Open up your mind and say, ahh...

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Grandma doesn’t know it yet, but she wants a Kodak Pulse digital picture frame. Kodak just began shipping Pulse version 2.0, adding interactive capabilities that’ll let her respond to the pictures you send to it via email. We put it to the test, finding it to be simple enough for even the most technically averse moms, dads or grandparents to use.On Easter or Passover, maybe you enjoyed visiting with your older relatives, and the conversation might have turned to staying in touch with each other, and maybe even social networking. They might not be ready for social networking (you tried to talk them into it, didn’t you?), but this Kodak Pulse will solve the problem of staying in touch with each other.

Easy as pie. If those loved ones have a wireless network, all they have to do is plug in the Kodak Pulse picture frame, and its touchscreen leads them through an easy set of menus, getting the frame to the point where you can set it up remotely using a browser-based interface. Once you’ve chosen an email address specifically for the picture frame and entered its secret number, you can email pictures to grandma’s picture frame, or configure it to receive pictures from your Facebook account.

Emailing a pic to grandma’s picture frame is nothing new, though. That capability has been available from Kodak and others for a while now, included in the first version of this Kodak Pulse picture frame. In fact, that emailing capability first appeared four years ago in the relatively primitive eStarling picture frame that I reviewed here. But digital picture frames have come a long way since then, and this Kodak Pulse takes the concept the furthest yet with its ability to let users respond to pictures they’ve received.

Going social. Even if grandma is not involved in social networking at all, she can get an elementary taste of it when you email pictures to the Kodak Pulse. Its new interface (see it up close in the gallery below) offers “quick comments,” a dozen abbreviated responses to received pictures, including “Nice picture,” “Fun!” “Strange,” and “Congrats,” and some grandma might not understand at first, such as “LOL” and “OMG.” With a quick touch, it’s easy to fire off one of those canned responses. There’s no keyboard capability, but in the case of those technologically challenged individuals who might own such a frame, perhaps an on-screen keyboard would be more of a detriment than an advantage.

So what else is new? Besides that response capability, Kodak has upgraded the hardware with an activity sensor that conserves power when no one’s around. Cool idea. More good news for Kodak picture frame users: That “quick comment” capability, as well as the ability to create a playlist and rotate pictures on the device’s touchscreen will also be available to version 1.0 users in a firmware update.

Available in 7-inch ($130, we’ve seen its predecessor discounted to below $100) and 10-inch ($200) sizes (Kodak lent us the 7-inch unit for our review here), its 800×600 screen has the same aspect ratio as photos from most digital cameras. The screen is sharp and bright, and while its viewing angle is slightly shallower than I would like, it’s just good enough. And its capacitive touchscreen is nicely responsive, much more so than the resistive touchscreen on the Chumby I reviewed a couple of weeks ago.

After spending some time with this Kodak Pulse digital picture frame, it’s obvious that Kodak understands the market for this device. There can’t be anything complicated about it, and it has to just work. Kodak has accomplished that, creating a quality product at a reasonable price. That new ability to respond to pictures adds an extra dimension to a digital picture frame. If you’re looking for a gift for a technologically uninterested mom, dad or your grandparents, a digital picture frame might do the trick, and this one’s the best I’ve seen.

Love it or hate it, there’s no debating just how much e-mail has changed the way we communicate.

Since the 1990s, electronic mail has eclipsed snail mail and the fax to become the standard in the business world, and although social media sites are edging in on personal online messaging, e-mail still holds strong in that arena.

You may use it everyday, but how much do you know about e-mail? Do you know who sent the first message? What the biggest webmail provider is in the U.S.? What about the most common Hotmail password?

We’ve found 10 fascinating facts about electronic mail. Have a read, and do share in the comments below any relevant trivia you know on the topic.

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1. What Was the First E-mail Message?

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Ray Tomlinson is credited as being the first person to hit send on a network e-mail message.

Tomlinson had not been specifically tasked to develop e-mail, but he was working out some useful applications for MIT’s ARPANET project (which later evolved into the Internet). He took the time to work on e-mail “mostly because it seemed like a neat idea.”

Sent between two side-by-side computers, the first message was a small step for e-communications, but an important one. Tomlinson says he can’t remember the content of that first message but it likely read “testing 123″ or “QWERTYUIOP” — the letters found on the top line of a QWERTY keyboard.

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2. Where Did the Word Spam Come From?

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The term spam is widely thought to have come from the above Monty Python sketch, where its incessant chanting by Vikings (naturally!) drowns out all meaning.

These days, while the term refers to nuisance e-mail, it seems the phrase pre-dates e-mail as we know it, and has been traced back to online role playing chat rooms from the ’80s called MUDs. Generally, the term refers to any type of abusive online behavior.

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3. What’s the Most Common E-mail Password?

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We are nothing if not unimaginative with our e-mail passwords. It seems “123456″ is the all-time most popular choice for protecting our precious online correspondence. This sequence came out on top in 2009 when 10,000 Hotmail passwords were exposed online. (“123456″ also topped the list of passwords in the recent Gawker hack.) Come on netizens — must try harder.

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4. What is Google’s Spam-Flavored Easter Egg?

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Google has a little fun with spam via an Easter egg that can be viewed in any Gmail account. Opening the “Spam” folder turns the “web clips” display into recipes for the canned pork product. Spam Primavera, Spam Swiss Pie, Creamy Spam Broccoli Casserole and Spam Veggie Pita Pockets are just four examples of the delicious recipe links Google offers. Mmmmmm, Spam.

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5. What is the @ Sign in Morse Code?

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Despite the rise in popularity of e-mail in the late 20th century, Morse code didn’t get a character for the “@” sign until 2004.

The string combines Morse for “A” and “C,” and is known as the “commat,” an abbreviation of “commercial at.”

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6. How Do You Spell E-mail?

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So is it e-mail, email, Email, E-Mail, E-mail or eMail?

That depends who you ask. While many dictionaries and style guides are beginning to drop the hyphen and the caps in favor of “email,” the The Associated Press Stylebook still insists on seeing the word as an abbreviation of “electronic mail” and therefore sticks with e-mail. Here at Mashable, we do the same.

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7. What’s the Biggest Webmail Service in the U.S.?

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As of September 2010, Compete revealed that, based on the U.S. Internet browsing population, Yahoo! Mail clearly dominates. Hotmail — or “Windows Live Hotmail,” as Microsoft insists on calling it these days — comes in second. A little upstart known as Gmail looks positively minnow-esque in third place.

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8. What is the @ Sign Called?

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In English, “@” is commonly known as the “at” sign or symbol — or if you want to be adventurous, the “commercial at.” Other languages have much more poetic ways to describe the symbol, many of them animal-related.

In Dutch, it’s apestaart — “monkey’s tail.”

In Swedish, it’s snabel-a — “A” with an elephant’s trunk.

And in Italian, it’s chiocciolina — small snail.

Other languages nickname it “mouse’s tail,” “sleeping cat,” “little duck,” “dog,” and “little worm.”

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9. When Was the First E-mail Sent From Space?

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The first e-mail from space was sent in 1991. The crew of STS-43 Atlantis used Apple’s early AppleLink software on a Macintosh Portable to transmit the following:

“Hello Earth! Greetings from the STS-43 Crew. This is the first AppleLink from space. Having a GREAT time, wish you were here… send cryo and RCS! Hasta la vista, baby… we’ll be back!”

Oh, and if you guessed from the latter part of the message that 1991 was also the year Terminator 2: Judgment Day came out, you’d be correct.

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10. Which Animated Character’s E-mail Was Hacked?

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It was everyone’s favorite donut-loving, dysfunctional dad — Homer Simpson. Simpson’s e-mail address — chunkylover53@aol.com — was revealed in The Dad Who Knew Too Little.

Back in 2003, a Simpsons writer used to reply to messages in-character until the address became unmanageable due to sheer volume of mail.

Once the address was inactive, some dastardly hackers sent messages from the account to people who had added chunkylover53 to their AIM buddy list. The messages promised exclusive access to a new Simpsons episode, but instead delivered nothing but malware.

D’oh!

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Image courtesy of iStockphoto, chezzzers. Homer image courtesy of Simpson Crazy.

It’s a good thing software code doesn’t weigh much. The Chevrolet Volt boasts an all electric range of more than 40 miles, but it takes 10 million lines of code to get it there. The software heavy car features over 100 electronic controllers and also has a unique IP address for each one on the road.

For comparison, the new Boeing 787, which is widely considered to be the most electronic airliner ever, has around 8 million lines of code. And that includes the complex avionics and navigation systems. The new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter? Around 6 million.

With a press release announcing the massive amount of software running the Volt, it’s apparent GM is not celebrating a minimalist approach to coding. The company points out that beyond the functionality with the car itself, the software may eventually be able to interact with the electric grid itself. Or perhaps there’s a really cool Easter egg some lucky driver will discover with just the right combination of button, pedal and steering wheel movements.

Earlier examples of electric vehicles got by with far fewer lines of software engineering, including the 1898 Lohner-Porsche which featured zero lines of code. Of course the Lohner-Porsche didn’t have a complex cooling system to properly take care of its batteries, something GM says will allow the Volt’s lithium electron storage cells last for up to 10 years.

We’re not software engineers here at Autopia, but with all those lines of software code, anybody looking to tweak a Volt may have quite a puzzle on their hands. Sure the days of a new intake manifold and a four barrel carb are long gone, but now it looks like the modern version of ‘chipping’ a car is far from adequate for the new cars on the block. Then again, we doubt hot rodders are looking at the Volt anyhow.

Photo: General Motors