Ever since my brother made the mistake of teaching our dad how to share his digital photos and videos by email, he's rarely gone a whole week without sending photos of nothing in particular to all of us because he simply can't get over the magic of it. Common scenario: I'm sitting in his livingroom working on my laptop, he sneaks up and takes a picture of me in the middle of this fascinating activity, then emails it to me on the spot. Wow.

For Father's Day this year, he's getting this eStarling digital frame, which will connect wirelessly to his network and receive digial photos via its own email address. This way, he can send photos to the frame instead of to me. I can just see him running back and forth between his laptop and his digital frame all day long.

Seriously, though, I think this is a great gift for everyone in the family. I've tried out digital frames before, but have never had one set up in my house, and have never purchased one for my parents (my reasoning being that I don't need one more thing to maintain and update). But with the eStarling digital frame, you don't have to do anything after the initial setup. You can email the photos directly to the frame, set it up to automatically receive Flickr photo feeds, and send photos to it from your cell phone camera. My brother will be able to send the parents photos of his son ice-skating by shooting them straight to the digital frame while my nephew is still on the ice.

But this won't solve all of my problems in relation to my dad's love of all things digital - I'll still have to live with his obsession with Skype video conferencing with the whole family during bicoastal holiday dinners.