cycles?

December 15 2007 at 8:21 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Fabio P

mike, leave the iphone things to erica ;)

December 15 2007 at 8:07 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply