We are working hard and furiously on a major update to iVideoCamera. We know a lot of you have been complaining about the facebook bug. When we updated to v1.1 we added some UI elements which were not compatible with Facebook Connect SDK login process. We have just been waiting to release that fix along with a major update. If for some reason you absolutely cannot wait email us with your UDID and we will send you an adhoc.
Thanks for your patience…..
The update of iVideoCamera has been approved by apple and it chalked full of new features:
The next update (after this update) will have better fps (probably 15) and better resolution, but in the meantime here is a little video walking you through the new features and some sample videos in standard and HI-RES mode.
Welcome all. We are going to be doing a Time Lapse Video contest in late January ‘10 for the best video made with iTimeLapse. Full contest details will be announced in a couple of week but right now we some help.
We are looking for some reader feedback as to what the Grand Prize should be. We have partnered with Zacuto to be able to offer two runner-up prizes of the Zacuto zGrip Jr’s, but we are still considering options for the grand prize. The obvious choice is the zGrip Pro though we are thinking about a mini-projector, 3M Pocket Projector MPRO120 or Apple’s Time Capsule. So let us know what you want for your prize for the new year and vote below:
Just a little android update. The verizon phones definitely increased the number of downloads, but not any revenue. The phones and google still have the inherent developer revenue flaws. Not that we have given our android apps much love lately, but we just passed a million downloads and still it rakes in enough money for about one-half of my daily small latte from my local.
The official Cylon Bobble we developed for SyFy should be coming out soon (here is iPhone Version) so that will be a good test with a major promotion behind an android app. While have picked away at some major android apps, still believe its a real wait for critical mass before putting any more real resources to the (An)droid.
Putting geotagging in tweetdeck was a very interesting experience because in between lines of code and testing really got to experience the obvious value of this new feature (especially combined with lists). I tweet occasionally (to my three followers) but i find twitter to have a so much noise that is only when i have some real down-time that i go back to look through the people that interest me to see whats going on.
So last weekend when i was headed down to the boat cc told me to keep a look out for the red ballons – and by a very odd chance i got off a strange exit so i could go park under an underpass to check the accuracy settings of sending geotags on TD tweets. Driving a bit down the road what do i see.
Yes. A Red Balloon. I stopped. Talked geek with the darpa folks and tweeted about it (of course forgetting that geotagging was not enabled on tadwook) and then watching my iPhone die before i could enable a proper geotagged tweet. In the end i was a bit supprised how long it took teams to find all balloons. I am hoping a brand does a follow-up contest (clients are you listening?).
iVideoCamera was finally approved by apple last night after many many months of approval process fun. This app lets your record about 3 fps on any iPhone (well its for you 3g owners out there). I know it seems like we just put out this app (and we kinda did), but VideoSlides was a result of iVideoCamera not getting approved though we firmly believe the photo snaps to video with its three different capture modes warrants its own app.
Apple is definitely opening up what we can do with video capture (i.e. UStream and Knocking Video) so we expect to improve the frame rate and length of iVideoCamera in the next update.
Our Video Camera app VideoSlides, which lets any phone shoot a video (well almost — it lets you take pictures with a sound track so it’s like a low frame rate movie – see example below) or something we like to call Video Slides. It has some nifty features to let you take pictures in three different modes: Manual, Timer & Accelerometer. We have found it’s pretty useful for shooting presentations, how-to’s, or apartment walk-throughs, but it works for pretty much anything you would shoot a video for.
NOTE: this version has an issue with YouTube audio encoding (it turns out they dont support 8KHz sampling rate) so if you upload your video there you won’t get sound, but facebook and vimeo work fine. We have submitted the fix to apple so the update should be in store shortly for sound on your YouTube Videos
Yes it only took about 2 months for apple to approve, but its all good because you can now grab it here from the app store. We have also put together a nice little site to feature videos made with iTimeLapse and accessories such as standsthat will make your time lapse projects easier.
Check out one of our favorite videos (well that because @cclaan made it)
We packed this app chucked-full-of-features:
Its not what you think. In the film world high concept movies refer to “artistic work that can be easily described by a succinctly stated premise.” (i.e. Snakes on a Plane). This is even more relevant to the app world where your main promotion avenue is essentially a list. Like with movies these titles should hit a resonance of popular fascination (or what we like to call a meme in the techie world). Apps are not movies so (obviously) but most the most part they are entertainment and even the most successful utilitarian apps tend to have a bit of “zazz” that gives mundane task such as converting units a fun experience.
We have talked about What’s in an Application Name before, but the modern entertainment industry has 100+ years of experience and its always good to not have to re-invent the wheel.
This app has been kicking around the labs for about 6 months and it finally came out. Basically it uses the iPhone’s speaker to send out a short click sound and it then measures how long it takes for that sound to bounce off of something in the environment. It can be quite accurate to within an inch or so when used in the right situations. I’ll say right upfront it’s not perfect, and cannot measure something small like a person. It works best on a large flat surface that is perpendicular to the iphone (like a large wall.) Things like temperature and even wind can affect the values, so I don’t recommend using the measurements it spits out for anything other than your entertainment. (itunes link: here)
The principles used in the app are actually pretty simple, it just took a lot of experimenting to figure out the right approach. I initially tried using FFT analysis to pick out the echo from the microphone signal, but it produced results that were pretty similar to just plain old maximum value detection. Throwing in some averaging and filters made it fairly tolerant to noise also. I may revisit the FFT technique as it is probably the more robust way to go, I just don’t have time to mess with it right now (it’s still in the source, it’s just not enabled.)
There is a short how-to video within the app, or you can check out another video here:
Sonar Ruler Demo from cc laan on Vimeo.
For German or Japanese subtitles, try the YouTube version.
I think a lot of things could be improved in the app like better echo detection or user interface. I’d like to post the code up here, but it’s kind of mangled right now so I may wait until I can clean it up a bit. Email me cc at laan dot com if you’re interested in checking out the source or making your own version. Also, follow us on twitter @laanlabs
How to hold the phone:
hold your free hand at a 45 degree angle next to the speaker/mic
Some more random shots:
Fun with photoshop..
Old school logo..
© the labs @ laan.
