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As Valentine's Day approaches, it's natural to pull out pictures of the people you love — which these days can involve a long search through the hard drive of your computer.

But imagine if you could hold something — a shell from a Bermuda beach you visited, say, or a picture drawn by your child — up to your computer or television and your photos would magically appear.

Researchers at the University of Calgary have come up with a way to let you do just that using electronic tags that talk to those digital displays.

“We don't really know what to do with (digital photos), how to make them fit into our lives better, because of the design of computer systems now,” says Michael Nunes, a master's student who helped write a study on the issue. “We can take lots of pictures with digital (cameras) and store them,” but it's not always easy to share them with people face-to-face.

In the study, to be presented at a technology conference in South Africa this month, tiny tags are stuck to different mementoes. These inexpensive radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags correspond to sets of photos stored on a computer.

As an example, take that sea shell. You download the photos and drop them into a hard-drive folder associated with an RFID tag, which is then stuck to the bottom of the shell. When you want to see the pictures, take the shell near a computer or TV screen equipped with a special reader. The reader senses the tag and the pictures begin to appear as a slide show. Suddenly you're describing the scorching day and the hunt for the perfect shell to a group of friends.

“It actually plays into a setting where you might be typically entertaining guests and want to share photos with someone,” says Nunes, who wrote the study with computer science professor Saul Greenberg and researcher Carman Neustaedter.

The study is an example of a trend in computer science to make technology and computers easier to use, says Greenberg.

“And as long as we just keep thinking about computers as screens and mice and keyboards, that's not going to happen — because that kind of technology essentially says there is a digital world, and it's totally separate from the day-to-day, everyday world of people,” he said.

“Currently, I'm quite concerned that people either do stuff in the digital world or the physical world, but there's very little crossover.”

Greenberg suggests another example that could be easily built — technology that could help address the need to check multiple times a day on an elderly person who lives alone. Motion detectors could be placed throughout the person's home and linked to a picture frame in the living room of a family member who lives elsewhere. Green lights on the frame would indicate movement in the senior's home. If the motion stops for an extended period of time, the relative would know to call and check in.

The concept behind such systems is called “ubiquitous computing,” says Carl Gutwin, a computer science professor at the University of Saskatchewan.

He compares the trend to the early days of motors — people would buy a motor and attach it to their kitchen gadgets. Now, every blender and mixer has its own motor built in, and you never stop to think about the need for a motor.

“This is going to be what we see happen,” Gutwin said. “You won't think about buying a computer and then doing different things with your computer.”

An example from his own research is an office door window that consists of a computer screen and video camera. For people who are authorized to see you, the screen will display the inside of the office, just as a normal window would. Others may get the a view that is clouded — or a “super view” that includes a view of a desk calendar.

In many cases, says Greenberg, such research actually involves fairly simple technology looked at from a new angle.

The challenge, he says, is to create technology so “it's part of our social world, and it works under our terms — rather than what currently happens, where if we want to do anything digital, we have to go to the computer and do it under its own terms.”