Until recently, looking at photographs often involved turning through pages in photo albums, and, if provided, reading descriptions associated with the ongoing activities of each photo. Nowadays, endless pictures are taken with for instance digital cameras and mobile phones, and looking at the pictures often involves viewing the digital photos on devices such as computer screens and mobile phone displays. Additionally, modern technology allows digital photos, and even other digital objects such as for instance video, audio and flash files, to be communicated from one entity to another. Photos may for instance be submitted from one computer to another over the Internet, as attachments to an email, and the pictures hence shared with the recipient(s) of the message.
Sharing of photos by means of email attachments represents a convenient, and for the user often simple, and known manner of communication. The ability for a sender to share attachment with a recipient is for instance described in US 2003/0187936, which relates to a method of email administration comprising in a transcoding gateway receiving an email including a digital object and display attributes for the digital object expressed in a tag language, and displaying the digital object in accordance with the display attributes. The transcoding gateway of US 2003/0187936 thus describes transcoding of messages from one format to another, for instance from digital objects in emails to transcoded digital objects suitable for display upon display devices such as video screens, audio players, digital art frames and television sets controlled by set-top boxes.
Viewing of received digital photos on a television set is subsequently possible. For most people, specifically the elderly, the TV set represents a familiar interface, allowing the elderly recipient of the email to view attached photos without the hassles associated with handling of new technologies such as mobile phones, PC's and the Internet.
However, although the ability to display for instance photos in an email on the television set may facilitate viewing for the recipient, the provision of for instance individual descriptions of the ongoing activities in the respective photos is challenging. A solution more sophisticated than gathering all the respective descriptions of the photos in the message body for the recipient to read, likely requires help of specialized software or dedicated websites.
Consequently, there is a need for an improved user interface and subsequently improved interaction design in packaging and displaying an email having attachments.