Occipital

The nominations are in, and the poll is ready to go! The TUAW Best of 2011 awards are all about you -- the readers -- and what you think is the cream of the crop of Apple or third-party products and software. To vote, select one entry from the top nominations made by readers. We'll be announcing the winner in just a few days. Vote early and often! TUAW is asking for your votes for the best iPhone photography and video apps of 2011. The iPhone is one of the best point-and-shoot cameras possible. That's not because it has stellar lenses, great low-light capabilities, or high shutter speeds -- because it doesn't -- but because it's always with you. Developers have stepped up to the plate with some of the most innovative apps for iPhone, all in the photography and video app categories. In the photo app category, readers nominated FX Photo Studio (US$0.99), the ever-popular Camera+ (currently on sale for $0.99), social networking / camera app Instagram (free), new photo editor Snapseed ($4.99), and panorama powerhouse 360 Panorama ($0.99). As with the Mac video and photo apps, I've broken out the voting into two polls. Please feel free to vote for one video app and one photo app, and we'll announce the winners in a few days. And now, let the voting begin! What is the best iPhone photo app of 2011? What is the best iPhone video app of 2011? Read More

Stop whatever you’re doing and grab the Occipital’s 360 Panorama app for your Android smartphone (presuming you own a compatible, Gingerbread-powered smartphone). Yeah I know the Ice Cream Sandwich will bring this capability built-in, but I’m sure it won’t work the way 360 Panorama does its job. Occipital relied heavily on OpenGL hardware-accelerated graphics to make the magic happen. Heck their app will work even without a gyroscope which seemingly is impossible since accelerometers alone cannot track rotation — they are simulating a gyroscope using their own camera-based motion tracking algorithms. Impressive! Now the question is whether you think 360 Panorama is worth a buck (99 cents actually). I’m confident it is worth every penny, especially if you’re travelling somewhere and want to bring home the memories in a way that wasn’t possible before (at least with an Android smartphone)… So what are you waiting for – hit the link below and take it from there. Dusan has been using smartphones since their introduction and is now following the latest trends in the industry. The "convergence" is what he's most excited about, and writing about it is the next logical thing to do. He thinks that using a smartphone is what everyone who cares about their time should do. In addition to his interests in mobile phones, Dusan also loves to experiment with the latest web and mobile 2.0 services. The idea of accessing and managing your information from any device no matter where you are simply amazes him. Whether it's an online to-do list, note taking service or a video sharing social network, he's there to try it out. He admits though, he's still searching for the ultimate web-based organizational tool, which "sings" perfectly with the mobile PIM application. Dusan used to run SymbianWatch.com which later became part of IntoMobile. He lives in Serbia, South-East Europe, from where he edits the site on a daily basis. Read More

By Lisa Caplan on November 9th, 2011 We look at four classic favorite apps for creating or editing photos with stunning special effects. Last week we looked at the best camera replacement apps for the iPhone native app. So, this week we wanted to continue the theme, this time looking at apps that focus on adding those ever-popular effects and filters. Many of the choices feature a camera replacement component, but all do unique things to produce end results that are anything but the average cell camera shot, no matter how high the resolution. All of these apps will make even casual photographers look like virtual experts. Instagram Instagram is all about effects and sharing and it’s completely free. This long-time user favorite allows shutter bugs to shoot right from the app or use existing images in the photo album and easily add custom filters. Most photo apps have social media integration but Instgram can actually be classified as a social networking app. Users can share on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, but also less common options ike Posterous and Foursquare and even has a huge community that interacts with likes and comments. FREE! iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad Released: 2010-10-06 :: Category: Photography 360 Panorama For panoramic images 360 Panorama is our choice. This universal app allows users to take ad then patch together photos seamlessly to create breath-taking immersive images. The app uses the gyroscope to give users a full 360 view and stitches the images with amazing speed. $0.99 Released: 2010-07-30 :: Category: Photography Pro HDR For truly detailed images, high dynamic range photography (HDR) is the way to go. Pro HDR takes a lot of the hassle out of getting the images to look sharp and brilliant in all conditions. This app takes multiple pictures of the same thing with different settings to highlight or fix specific areas and them merges them together. The results are near 8 mega-pixel image quality. This is the only HDR camera app that automates the process, but for those with advanced photography skills there is also a manual option for setting exposure of the images that will make up the final composition. $1.99 Released: 2009-12-21 :: Category: Photography Hipstmatic For vintage effects like we got in the 1970′s with plastic encased toy-like cameras which gave very analog results, Hipstamatic is the go-to app for iPhone photographers. Read More

Oft nachgefragt: ein Beitrags-Update über meine ‘Homescreens‘. Seit März 2011, als die letzte Aktualisierung dieser Artikel-Serie erfolgte, hat sich die eine oder andere App verschoben, geändert und aussortiert. Der derzeit aktuellen Stand ist an dieser Stelle festgehalten. Vielleicht finden an diesem Montag ja speziell frische 4S-Käufer, die einen ersten Grundbedarf an Software benötigen, die eine oder andere Anregung. Ich persönlich ziehe jede individuelle Empfehlungen allen generischen ‘Hitlisten’ vor. Genau deshalb soll mein privater Einblick auch nicht alleine bleiben: Wer Screenshots oder Tipps von seinen verwendeten Apps in den Kommentaren kundtun möchte, ist dazu herzlich eingeladen. Zwei Anmerkungen noch: Die zwei benutzten Hintergrundbilder gibt es hier und hier. Auf meinem Standby-Screen befinden sich dieses und dieses Bild. Außerdem führe ich zwei Ordner mit ‘Review’-Software, die ich mir für dieses Blog noch genauer anschauen möchte. Da diese Programme (noch) keine Empfehlungen sind, verbleiben sie für diesen Artikel ohne Erwähnung. Außerdem verstecken sich in den iPhone-Ordnern: Delivery Status touch (3.99 €); Dropbox (kostenlos); eBay (kostenlos); iCab Mobile (1.59 €); Skype (kostenlos); WeatherPro (2.99 €); Tumblr (kostenlos); Verbs (0.79 €); WhatsApp (kostenlos); PayPal (kostenlos); Analytics Pro (4.99 €); Boxcar (kostenlos); Articles (2.39 €); Instapaper (3.99 €); Facebook (kostenlos); Kicktipp (kostenlos); Flickit Pro (3.99 €); 360 Panorama (0.79 €); Lab (0.79 €); Halftone (0.79 €); Instagram (kostenlos); Finnish English (2.39 €); Evernote (kostenlos); Reeder (2.39 €); CrashPlan (kostenlos); Meine Freunde suchen (kostenlos); Shazam (kostenlos); Synonymwörterbuch (19.99 €); iSSH (7.99 €); Handoff (1.59 €); Screens (15.99 €); Google+ (kostenlos) und AirPort Dienstprogramm (kostenlos). Außerdem verstecken sich in den Ordnern: Evernote (kostenlos); iOutBank (9.99 €); Pages (7.99 €); iSSH (7.99 €); Dropbox (kostenlos); iMovie (3.99 €); Skype (kostenlos); Numbers (7.99 €); Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery (3.99 €); Bumpy Road (2.39 €); Cut the Rope (1.59 €); Emberwind HD (1.59 €); Groove Coaster (2.39 €); The Last Rocket (2.39 €); Contre Jour HD (2.39 €); ShadowGun (3.99 €); Comic Zeal (5.99 €); Flipboard (kostenlos); Kindle (kostenlos); Tagesschau (kostenlos); Wired (2.99 €); Zeit Online (kostenlos); Big Picture (2.39 €); Color Splash (1.59 €); Instagallery (1.59 €); Instamap (1.59 €); PhotoSync (1.59 €); Remote (kostenlos); Boxee (kostenlos); iCab Mobile (1.59 €); Simplenote (kostenlos); Air Display (7.99 €) und PDF Expert (7.99 €). * Alle Affiliate-Links (Danke!) führen direkt in den App Store. Read More

by on 16. Aug, 2011 in Lets face it, 80% of the apps out there are garbage. They either don’t solve a problem well, they were poorly built, or just don’t work at all. These apps deserve bad public ratings and don’t belong anywhere on the app store charts. Then there’s the other 20% that are backed by passionate designers and developers changing how we interact with technology. People like Mobile Orchard readers These apps deserve recognition. Even great apps get negative feedback, and that’s OK. Feedback is a great thing when we can learn and improve from it. What’s broken is that when someone leaves a negative review in the app store, it scars your app for life, you can’t respond to it, and you can’t learn more about the problem in order to fix it quickly. Most of the developers I know building great apps tell me how app users are so quick to make a harsh review without much use or thought. I can only imagine how frustrating this is to deal with if you’ve put a lot of time and effort into creating something useful. This is human nature though. When we’re frustrated with something, we want to vent, and in the heat of the moment we usually say things we don’t mean and without much forethought. As an app developer you want feedback (especially heated negative feedback) to come directly to you and never find it’s way into the app store. When the feedback comes to you instead of the app store, you control your destiny: It’s a win/win. One of my personal favorite apps for taking and sharing panoramas, 360 Panorama by Occipital, does a really good job at keeping negative feedback out of the app store while helping disgruntled customers. They have two buttons, “Send Feedback”, and “Send Love”. Send Feedback opens up a screen which looks and feels like a review, but sends an email directly to the developer. Send love takes you to the app store for a review. As you can see they have quite a good rating, which is well deserved, but it wasn’t always that good. Crittercism is a handy framework for quickly incorporating a feedback mechanism into your app. Shacked Software recently incorporated this into Flickpad and has reported good results so far. Crittercism loads a support forum where users can submit bugs, ask questions, suggest feedback, and Read More

By Leanna Lofte, Saturday, Aug 13, 2011 | Every week a few of us from team TiPb will bring you our current favorite, most fun and useful App Store apps, WebApps, jailbreak apps, even the occasional accessory, web site, or desktop app if the mood strikes us. As long as they’re iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch related, they’re fair game. To see what we picked, and to tell us your pick, follow on after the break! Especially with school starting back tomorrow, I figured it would be smart to get it in early. Now put it somewhere safe!!! I jumped on the Google+ bandwagon early. I never liked Facebook, and I was tiring of Twitter. If you haven’t already tried Google+, there’s a great forum thread where you can get an invite, if you can’t already get yourself in there. The app works a lot like the web client, only it provides notifications. So the real question is – why do I like Google+. And the answer is simple: it’s like having any of your other social networks mixed with a forum, and real time updates. Take away the games from Facebook, take away the spam from Twitter – that’s Google+. Now that you have a working iOS app for Google+, there’s really no reason NOT to try it. Right?! I’m away at the beach this week, so I thought it only right that my pick be something super-useful when you’re away from home. Screens is a VNC client for iOS that works as a universal app on all your devices. What sets it apart from the many other apps that do the same thing in the App Store is that it was designed from the ground up with touch devices in mind. Where other VNC clients try to emulate your desktop exactly as a traditional client would, Screens makes excellent use of multi-touch gestures and different touch patterns to provide a really seamless remote experience. The other feature I really like is the super easy and fast setup for connection using Screens Connect, a server assistant app you download and run from the computer you wish to control. In doing this, you’re able to assign the computer a dedicated name instead of having to remember a long IP address (which may be changed without you realizing it by your ISP) and you also gain some more specific controls that make Read More

Occipital, the company behind the popular iPhone and iPad app 360 Panorama, announced on Wednesday that it received US$7 million in venture funding. 360 Panorama lets you take panorama pictures by shooting a series of pictures at one and stitching them on the phone before saving them to your camera roll. Besides a healthy infusion of cash, Occipital is also expanding beyond its iOS application to create a computer vision platform that other developers can use. Occipital will create the backbone and developers will use their creative skills to produce innovative apps with advanced imaging and camera features like eye tracking. Occipital has also added four new members to its board of directors including Jason Mendelson and Brad Feld of a venture capital firm Foundry Group, Manu Kumar of venture capital firm K9 Ventures and Gary Bradski, the creator of OpenCV, an open source computer vision library. Read More

Como todos sabreis, con la ayuda de algunas aplicaciones podemos usar el iPhone para realizar fotografías panorámicas en pocos segundos. Pues bien, este fin de semana, mi amigo Surfiky me ha hablado de 360 Panorama, que va más allá y nos permite realizar fotografías a modo de “visita virtual”. Para los que no conozcan este tipo de fotografía, se trata de panorámicas pero con una salvedad: nos podemos mover dentro de ellas pudiendo ver lo que hay a nuestro alrededor. Estas instantáneas son ideales para mostrar por ejemplo pisos que queramos poner en alquiler, enseñarles nuestra casa a algún amigo que se encuentre lejos o incluso poner en la Web de nuestro negocio una visita virtual de nuestras oficinas, bar, hotel, etc. Su precio no está nada mal, así que aprovechad y sacadle todo el rendimiento a esta magnífica aplicación. Precio: 0,79€ Read More

Last November, TechCrunch’s own Sarah Lacy sat down with Vineet Devaiah from “social streetview” startup, Phototour.in, which, at the time, had just received term sheets from a number of high-profile U.S. investors and had recently been awarded the “Top Emerging Technology Company of 2010″ by Nvidia. The startup was the first international, non-funded, under-20-member company to win the award, according to Devaiah. Since then, Phototour added Academy Award certificate-winner and entrepreneur Bala S. Manian as an advisor (who was honored for “technical achievement” for his contributions to optical technologies used in films, including Star Wars) and has gained more than 47,000 users for the alpha version of its image and panorama crowdsourcing app, “360″, on Android. Users have logged more than 75,000 panoramas in a relatively short period of time, so, considering the rumors that the iPhone 5 will have a native panorama app, sources tell us that 360 might be a candidate for a potential partnership with Android so that it can remain neck-in-neck with Apple. What’s more, today the startup is officially announcing that it is rebranding as TeliportMe and is bringing 360 out of alpha and into the public sphere in ready-to-wear form. For free. Granted, 360-degree panorama apps for smartphones are nothing new. There are quite a few cool apps and gadgets that have these capabilities on the market, like “You Gotta See This!”, Occipital’s 360 Panorama, and Microsoft’s Photosynth, to name a few. In light of this competition, TeliportMe wants to distinguish itself from the field by building a high quality Android app, that works across OEMs. According to Devaiah, panoramic apps tend to be very hardware centric because of their reliance on a smartphone’s camera, accelerometer, gyroscope, RAM, and so on. Because Android relies on so many different OEMs, it becomes a tricky proposition to build a good 360-degree app for Android and is the reason why most panorama apps are built on iOS (thanks to the vertical integration it has with its hardware). Another obstacle for Android is that only about 20 percent of its smartphones have the processing capability of the iPhone, and as panoramic apps require a lot of image processing during photo stitching, many Android phones don’t have enough RAM to make this possible (at least at speed). Devaiah cited the example of a phone like the HTC Wildfire, which has processing capabilities lesser than that of an iPhone 2G. (Burn!) Read More

Last November, TechCrunch’s own Sarah Lacy sat down with Vineet Devaiah from “social streetview” startup, Phototour.in, which, at the time, had just received term sheets from a number of high-profile U.S. investors and had recently been awarded the “Top Emerging Technology Company of 2010″ by Nvidia. The startup was the first international, non-funded, under-20-member company to win the award, according to Devaiah. Since then, Phototour added Academy Award certificate-winner and entrepreneur Bala S. Manian as an advisor (who was honored for “technical achievement” for his contributions to optical technologies used in films, including Star Wars) and has gained more than 47,000 users for the alpha version of its image and panorama crowdsourcing app, “360″, on Android. Users have logged more than 75,000 panoramas in a relatively short period of time, so, considering the rumors that the iPhone 5 will have a native panorama app, sources tell us that 360 might be a candidate for a potential partnership with Android so that it can remain neck-in-neck with Apple. What’s more, today the startup is officially announcing that it is rebranding as TeliportMe and is bringing 360 out of alpha and into the public sphere in ready-to-wear form. For free. Granted, 360-degree panorama apps for smartphones are nothing new. There are quite a few cool apps and gadgets that have these capabilities on the market, like “You Gotta See This!”, Occipital’s 360 Panorama, and Microsoft’s Photosynth, to name a few. In light of this competition, TeliportMe wants to distinguish itself from the field by building a high quality Android app, that works across OEMs. According to Devaiah, panoramic apps tend to be very hardware centric because of their reliance on a smartphone’s camera, accelerometer, gyroscope, RAM, and so on. Because Android relies on so many different OEMs, it becomes a tricky proposition to build a good 360-degree app for Android and is the reason why most panorama apps are built on iOS (thanks to the vertical integration it has with its hardware). Another obstacle for Android is that only about 20 percent of its smartphones have the processing capability of the iPhone, and as panoramic apps require a lot of image processing during photo stitching, many Android phones don’t have enough RAM to make this possible (at least at speed). Devaiah cited the example of a phone like the HTC Wildfire, which has processing capabilities lesser than that of an iPhone 2G. (Burn!) Read More