Looking at family photos has come a long way since I was a kid. My mom had volumes of photo albums with pictures crammed in slots. Inevitably, over time they would stick to the pages and ruin the pictures. Today for family photos, we store thousands of them on one tiny memory card or our computers and view them on a digital photo frame. The next evolution of viewing family photos will be looking at them on the big screen TV in the living room.

You can do something similar on an Apple TV, but you have to send the photos over a network to the device. PIE Unites has a new digital photo viewer called the HD-0310 that connects to your HDTV via HDMI and can display images at full 1080p resolution.

Do you have boxes of old VHS tapes taking up space in a dark corner somewhere? They probably contain all sorts of precious moments, so you don’t want to throw them out. Now you can turn VHS tapes into formats readable by today’s digital media players thanks to the ION.

The Ion VCR2PC video player can hook up to your computer via it’s USB port. Just pick a VHS tape, put it in the player and hook up the player to your computer. When the tape finishes playing, you’ll have it in digital format. Of course, you can also use the player as a fully functional, cable-ready VHS player. It will cost you $250, and will keep your memories safe.

Now that you have your thin, sharp-looking iPhone that for many adds as much style as it does functionality, you can gaudy it up with this 6x zoom attachment for the built-in camera. With this photo shooting accessory from Conice you can take that little 2 megapixel camera to new distances.

The camera uses a clear acrylic case that snaps onto the iPhone and contains an attachment point for the scope which lines up with the existing camera lens. The zoom attachment is 2.87 inches long and weighs a little over 4.5 ounces which is almost as much as the iPhone itself. DealExtreme has the iPhone zoom attachment available for a mere $14.77.

Polaroid launched at CES a new way to print instant photos from Bluetooth and USB-enabled mobile phones and digital cameras. It makes use of a technology by Zink to accomplish its mobile printing goals.

The Polaroid Digital Instant Mobile Photo Printer, powered by Zink Zero Ink Printing Technology, lets consumers create full-color digital photos without ink cartridges or ribbons. It makes use of special paper inside the printer which “is an advanced composite material with embedded yellow, magenta and cyan dye crystals, activated with 200 million heat pulses, in 30 seconds, in a single pass.”

Samsung is offering up for the holidays a new digital picture frame which makes use of Microsoft technology to wirelessly display your digital photos. The new Samsung SPF-83V looks to be priced at around $230.

The Samsung SPF-83V uses technology developed by Microsoft Research to work with the Windows Live Photo Gallery and Windows Media Player. The frame communicates with WMP, which in turn in conjunction with the online photo gallery wirelessly streams digital images to the Samsung display for presentation.

It was only a matter of time. In some distant future we may even have a tree full of programmable hologram ornaments. Right now there is the new USB Santa’s Slide Show Ornament. It displays up to 50 photos on a 1.5 inch color LCD screen in a red ornament. It can either be mounted on a Christmas tree or displayed on a small stand. Connect it to your PC with the usb cord and transfer photos directly into the ornament.

You aren’t limited to just displaying a single frozen image either. Create amazing slideshows. Imagine a slideshow of previous Christmas images to thrill Grandma.

PhotoVu, which earlier this year unveiled a 19-inch wireless digital picture frame, announced today the addition of a 17-inch photo frame to the same product family. The new PhotoVu PV1765w is priced at around $700.

The PhotoVu PV1765w, like other frames in the series, lets you wirelessly stream digital photos to it for display in out of the way places. It uses 802.11 technology to accomplish this. You can also insert a USB thumb drive into the frame to show off photos. It has a variety of customizable frames and can also display RSS feeds.

EDGE Tech Corp has a new 12″ digital picture frame coming to the market in time for the holidays with a competitive price in which they are touting as the most affordable 12″ frame currently available, priced at $129.95. The frame measures 13″ x 2″ x 10.5″ with a 12.1″ screen size putting out an 800×600 resolution of your favorite digital photos.

Like many digital picture frames, this one has a slideshow feature with transition effects between pictures, but unlike many picture frames it also has integrated speakers and can playback MP3 files right through the frame. This is a nice combination of features, giving you one device to have in an office or kitchen that scrolls through your family photos as well as plays back some of your favorite tunes.

SanDisk knows those who own high performance digital cameras demand memory cards offering better transfer speeds and storage capacities. The company thinks it can meet that need with its new SanDisk Extreme III 8GB, priced at around $180.

The SanDisk Extreme III 8GB memory card is in the SDHC format and comes bundled with a SanDisk MicroMate SDHC Reader. A typical Extreme III 8GB card can store more than 4,000 high-resolution pictures or up to 16 hours of MPEG 4 video. Transfer speeds are rated at 20MB per second.

Digital Foci, a developer of digital picture products, is turning to keychain designs to help you carry around your digital photos. The new Digital Foci Pocket Album is priced around $40.

The Digital Foci Pocket Album takes the form of a keychain like device. It sports a 1.5-inch color screen which can be used to view photos for up to nine hours before needing recharging. The Pocket Album can hold up to 74 photos with its 8MB of internal memory. It does not unfortunately offer any type of expansion.

This design concept from Franziska Faoro is called the Triops and consists of 3 fish-eye digital camera lenses facing in 3 separate directions allowing it to take 360 degree panoramic shots. What’s really cool about the device is that it can take them on its own at unexpected moments.

The Triops will take pictures in reaction to movements or sound and can be thrown and take the photos in mid-air. It can also be set to take shots manually and then send them wirelessly to a separate viewing/storage/docking station. This design is still a concept at this point but is definitely something we think would be fun to own.

Look around and you will see digital photo frames everywhere. Just as digital cameras seem to have replaced the older style film ones, are we seeing the end of traditional paper photos in frames? Could be if the price for these marvels keep dropping.

In favor of that direction we present to you Toshiba’s latest digital photo frame, a creation so new that all it has right now is a model number, the sexy sounding DPF7XSE. The 7-inch center display is raised from the base of the unit and displays 800 x 480 resolution. But here’s where it gets interesting: the DPF also has two dual-one watt speakers, 256 MB of memory (as well as allows for SD/MMC/CF/memory sticks via its 2.0 USB port) and can play MP3, WMA, MPEG4 and even DivX files (that sure beats having to press the next button fast to mimic full motion video, doesn’t it?) Color us interested but the company hasn’t revealed how much this little gem will cost us just yet, only that it will be on sale sometime this fall (infrared remote included.)

This unique looking mobile phone-like device is actually not any type of phone at all but is a small DV cam that lets you take photos and record video that you can edit right on the spot.

The mi VDO FX DV Cam sets itself apart from other similar devices through its ability to edit recorded video and add in 3 special FX style modes and up to 18 different visual effects to the footage. You can also …

How wide is wide enough when it comes to a digital picture frame? What if that frame was also wireless? Those are the two main ideas behind the newly announced PhotoVu PV1965w ($1,199).

The PhotoVu PV1965w sports a 19-inch widescreen display capable of showing photos in a 16:10 format. The digital photo frame automatically resizes images sent to it wirelessly or through an attached USB device automatically to 1440 x 900. The PV1965w supports 802.11b wireless technology, though it can be upgraded to 802.11g as well. A recessed accessory pocket lets one connect portable storage devices such as USB flash drives.

Genius, a division of KYE Systems, is releasing a new digital pad for artists, graphic designers and generally anyone who likes to digitally doodle. The Genius PenSketch 9X12 is priced at around $249 and should be available now.

The Genius PenSketch 9X12 is a pen tablet style digital pad for letting users sketch screen art and other forms of free-hand design. It has a large work area and is cordless so that users can work more comfortably. A rubber coated cordless pen with two programmable buttons can be put into the pen-holder when not in use. This pen can control all kinds of shapes and is built with 1024-level of pressure to make thickness control, editing and design easier to do.