Taking cool pictures and then bragging about them to your friends is quite a widespread sport, and that, I guess, is one of the reasons behind the development of the Digital Photo Album concept, a portable storage device that also offers photo viewing and browsing capabilities. And one of the most interesting devices of this type made available as of late is the one presented by the people over at Brookstone, who have just announced the PictureBook Digital Photo Album, which, besides sporting a 5.6" Screen, also features a 40 GB hard drive, just enough for you to put there all of your digital photos.

As you can plainly see, this device is much more than a simple portable storage device. According to its manufacturers, it can store up to 20,000 photos, but also offers several methods of transferring them into its memory. Thus, besides the already "classical" USB transfer cable, the PictureBook Digital Photo Album comes with a card reader compatible with the most popular types of memory cards, as for example Compact Flash, Smart Media, Multimedia, Micro Drive, Memory Stick, Secure Digital, and xD. Moreover, it seems to have quite intuitive controls and customizable folders that will let you easily scroll through, organize, and enjoy your photos.

Unfortunately, the product's page on the Brookstone website is pretty unrevealing when it comes to technical specs. However, I've managed to discover some other pretty interesting information, as for example the fact that the device comes with an internal rechargeable battery that offers 3.5 hours of power, as well as with a DC power adapter. Even if this device would make a great Christmas gift, I do believe that, at 400 US dollars, it is way too expensive for its own good. In any case, leaving aside its price, the device is quite interesting, and surely represents a very important step forward in the development of digital photo frames.

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