![Kitchen Joggler [image: electricpic.com]](http://www.wired.com/geekdad/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/o2-joggler-hands-on-16-300x224.jpg "Kitchen Joggler [image: electricpic.com]")
Kitchen Joggler [image: electricpic.co.uk
It’s not often that a gadget comes along that simply fits your life. I was skeptical before trying out the latest picture frame-cum-PDA-cum-kitchen clock from O2.
But what at first seemed to be a bit of a gimmick soon became a device at the center of my family’s organizational life. And actually it wasn’t me but my esteemed other-half that really got the most out of it.
The Joggler looks like a digital picture frame and is designed to sit on a counter top. Although it can indeed show your pictures off (streamed wirelessly from your network or from a SD card), it also provides a touch screen and enough horsepower and connectivity (Ethernet or Wi-Fi) to hold its own as a pseudo tablet computer.
You can set-up an O2 diary on your PC and sync or edit it from the device. It was surprising how useful it was not only to have our Calendar live in teh Kitchen (after all we have this already on our iPhones) but on a screen large enough to notice and comment on over breakfast. Our family got into the habit of checking the Joggler for the day’s events over the Cornflakes and Weetabix.
If we were headed out somewhere for the day, it being the summer holidays, we could then check weather and traffic right there on the Joggler. Again nothing new, but doing it on this shared device meant even our kids (2, 4 and 6) could get involved in the decision making and research. We even watched some tips video for some ds games they were playing.
Once we’d finished our breakfast meetings we could flip the Joggler back to our picture slide show and display the family snaps through the day. Sometimes we even popped some music on the device straight from our PC upstairs.
I know that this little gadget won’t fit everyone, and it does have a few short comings – being a little sluggish sometimes and not as bright as we would like – but for us it was the right gadget at the right time. Something that doesn’t happen often enough for our family.
