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DIA Parrot by nodesign

What happens when a digital photo frame meets a lightbox and takes a trip through the land of apps?

Lexy Savvides Principal Video Producer
Lexy is an on-air presenter and award-winning producer who covers consumer tech, including the latest smartphones, wearables and emerging trends like assistive robotics. She's won two Gold Telly Awards for her video series Beta Test. Prior to her career at CNET, she was a magazine editor, radio announcer and DJ. Lexy is based in San Francisco.
Expertise Wearables, smartwatches, mobile phones, photography, health tech, assistive robotics Credentials
  • Webby Award honoree, 2x Gold Telly Award winner
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Lexy Savvides

While the very thought of digital photo frames may strike a discordant note in the hearts of many photographers, it's still the case that digital photos are often left languishing on a hard drive or in a box of prints rather than out on display.

The DIA Parrot frame, brought to you by the same enterprising folk who designed the Parrot AR.Drone, is about to make the photo frame cool again — even if the spacebar was still broken when it came around to naming rights.

As for the frame's specifics, this is where things start to get much more interesting. Like a lightbox, the transparent 10.4-inch screen is suspended in front of a light source so that light passes through the image. You can connect via USB, SD cards, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth and for those still sitting on the fence, this photo frame has apps. Holidays 2.0 takes you through a scenic tour of the world via Google Maps and works with geotagged images from compatible cameras allowing for custom journeys to be created.

Using a modified version of Android, the DIA can connect to the internet to download additional apps, get an e-mail address and send images to Picasa and Flickr. Despite its Google OS ways, the DIA is compatible with MoverLite (from the Apple App Store), a transfer app for exchanging data over Wi-Fi.

The price of such luxuries? That would be AU$549. Like the AR.Drone, the DIA Parrot looks like an expensive (but fun) accessory.