But keeping those types of digital-photo frames up-to-date with new pictures demands more technical skill than many parents and grandparents are likely to have. It requires, for example, rudimentary knowledge of how to configure a home Wi-Fi network or shuttle storage cards between a frame and a digital camera. Still, digital frames are a great way to keep generations in touch with, say, a far-flung child’s latest ballet recital or a football game.

Just in time for the holidays, the wireless carrier T-Mobile is selling a digital-photo frame that makes it easy to set up and to keep fresh. While I found the Cameo excels in its simplicity, it comes with a number of annoying drawbacks and a pricing model that will limit its appeal. It sells for a reasonable $99.99 in T-Mobile stores, but carries a hefty $9.99 monthly fee.

Still, Cameo is an exciting first edition of a product.

First, its strengths. The picture frame is as easy to operate as a cellphone, containing some of the same technical innards of a wireless handset. And each Cameo has a unique phone number, just like a cellphone, that lets anyone who knows the number to “dial” it up — sending messages containing digital photographs instead of voice calls.

Setting up Cameo is as easy as taking it out of a box, screwing a stick into the back to prop up the frame and plugging it into an electrical outlet. The Cameo has a seven-inch color display and one of the more attractive borders I’ve seen on a digital photo frame: imitation black leather with white stitching.

Users themselves can manually load images onto the frame from a PC by connecting it through a USB cable or by inserting a miniature storage card from a digital camera.

Cameo can receive pictures wirelessly two ways. The owner of the frame hands out the Cameo’s phone number to friends and family members, who then send pictures to the frame that were taken with the cameras standard on most modern cellphones. This method uses MMS, or multimedia messaging service, a communications standard normally used to share pictures and other media between cellphones.

Cameo owners also can give out an email address for their picture frames that is based on their Cameo’s phone number, allowing people to email images that they’ve downloaded to their computers from digital cameras.

The first time the frame receives a picture from an email address or phone number, Cameo asks the frame owner to push a button on the back of the frame to place the sender on an approved list. After that, all images from the approved source appear automatically on the frame — a method that at least keeps random people’s photos from popping up in grandma’s living room.

There’s a wonderful unpredictability to how Cameo works. Imagine all of the kids and grandkids in a sprawling family room in different locations being able to send snapshots to each other. This is possible now with photo-sharing sites like Flickr, but those typically require going to a Web site. Images on a Cameo just show up without warning on your kitchen countertop, living room or office desk.

I handed out my Cameo number to some colleagues and was delighted when their cameraphone pictures began trickling into my frame, including a shot of the New York neighborhood in which one of them lives, and an image of another colleague ice skating.

The Cameo’s screen, featuring 720×480 pixels, isn’t the highest-resolution digital photo frame on the market, but the pictures looked fine to me. You can do a slide show for any number of images, chose a fade-out or other transition, change the order of the photos and alter the display speed — holding a single image for up to an hour.

Unfortunately, the frame has a skimpy 64 megabytes of memory, and storage capacity isn’t expandable. There is enough room for only about 200 photos at maximum size. Once it’s full, you have to make room by manually deleting photos.

Another problem is that the frame currently is available only to existing T-Mobile cellular subscribers.

By far, the biggest turnoff is the monthly fee for the cellular service that delivers the pictures to the frame. There’s no limit on how many pictures can be sent to a Cameo under T-Mobile’s cellular plan, but $120 a year is a steep price.

The carrier says it will consider other pricing options in the future. Until it does, it’s going to be tough for most people to buy the Cameo, even for a beloved family member.

Walt Mossberg is on vacation.

Write to Nick Wingfield at nick.wingfield@wsj.com

Trying to share information with people on your Web-based networks can introduce another layer of digital jujitsu. It can be awkward to snag a photo or a snippet of text from one Web site and send it to a friend in a social network on another, or post it to your own blog.

But I’ve been testing a little-known Web browser that attempts to solve these problems. It’s called Flock, and it bills itself as “the social Web browser.” I found that it worked well, but it isn’t for everyone, and it has some important downsides.

Flock is a modified version of the excellent Firefox Web browser that tacks on some special features for social networkers and bloggers. It’s available free at flock.com in essentially identical versions for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Flock adds a special vertical “sidebar” at the left of the browser that keeps your social networks, photo sites or news feeds visible at all times, regardless of what page you’re viewing in the main browser window.

For instance, with Flock, you can see that you have a new friend request in Facebook, or that a pal has posted new photos in Flickr, without clicking away from reading this column in the main browser window.

But, wait: There’s more. With one click, you can display a horizontal “media bar” across the top of the browser containing thumbnails of all of a friend’s photos or videos from a social-networking or photo site, again without changing what’s in the main browser window.

These two special bars also allow you to take action. For instance, you can just drag images and text from Web pages into the sidebar to share them with friends listed there. And any photo on the media bar can be quickly emailed or posted to a blog.

There’s also a “Web clipboard,” which can save any text, image or link from a site in the main window by merely dragging it to the Flock sidebar. Once an item is in this clipboard, it stays there until you delete it.

Flock has its own built-in blog editor, which allows you to quickly compose, edit and publish blog posts containing interesting items you encounter on the Web. And it creates a special personal Web page, called My World, which combines your social-networking updates, news feeds and photos.

I found Flock productive and fun to use. I tested its special sidebar with my Facebook, Flickr, Picasa and YouTube accounts, and with my favorite news feeds. I also used another of Flock’s features, which let me check my Gmail and Yahoo Web-mail accounts without navigating to their main pages. And I published several posts from within Flock to a test blog I maintain. All of this worked as promised.

In my tests, I used the latest edition of Flock, version 2.0, which is built on the new Firefox 3.0 browser. Even though this latest iteration of Flock is still in beta status, I found it to be quite stable.

But Flock isn’t for everyone, and it has some significant drawbacks. For one thing, you’d need a fairly large or high-resolution monitor to accommodate the Flock sidebar and media bar without reducing the size of the main browser window so much as to require too much scrolling. Even with a big or high-res screen, you will see fewer toolbar links and browser tabs than normally.

And, Flock has a busy, even frenetic, look that can be distracting and annoying. So many things are going on at once that it can be hard to concentrate on the main attraction: the Web page you are reading in the main window.

Also, while Flock does indeed spare you from clicking back and forth as often among tabs in your browser, it doesn’t entirely eliminate clicking around. Its sidebar can display only one type of information at a time — social networks and photo-sharing sites in one view, news feeds in a second, the clipboard in a third, and Web bookmarks in a fourth. So you’ll have to click the sidebar’s own controls fairly often to check all of these, or keep going to the special My World page in the main window.

Finally, Flock works with only certain social networking, photo-sharing and blogging services. While it does support most of the main ones, there are some glaring omissions. MySpace isn’t yet on the list, though it’s expected to be added next month. But Hotmail, Windows Live Spaces and SmugMug, among others, are missing. And it doesn’t support any instant-messaging services at all.

Flock does a good job at the tasks it sets for itself, but I would recommend it for only the heaviest and most impatient social networkers. For most others, Flock is overkill.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

So, last month, the photo giant introduced Photoshop Express, its free Web-based service for storing, sharing and editing photos, in an effort to compete with established online photo services such as Yahoo’s (YHOO) Flickr, Google’s (GOOG) Picasa Web Albums, or the photo-laden Facebook social-networking service.

Photoshop Express has many of the same features as Flickr and its ilk. It gives you two free gigabytes of photo storage. But Adobe is hoping to make its mark with editing.

Most online photo services offer little or no editing, assuming you’ll do that using software on your computer before you upload your pictures. But Photoshop Express, borrowing from Adobe’s deep knowledge of photo editing, offers the nicest set of Web-based editing tools I have seen. They are sophisticated for a consumer application, yet easy to use. They edge out those in Picnik, a pioneering Web-based photo editor I hailed last year.

These slick editing tools are not only available for use with photos you’ve uploaded from your hard disk. You can also use them to edit pictures stored in your accounts at Facebook, Picasa Web Albums and another big photo-storage service, Photobucket — all without leaving Photoshop Express. You can even move pictures between Photoshop Express and these three services just by dragging and dropping.

Adobe’s new service is available in the U.S. only, at www.photoshop.com/express.

I’ve been testing Photoshop Express and its service overall is pretty good, even though it’s still labeled “beta.” It’s a nice example of the Web 2.0 trend, where programs accessed via a browser can look and feel like applications that live on your computer.

But Photoshop Express is rough around the edges. It can be slow at times, and it’s missing some obvious features, like the ability to easily download publicly shared pictures from other members or to print photos. Adobe says it is working on these things.

Photoshop Express isn’t meant to replicate all the features and power of Photoshop. It’s more like a Web-based version of Photoshop Elements, Adobe’s consumer software package.

I tested Photoshop Express on multiple computers: PCs running Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows XP and Windows Vista, and Macs running Apple’s (AAPL) Leopard operating system. I used it in all three major Web browsers: Internet Explorer for Windows, Firefox on both Windows and Mac, and Safari, also on both platforms. It worked fine in all of these operating systems and browsers, though it does require Adobe’s free Flash software.

For my tests, I uploaded from my computers dozens of photos, from very large images captured with good digital cameras to smaller shots from cellphones. All were handled perfectly by Photoshop Express. I also opened and edited pictures in Photoshop Express from my accounts on Picasa Web Albums and Facebook. All of this worked well, though uploads of large images can be slow if your Web connection is pokey.

Photoshop Express is a handsome product, presenting your photos on a gray background with controls and features arrayed at the top and bottom, and down the sides, in a logical, clear manner. Your own photos are presented in a section called “My Photos,” and can be organized into albums. Photos that other Photoshop Express users have chosen to publicly share are organized into collections called “Galleries,” which can include multiple albums. You access these community photos by simply clicking on “Browse” or performing a search.

For each album you create, you can choose to share it publicly or to keep it private. Whichever option you choose, you can email friends either a link for viewing the album or a single photo. Your own photos can be downloaded at a variety of resolutions, including original size.

When you view shared galleries or albums, they appear as slide shows. You can select a number of slick effects by which the slides appear, allowing them to zoom and glide into place from various directions.

The editing features really stand out. In addition to standard tools such as auto-correction and red-eye elimination, Photoshop Express lets you touch up areas; adjust exposure, saturation, and lighting; and even make certain colors pop — so grass is greener, for instance. And, in most cases, it shows you small example images illustrating the changes, then previews those changes in the larger main image just by moving your mouse over the example. You can revert to your original at any time.

Unfortunately, there are a number of problems. Photos, especially large ones, can take awhile to appear in the editing module and to snap into focus. Captions sometimes get lost or mixed up when you move photos to other services. You can view shared albums only as slide shows, not as individual photos.

Still, Adobe has made a good start with Photoshop Express, and it’s worth a try if you want better online editing for your pictures.

Email me at mossberg@wsj.com. Find all my columns and videos online, free, at the new All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

Such Web-based software has existed for years, but it was clumsy, slow and simplistic — no match for locally installed software. Common techniques, such as dragging items around the screen, were impossible. Seeing the results of an action often required the Web page to reload.

Now, developers are churning out Web-based applications that are so fast, rich and smooth they can hardly be distinguished from standard programs. And because they live online, these Web applications can be constantly updated; can run on both Windows and Mac computers; and can be easily integrated with other Web sites and services.

One of the best examples of these slick new Web-based application is Picnik, a sophisticated, photo-editing application offered free of charge at picnik.com. I have been testing Picnik and I like it a lot. It’s a fast and impressive program for tweaking and improving your photos, then posting them to popular photo Web sites, saving them to your own computer, emailing them, or even printing them.

Picnik, which comes from a small Seattle company called Bitnik, isn’t meant to compete with Adobe Photoshop, or to serve professional photographers or dedicated hobbyists. Instead, it’s for the same casual photographer who would use the limited editing tools in Apple’s iPhoto or Microsoft’s Windows Vista Photo Gallery.

Picnik isn’t a place to store your pictures, or a way to organize them — yet. The company says it will consider adding these features down the road. For now, it is focused on being an editing complement to popular Web services — such as Yahoo’s Flickr, Google’s Picasa Web Albums, and the independent Facebook — that already allow for storing and organizing photos. You could also easily use it as the main editor for photos you store on your hard disk.

The program is currently in beta, or test, phase, though in my tests it worked smoothly and surely. During this beta period, all of its features are offered for free. Later this summer, the company expects to end the beta period and begin charging something like $20 or $25 a year for access to some of the more rarified special effects that Picnik offers, though the core editing and sharing functions, and some of the effects, will remain free.

In my view, Picnik has a beautiful and responsive user interface that worked perfectly on the multiple Windows and Macintosh computers I used to test it. It worked equally well in the latest versions of the three best-known Web browsers: Microsoft’s Windows-only Internet Explorer, Mozilla’s Firefox (on both Windows and Mac) and Apple’s Safari (on both Mac and Windows.)

Picnik uses a simple tabbed interface across the top to navigate among its major functions. Edits and changes are previewed in real time, instantly, without the need for a page refresh or reload. Actions are confirmed with translucent messages that pop up on the screen and fade gracefully.

Any edit or special effect can be undone or redone instantly, all the way back to the original version of the picture, which Picnik retains on its servers during the editing process.

For example, you can zoom in or zoom out on a picture with a slider that works just as it would in a local program — the effect is immediate, with no jerkiness. If you wish to crop a picture, a pane representing the region to be included in the crop is superimposed on the photo. Everything inside the pane is sharp and clear, and everything else is faded a bit. This pane can be dragged, or resized, in real time.

Another example: If you want to tint a picture, the program shows you a color palette with a white dot you can move around the palette to pick your tint. As you do this, or move a slider that controls the intensity of the tint, the changes are instantly previewed in the picture.

None of this is unusual for a standard photo program installed on your computer, but it is impressive to see these effects happen so quickly and interactively in a program functioning over an Internet connection.

Picnik’s makers have struck partnerships with Flickr, Picasa and Facebook, and you can easily fetch pictures from these sites and post new pictures or edited versions of the originals back to the sites. You don’t need to switch to the sites themselves, they appear inside the Picnik Web page.

You can also upload pictures for editing from any other Web site, or from your hard disk, and you can email pictures to friends or to a wide variety of other sites, such as PhotoBucket, SmugMug and Snapfish.

The designers of Picnik have done such an elegant job that I wish the site would allow storage of photos, or organization of photos across your multiple online accounts and your hard disk. If you want to see how good a Web application can be, take Picnik for a spin.

• Email me at mossberg@wsj.com. Find all my columns and videos online free at the new All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

These technologies allow users to create highly personalized pages filled with just the information or tools they desire. If you’re interested in the car industry and college basketball, live in Toronto, love to view family photos and often use a calculator, you can fill your computer screen with small modules that display relevant information and necessary tools for all these interests. You won’t have to browse through the Web or launch a bunch of large programs.

These modules and miniapplications appear as small square or rectangular objects, with the content or functionality inside. You can arrange them as you like.

There are two broad categories of these personalized pages — those that appear as Web pages, and thus require you to be online to use them, and those that are on your local desktop. The latter don’t require an Internet connection, though some of their modules may work only if you’re online.

On the Web, the most familiar of these modular systems is My Yahoo, which allows you to combine page segments featuring Yahoo’s own news and information with segments containing syndicated feeds of headlines from other sites, often called RSS feeds. Others have launched similar pages. One longstanding competitor is Microsoft’s my.msn.com.

On the desktop, the best known miniapplication system is Apple’s Dashboard, which allows Macintosh users to install tiny programs called Widgets that perform searches, display photo slide shows, track stocks, play music, and more. Microsoft’s new Windows Vista operating system, out this week, has a comparable system called Sidebar.

Now, there’s a new free Web site that combines some of the best features of My Yahoo and Dashboard. It’s called Netvibes, it’s available at Netvibes.com, and it’s unusual because it’s from Paris, France — not Silicon Valley or Seattle.

Like My Yahoo’s system for displaying feeds from non-Yahoo sources, Netvibes allows you to fill your personal page with headlines from all over the Web. And like Apple’s Widgets, Netvibes’ modules are produced by a wide variety of users, who upload them and make them available free.

I’ve been a My Yahoo user for many years, mostly because it allows me to see a lot of information at a glance, and it’s mainly plain text so it loads fast. I also use Apple’s Widgets on my Macintosh machines. But I find myself using Netvibes more and more lately.

Netvibes isn’t the only new Web player in the personalized Web page space. A new entry called Pageflakes, run by an ex-Yahoo executive, promises a graphically richer approach than Netvibes that the company claims is easier for novices to customize. It’s at pageflakes.com.

And Yahoo is in the process of revamping My Yahoo to update its look and features. The details of the new design aren’t public yet.

Like My Yahoo, Netvibes is text-heavy and loads quickly. But depending on which module you use, it can have color and graphics.

A menu down the left-hand side of the screen lets you quickly add modules to Netvibes. Popular ones are listed in this menu, and you can browse or search for others by clicking a link called “Get more modules.” You can add feeds — headlines from regular Web sites that support them — by clicking “Add a feed.”

Among the modules you can add to your Netvibes page right from this menu, without navigating to any setup page, are weather forecasts, a notepad, a to-do list and calendar, and modules that perform searches for Web pages, blogs, pictures, videos and podcasts.

There are also email modules that will display your new messages from Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, AOL Mail or any regular old email account you configure. Others display content from eBay, MySpace, Fox Sports and more.

To add an unlisted feed, you just navigate to a Web page that offers feeds and copy the Web address into Netvibes’ ”Add a feed” feature. Or you can place a button on the toolbar in the Firefox Web browser that will add a new feed with one click.

On my Netvibes page, I have modules that show the weather, my latest emails, the most popular stories from the Journal’s Web site, and top headlines from various technology and sports Web sites. I have colorful modules displaying photos from Flickr and other photo sites, and modules for video searches.

One nice feature of Netvibes is that you can set up automatically updated searches for terms that may appear in blogs all over the Web. For instance, you could create a module that will constantly show any new blog entries featuring, say, “Microsoft Vista” or “Apple iPhone.”

There are some downsides to Netvibes. Some of its modules seem aimed at techies, not mainstream users, and others are in French, though a version customized for American users is in the works.

But Netvibes — and competitors like Pageflakes — will give My Yahoo a run for its money. They provide an easy way to cut through the clutter of information that confronts us all.

• Email me at mossberg@wsj.com.