It is always nice to see great reviews on our products. Here is one from Business Week that covers the EX1011 Digital Picture Frame.
"When I tested the EasyShare EX1011, I found the frame simple, elegant, and, yes, easy to use. That's a rarity." said reviewer Olga Kharif.

We got a couple of dings (hey, nobody's perfect ;-) but overall the frame fared well in a great review. Also from the review, "...then there's my favorite feature: You can select from one of a dozen languages. My native language happens to be Russian. When I switched to that, all the menus appeared in Russian. Many digital frames lack these extra touches."

More information on this frame can be found here.

Hi, this is Craig McGowan.  I'm the product marketing manager for EasyShare software.  What that means is that I get to spend my time working with our development team to understand all the cool new features coming out from Kodak research and help explain them to all of our users.  By the way, we just crossed the 20 million mark for EasyShare software users world wide.  There are a lot of you out there!

EasyShare software is Kodak's solution for digital photography on the PC.  It has features for organizing and finding pictures, photo editing, printing (at home and online), sharing (email and online), and creative projects.  It also has features to work with Kodak products like cameras, digital frames, and printers.  Today, I'm going to focus on red-eye editing but check back, I'll be covering many more topics in this blog.

One of the most annoying picture problems is red-eye.  My family is full of blue-eyed people who tend to be prone to big, bright red eyes in pictures.  I'm not very good about going back and setting my camera to red-eye pre-flash so I often end up with lots of red eye pictures.

Here's one of my son from a couple of years ago:

I had lots more like this in my picture collection until we added a nifty new way of reducing red-eye in pictures with EasyShare software.  We took the technology Kodak developed for Kodak Perfect Touch film processing and added to EasyShare software.  The great thing about KPT (as we call it here in Kodak) is that it was designed to work with no operator intervention: it's completely automated.

So when you have a picture with red eye in EasyShare, you can use our editor to remove it automatically.  It finds red spots in the picture and then it uses our proprietary "face detector" to double check that the red eyes are on a face and not red bulbs on a Christmas tree.

The great thing about this is how much time it can save: we find as many red eyes as we can.  I've got one picture with five kids in it and ten red eyes that all got fixed in one click.

Occasionally, we won't find red eye in a picture, so as a backup we also provide manual, click on the red-eye removal.  You just find the red-eye and click on it as shown below.

Our red-eye removal also works great with scanned pictures.  I've been using our new AiO printers to scan in my best pre-digital pictures and its fun to see some of my old pictures again, but this time with out those annoying red eyes!

If you'd like to give EasyShare software a try, you can get it free at www.kodak.com/go/easysharesw

PopPhoto listed Kodak as one of the Top 5 Digital Photo Frames for Mother's Day.

There is an article today in the New York Times Technology section called "At Kodak, Some Old Things Are New Again".

It starts off with Steve Sasson, one of our electrical engineers, remembering the reaction when he invented the first digital camera.

Then it's pointed out that although Kodak was once "the Bell Labs of chemistry", it "has embraced the digital world and the researchers who understand it."

"Indeed, physicists, electrical engineers and all sorts of people who are more comfortable with binary code than molecules are wending their way up through Kodak's research labs."

Also, "finally, digital products are flowing from the labs." The article touches on Kodak's sensors, O.L.E.D., Stream and more.

It's an article worth checking out.

Do you keep your digital pictures trapped on your DSC memory card or the PC? Do you want a fun and easy way to free your pictures, re-live your memories, and bring your pictures to life? I'm eager to tell you about one of Kodak's newest products that will help you unleash your digital pictures. This April 2008, Kodak introduced the 2nd generation of Kodak digital frames, the Kodak Easyshare M820, M1020, and Kodak Easyshare P720.

If you are not familiar with digital photo frames, a digital photo frame is a picture frame that displays digital photos without using a PC. Just think of the traditional picture frames you display in your home. Now with a digital photo frame you have a new and exciting way to display your photos. The Kodak M series frames also play music and video.

 

I have a new digital M820 frame. It's easy to start using. I took it out of the box, plugged it in and inserted my memory card. You can plug in your USB flash drive too. Now you don't have to use a remote control. The quick touch border is a fantastic feature. The unique touch border keeps fingerprints off of your viewing screen so your images stay beautiful. You can create, edit and view slideshows—at the touch of your fingertips.

Watching videos is a great experience. The videos have vibrant colors and you can see details clearly. The built in speakers have adjustable volume. This is great --you don't have to huddle around the frame to hear. You can even add music to your slideshow by playing MP3 files.

I like the design of the new digital frames. They have an art gallery design look and feel. The frame comes with two decorative mattes in silver and red. This is terrific because you can personalize your frame to complement your home décor. If you want to change the style of your 8" and 10" digital frame you can buy accessory faceplates. Each of the faceplates comes with a coordinating matte.

 

Mother's Day is coming up. If you are thinking of buying a frame for your Mom, make it more meaningful and special by preloading it with a slideshow. The new version of EasyShare software lets you create slideshows with videos, pictures and music using your PC. You can select pictures that tell a story of your Mother's life. All you have to do is copy your slideshow to your memory card or USB flash drive and insert in your frame.

Imagine your Mom opening up the frame and seeing pictures of her children, family, and friends set to her favorite songs. She will cherish this priceless gift for years to come.