A couple of pals under the name Satarii have been working out of a garage-office for the past year perfecting the Satarii Star, an iPhone dock that follows your every move. In conjunction with a wearable tracker, the Satarii is a rotary base that follows you around around a scene such as your living-room. FaceTime conversations would be rather awesome when you could grab a cup of coffee without having to worry about the ol’ shaky cam, and imagine the possibilities in self-producing quality video? Imagine the MacStories reviews that could come of this thing! We’re pretty excited about this neat gadget because it’s a novel idea. Support the team and help Satarii reach their goal of $20,000 so we can see this thing get some legs.
Posts tagged with "camera"
Homebrew Satarii Star iPhone Dock Follows Your Every Move
OmniVision’s New Camera Sensor Would Be Great On Future iPhones
OmniVision, the company behind the current iPhone 4’s camera sensor and among the rumored iPad 2 camera suppliers, has announced a new native 16:9 CMOS image sensor that will provide 1080p HD video recording with simultaneous 10 MP image capturing capabilities. OmniVision is promoting the OV10810 as the “ideal choice for digital still and video camera hybrids and high-end smartphones”, and there’s no doubt such specs would be more than welcome on a future iPhone – perhaps not the iPhone 5 that should come out later this year as that’s likely already been built and it’s in the middle of testing stages.
Still, this new camera sensor from OmniVision sets the bar higher for digital cameras and smartphones, thanks to its 1080p or 720p video recording at 30 fps and the possibility to capture photos at the same time. Sounds a bit like the future of smartphones – no doubt several camera / smartphone makers will adopt this in the next months.
In the meantime, check out the press release below and imagine an iPhone with 1080p videos. [via Engadget] Read more
Eye Scope Adds 8x Optical Zoom To Your iPhone
If you’ve ever wished you could spy on your neighbor’s house or simply take better photos of distant objects with your iPhone (yes, we’re going to pretend your never thought of spying on people using an Apple device), you might want to consider the Eye Scope, a $45 (£29) accessory that can add 8x optical zoom to the iPhone’s lens.
Available for iPhone 3G / 3GS / 4 owners,the Eye Scope is basically a case with an attached optical lens that promises to cover 246 meters ahead of you and your iPhone. Not bad, huh? In the package, you’ll also get a tripod mount and a lens cloth to keep everything clean and well focused.
If you want to go ahead and buy it, the Eye Scope for iPhone is available on online retailer Firebox. [via Ubergizmo]
Turn Your iPhone Into A Vintage Polaroid
If your iPhone, besides being a phone, also happens to have become your best camera and you fancy some old-style gadgetry in your pockets, perhaps you’d like to consider Ryan Astle’s Photoroid skins.
Available in iPhone, iPad, Blackberry and Evo models, the skin costs $15 for the iPhone and $20 for the tablet. It’s made of 2 pieces of art for the front and back of the iPhone, it really resembles an old Polaroid camera and, personally, I think it’s got something that reminds me of the Instagram icon as well.
With all these apps that apply vintage effects to your photos (and videos, too), the Photoroid skin seems appropriate. [Gizmodo via Infectious]
App Store Updates Are Back, Camera+ Sells Over 78,000 Copies On Christmas Day
In case you missed it, iTunes Connect is back online. The web interface that allows developers to submit apps, updates and price changes went down on December 23 for the so-called “holiday shutdown” which didn’t freeze the App Store charts as many believed, but still made it impossible for developers to submit apps and users to find updates in iTunes. iTunes Connect went back online a few hours ago, and app updates are now showing up in iTunes and propagating through the App Store. Read more
8mm For iPhone Applies Vintage Effects to Videos In Real-Time
Hipstamatic is one of the most popular iPhone apps in the App Store: not only it’s a great app with a cool camera-like interface and tons of filters, films and flashes to choose from, it has also been named “iPhone App of the Year” by Apple and journalists at the New York Times use it. Hipstamatic is the closest thing to having an old analog camera on your iPhone. Some say it’s overly designed and too complicated for the average users, I think the results and popularity of the software speak by themselves.
Then again, Hipstamatic (and other apps that apply cool effects to photos like Instagram or Camera+) is for photos. 8mm Vintage Camera by Nexvio is a new app that can apply vintage film effects to videos, all in real-time through the iPhone’s rear and front-facing cameras. Read more
This iPhone App Snaps Pictures With The Volume Buttons
Remember when Camera+ was removed from the App Store because the developers hid a feature in it that allowed you to snap pictures using the iPhone’s volume buttons? Apple didn’t want that and as far as I know they’re still going against apps that modify iOS’ standard functionalities such as volume adjustment. But then why is there an app in the App Store that lets you do just that? Quick Snap, available at $1.99 and released two weeks ago, enables you to take pictures using the physical volume buttons. I just bought the app and it works.
Not only does Quick Snap take pictures with the “+” volume button, it also triggers a timed shot with the other button. I don’t know how this app made its way into the App Store, also considering how much the developers promote the feature on the app’s description page. But other than that, the app isn’t really great. It’s got a less than decent UI and its animations when changing from portrait to landscape mode are slow. It saves pics to the camera roll, but it hasn’t got basic camera features such as zoom or tap to focus.
But hey, it’s got the volume buttons thing. If $1.99 is a good price for such functionality, then go ahead and buy it before Apple pulls it. I’m just surprised the App Review Team missed this one.
Update: And just as we expected, the app is gone. It wasn’t that great anyway.
Camera+ Sells 500,000 Copies, Jumps Behind Angry Birds
The highly anticipated new version of taptaptap’s Camera+ was released only two days ago, and while we’re still testing it in real-life situations before our huge review, we do think already it’s a great app update. In fact, Camera+ is one of our Top Camera Apps of 2010.
According to the numbers shared by taptaptap’s John Casasanta, Camera+ 2 has sold 500,000 copies so far. This made the app quickly climb the charts of the App Store, placing it at the #2 spot of overall Top Paid Apps right behind Angry Birds and above all the discounted EA games, which have taken over the iPhone and iPad App Store charts. Casasanta doesn’t know whether Camera+ will manage to get to #1 before the iTunes Connect shutdown (the App Store charts will be “frozen” from today until December 28th, and developers won’t be able to submit new apps, updates or price changes) or not, but releasing Camera+ this week was a clever marketing move nonetheless. They priced the app at $0.99 to celebrate the re-launch, put an additional effect pack in the app sold through in-app purchase and gained visibility thanks to all the blogs and Twitter users who mentioned Camera+ these 2 days. Thus, it got to #2 and it will likely stay there until next week. Very clever indeed.
Just as a reminder: the first version of Camera+ generated $250,000 in revenue in the first month of sales earlier this year. Well deserved.
Camera+ 2.0 Is Live In The App Store
As announced by tap tap tap yesterday, here comes a new version of Camera +. Camera + 2.0 is a major update that contains a huge list of new features and interface improvements, such as a redesigned lightbox, faster start-up times, a timer shooting mode, lots of new modes and effects. From a first look at the app, it looks like one massive update – which is free for existing users.
I’m testing the app right now and I can already say the tap tap tap developers really did a great job in optimizing everything to make the app faster. The SLR screen has been removed to let Camera+ start up directly to the camera UI, just like Apple’s own Camera app. The various shooting modes are accessible from a popover menu next to the camera button, timer shooting mode will let you choose between different intervals before shooting a picture. It’s really nice. The lightbox animations are faster, each photo has its own details such as ISO and location, there are several new effects available under the in-app purchase “I love Analog” pack. You can adjust these effects with a slider, and preview them as demo.
Everything feels new and improved in Camera+ 2.0. From a first quick run, I’m seriously impressed by what tap tap tap has achieved with “just an iPhone app”. The interface design elements on screen sport some beautiful pixels, too. Most of all, Camera+ doesn’t “force you” to share anything, I see it more as a full-featured replacement of the default Camera app that allows me to edit and apply neat effects to my photos, or not. Camera+ 2.0 – but this was a strong selling point of the first version, too – lets you decide whether you want to shoot, edit and share, or just shoot better (thanks to its multiple modes) and forget about it. I like choices.
The app is available here. Expect a detailed review soon on MacStories. Full changelog and screenshots below. Read more