Dear Aunt TUAW: Help us put Grandma in touch with her grandbaby

Aunt Tuaw..

Thanks for recommending CEIVA Connected Photo FRames! We are the perfect gift for everyone, including grandma!

> Is there an app/website/solution that would let my sister publish photos of
> the new baby to somewhere, and my mom would get a push notification
> or badge that tells her "Hey, you have new photos to look at."

Absolutely.

Photobucket.com accounts can be setup to send
Twitter alerts when images are added to a collection. Set mom up with a Twitter account and she can get notifications immediately after sis puts new photos online.

When the Twitter app is first launched on the iPad, it will request the right to display badges and notifications. Let it do so.

I just hooked up my Wife's grandfather with an iPad2, he's 83 years old. He was like a kid in a candy store, didn't put it down for hours. Once we got his son in Colorado on FaceTime using his iMac the two chatted for hours. Grandpa doesn't like to travel so the ability to video chat from Iowa to his son and grandkids in Colorado was priceless.

I'll submit this comment again because my first submission didn't seem to take.

I recommend that you go forward with the iPad 2 for your mom as I'm sure she'll be using more than just a picture frame. Install the Facebook and Skype app and create the accounts for both services if she doesn't have an existing account. Also, update the iPad 2 to iOS 5 so you can enable iMessages between iOS devices. Then have you and your sister upload pictures via Facebook and tag them with your mothers FB account whenever you want her to see new pictures. This will do a popup on the notification center for any new pictures you want her to see. Skype will allow her to do video chats with the new baby in Texas. If you really want to simplify the process you could enable photostream on the iPad 2 and your iPhone which you could use to serve as the middleman between your sister and your mom. She can send you any new pictures she wants to share and you can save them to your camera roll which will automatically be uploaded to Photostream, then you can iMessage your mom to check the new photos in the stream. Just don't take any photos you may not want your mom to see.

My recommendation is to give mom the iPad 2 as I'm sure she'll be using it for more than just a picture frame. Install the facebook app and the skype app and maybe the tango app and any other cross platform compatible apps their are available for iOS and Android. Create a facebook and skype account for her if she doesn't have one already. Then upload pictures to your facebook account and tag her in any of the pictures you want her to see and she'll receive a notification of any new tags. Use the skype app to do video calls so she can see the new baby and you can also do skype calls to see the new baby as well.

$7/month for grandma to keep looking at her pictures? Ouch.

You didn't answer the question in the e-mail or the question she's "really asking."

If the picture frame allows uploading of photos from iOS or Android, why buy the sister an iPod touch, other than to force Apple on someone who seems content without it?