At the surface, Canviz is essentially the exact same thing as its predecessors — a sleek, snazzy, network-enabled display intended to hang on your wall and show digital art. Using an accompanying smartphone app, you can load different images onto it and swap them out as you see fit. In other words, it’s a souped-up version of those kitschy digital picture frames that were mildly popular five or six years ago.
It’s not exactly a new idea at this point, but Canviz does have a few notable features that make it stand out from the crowd. Unlike other digital art frames that can only display images, Canviz’s software can also be configured to show real-time notifications for things like date, time, and weather conditions, making it more than just something pretty to look at.
Related: Framed digital canvases aim to bring interactive art home
In addition to notifications, the display supports a wide range of image formats, including .jpg .png .gif .bmp .tga and .tiff (with more to come), so it isn’t limited to simple static pictures. With .gif support, Canviz allows you to load animated images and cinemagraphs, so you’ll finally be able to outfit your walls with those weird, subtly-moving, Harry-Potter-sytle moving pictures you’ve always wanted.
To help raise money for production, Canviz’s creators have turned to the crowdfunding community on Kickstarter, and are currently just a few grand shy of meeting their $50K funding goal. If you back the project now, you can lock down a frame for as little as $250. Once they’ve got the money for manufacturing, the company expects to ship the frames to backers as early as May of 2015. Find out more here.
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