the labs @ laan thoughts and other ramblings

Twitter Video FX Contest

We are giving away $100 iTunes Gift card to a randomly selected video made with iVideoCamera using your favorite new effect that is shared on twitter (with TwitVid of course) with the hashtag #FXCONTEST. The contest starts now and runs until midnight saturday EST. To enter the contest simply make a video with iVideoCamera and share it on twitVid with the hashtag #FXCONTEST. Happy video’in

UPDATE: @robbydaly was selected as the contest winner. Congratulations!


iVideoCamera v1.5



The new iVideoCamera update is out and loaded with new features. Most exciting are all the new effects like obama vision, vintage video, water reflection and many many more. This new version makes this a great app for not only 2G/3G users but also 3GS users. Again, sorry that it took us so long but we were working hard to get performance improvements and build all these amazing effects.

What’s New:

  • Improved frame rate in both quality settings
  • Facebook bug fixed (finally, sorry) plus posting video to status stream
  • Lots of fun effects
  • 1x,2x and 4x Digital Zoom by double-clicking screen
  • Virtually unlimited recording at high res and low res.
  • No more save time in high quality
  • SMS link sharing (experimental)
  • Twitvid added for twitter sharing
  • Help section
  • Settings page

Effects Demo Video

Effects Pack #1

Vintage

Heat Vision

Snow

Breaking News

Effects Pack #2

Infinite Zoom

Vintage B&W

Night Vision

Scrolling Text

Effects Pack #3

Spy Cam

Solarize

Water Reflect

Title Maker

Effects Pack #4

Obama

Sparkles

Soft Glow

Dancing Hearts

Plus some hidden ones so you just might want to read up on the in app help and like unicorns….


iVideoCamera Coming Update…

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 iVideoCamera Update Approved (v.1.1)

The update of iVideoCamera has been approved by apple and it chalked full of new features:

  • Real-time encoding in standard mode – basically unlimited recording time and no wait for video to render (well it takes a sec to make thumbnail).
  • 320×427 resolution in HI-RES mode – this will let you record about 30-40 seconds and takes a bit to render, but if you have just rebooted your phone you can get about a min of time.
  • Improved fps to about 10 frames every second in standard mode only (HI-Res mode is lower). This will be better in upcoming updates.
  • Integrated video library – everytime you shoot a video its automatically saved to app library (you can still export video to your camera roll).
  • Additional share features to twitter(yfrog), flickr, 12seconds and WiFi (via ftp) along with the standard YouTube, Facebook and Vimeo- the ftp is great as you can transfer all your videos off your camera without going through iTunes/iPhoto

Features Demo

Standard Mode

HI-RES Mode

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.


Readers Poll for Grand Prize TimeLapse Contest

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:


So our android apps just pass a million downloads (#waitforit)

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.


Geotagging/Lists are really important (to my usability of twitter)

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 – an app that lets you record video on any iPhone (no really)

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.


VideoSlides brings video to any phone (almost)

videoslides512Our 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


iTimeLapse Finally Here!!!

iconstopwatch512 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:

  • Add Music Tracks
  • Adjustable frame rate
  • Adjustable resolution
  • Overlay capture mode
  • Share to YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo, email, etc
  • And just too many to list

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