One of the few services of Windows Live that has received no attention from Microsoft in the Windows Live Wave 4 update is Windows Live FrameIt. In fact this service has actually been down graded as the CSS for the site seems to have gone AWOL.

Windows Live FrameIt, for those that don’t know, is a website and service built to allow online photo albums to be shown on digital photo frames. Photos could be pulled from social networks and photo sites like Flickr and Windows Live Photos. This service doesn’t work with all digital photo frames as some have no internet connectivity. I don’t know if the service has been popular or not but one thing I do know is that Microsoft have given it very little attention over the few years it has been around.

I find it odd that Microsoft haven’t done anything with FrameIt, I think its a good idea for a service. I am seeing more and more digital photo frames in homes and I even think that Windows Live is in a great position to really make this service popular. Now that Windows Live integrates with so many web services and so extensively with the likes of Facebook and MySpace that FrameIt could be unrivalled as a digital photo frame service.

Just looking at Windows Live it could obviously pull photos from photo.live.com allowing users to just choose individual albums or the entire photo collection. But the service could also use the people tags when photos are uploaded with Photo Gallery to have only people or specific people shown on the photo frame. The same could be done for people’s photo collections on Facebook and MySpace now that Windows Live offers more integration to the social networks. Some people probably wont want only people on their digital photo frame so I think FrameIt could also use the geo tags on photos to only show photos from a specific location. This could be photos from several holidays at the same place or photos that fiends have taken on social networks. I think that the high level of integration Windows Live has with social networks could allow for some excellent photos to be shown on photo frames that aren’t possible with any other service.

Then there is obviously Flickr which will offer the same breath of choice for photos but perhaps lack some of the more social elements for a photo stream.

I know I’d love to use FrameIt on a digital photo frame if it would easily pull the photos I wanted it too from my social networks through such filters as people tags and geo tags. Just looking at photo.live.com’s Messenger Social stream suggests such a great source of photos for a digital photo frame.

Thinking on this idea some more I also thought about other areas of Microsoft that could add to FrameIt. Some of Bing’s Visual Search galleries are stunning and obviously it has it home page photo everyday. It would be great to get all of Bing’s home page photos on a photo gallery, I really don’t think I have seen a bad photo on that website.

Then I thought a little more and thought about the vast collection of music images that Microsoft have with Zune. Its unlikely that all people will want a collection of pictures of a single artist (or a collection of artists for that matter) shown in their living room but the way meta data is delivered over the top might be interesting to some people. Data such as the album and photo name could be overlaid along with the location and the names of any people in the photo. The way the photo moves or zooms on the screen is also excellent as it attracts the eye with movement but its only a still photo.

One final point I think should be made is that FrameIt shouldn’t be such a separate service but actually part of Windows Live Photos/Photo Gallery. Windows Live Video Messages has been rolled into Messenger and I believe this service should be merged too, it should make a much more discoverable function.

Now that people are using social networks more and more and because Windows Live does such a great job of unifying all the updates from various web sites and services into a single place it makes a lot of sense to me that they should serve these streams to the places that can best show them. Therefore with photos digital photo frames would obviously be that place. I also think digital photo fames should be more, well, digital. Having still photos is great but I could just as easily print photos off to do that with but instead they should move and be interactive with information on them.

I hope Microsoft don’t abandon FrameIt even if I have never used the service as I really think it could be an excellent way for people to browse photos without having to actually browse through photos.