Tag: Camera »

tap tap tap (Convert, Voices) has done quite well in the App Store despite not being a game developer. Continuing this trend, the company has announced today in a lengthy blog post that their newest app, Camera+, has made $250k in its first month. Surprisingly enough, the app did so with no advertising (the company doesn't advertise for its apps anymore due to costs) and quickly declining sales in the US market.

So how did they do it? Here's the abridged version.

Since tap tap tap does no advertising anymore, John Casasanta, head of the company and writer of the blog post, says that the key is to start with a HUGE launch. Huge as in contest for $10,000+ worth of camera equipment... but the key is how to get the word out. Fortunately for tap tap tap, John Casasanta is also the head of MacHeist, so the company got a large head start, but now tap tap tap has its own opt-in list with 70,000 subscribers. Says Casasanta, "Granted, not every developer has access to such resources, but there’s no reason that anyone can’t build-up resources of this sort over time… it’s taken us years so patience and persistence is key."

I guess in any business, you're only as successful as the people you know, or in this case, the amount of people you know.

The rest of the success lies in the app itself. Since the US App Store is completely dominated by games, it's imperative to have a flawless, detail oriented app with some fun touches and well done social network integration. The post talks, in detail, about making things feel right, with not too many options, but enough to work correctly. Also, developers need to be completely open to feedback, and update when the app needs to be updated, but only when the updates are necessary.

As a non-game, it's very important to keep hope even after sales wane in the US. The app market overseas is very different from our game and entertainment app dominated store, with countries like Finland having 14 of the top 25 being non game and entertainment apps. Check out the sales chart on the right to see how foreign app store are supporting Camera+.

The post ends with a warning. "You can spend a year on an app and hardly make a dime on it. It’s not just the nature of the App Store… it’s the nature of practically any business." Only make an app if it's something that you love, and be sure to slave over every last detail.

So good luck to all the devs that are out to make your own $250k. If every app turns out to look as well made as any of the tap tap tap apps, the world would be a much better place.
[Source: taptaptap]

Even since the introduction of a 5-megapixel camera in the iPhone 4, Apple’s phone isn’t blessed with the ability to take large photos. As those familiar with photography know and Apple is keen to point out, it’s not the megapixel count that determines the quality of your snaps, merely the size.

Our title doesn’t lie, however. You can achieve images equivalent to 20-megapixels from your iPhone if you make use of AutoStitch Panorama and apply a little concentration. Now updated to version 3.0, AutoStitch allows iPhone users to take multiple photos on their iPhone and stitch them together to create a poster-sized image. Ideal for when the subject you want to capture is too big for the iPhone’s screen (and lens) or you simply want to take bigger pictures.

This latest update adds enhanced compositing techniques, new algorithms to compensate for blending and exposure and automatic brightness matching between images. Users can also now share their shots to Facebook or via email right from their device.

Compatible with the iPhone 3G, 3GS and 4 as well as the iPad and iPod touch, AutoStitch 3.0 is available now for $2.99.

Aaaand...we're back! Phew. Is it Friday already? Well, here are our weekly five app selections, culled from recent App Store releases. We've got plenty of new stuff this week, from feed readers to music games, so let's get started!

Guitar Hero
Guitar Hero was demo'd at the WWDC keynote earlier this week, and made its official App Store debut shortly afterwards. Talk about big-name apps. The game costs $2.99 and comes with six songs, allowing you to unlock others via in-app purchase. (The included songs include hits like "We Are the Champions" by Queen and "Say It Ain't So" by Weezer.) It looks a lot like the Tap Tap Revenge and Rock Band games on the surface, but Guitar Hero introduces some new "swipe" and "strum" mechanics that add some new spice to the somewhat-stale tapping games. To put it succinctly, the game looks awesome—we'll have a full review up later, of course.

Camera+
Camera+ comes from TapTapTap, makers of excellent, succinctly named apps like Convert and Voices. It includes tons of tools, ranging from digital zoom to an image stabilizer to a grid that helps you avoid crooked pictures. There are also plenty of scene modes (Beach, Night, Sunset, Backlit, etc) and filters (from a dirty Grunge effect to the more humorous So Emo). Toss in a digital flash effect, borders, and the ability to share photos across a variety of social networks, and Camera+ has just about every feature covered. The app itself is elegantly designed, and on the whole, Camera+ seems to be another worthy addition to the ranks of photo apps in the App Store.

HECTOR: Badge of Carnage
This is not your typical adventure game, folks. HECTOR proudly declares itself to be "half-decent," but don't let that fool you. This point-and-click adventure game stars Detective Inspector Hector and is cheekily irreverent. The dialogue is crude (not for the young'ins) and witty, and the game features genre mainstays like interactive locations and an expansive inventory. HECTOR certainly takes a different tack than most App Store games. Point-and-click fans should check it out.

Sudoku 2 Pro
Sudoku 2 Pro is (you guessed it!) the pro version of the popular Sudoku port. This version strips out the ads, tracks your "runs" (uninterrupted win streaks), auto-deletes solved notes, and allows you to hide the timer if you so wish...among other things, of course. Naturally, the features that make Sudoku 2 loved by so many App Store customers are still intact: ease-of-use, graphics, etc. If you're looking for a good Sudoku game and don't want your screen cluttered with ads, check out Sudoku 2 Pro.

Pulse News Reader
And finally, one for your iPad owners. Pulse News Reader was also demoed by Steve Jobs at the WWDC. Pulse is a clean and visual news reader for iPad. It imports up to 20 news sources and then creates an elegant mosaic of your news stories. Tapping on a block brings up the article in full. Just take a look at the picture...the app looks gorgeous, and even supports both landscape and portrait. Yum!

We enjoyed Moe's Notes for iPhone which offers some unique features for taking rich multimedia notes that include audio, video, images and GPS coordinates and it's now available for iPad.

Moe's Notepad makes the most of the iPad's larger screen by using splitter bars to show different sections of the app that used to be spread across multiple screens. The updated UI allows users to customize the app's display as they wish while retaining the same functionality.

Without a camera in the iPad (although the team behind Moe's Notes believe one is coming) images are taken from the iPad's Photo's App with a number of editing options available within the app itself. Audio editing is also impressive with recording and trimming of audio as well as volume and speed settings available.

All media can be combined into an email and sent as attachments with more streamlined options coming in a future update that could include popular formats such as Evernote or GoogleDocs among others.

Users of Moe's Notes for iPhone should certainly invest in this iPad reworking and those that need a decent note taking tool will be hard pressed to find a more feature-packed alternative.

Moe's Notes is available now for $9.99

Having an iPhone on you is always handy when you want to snapshot something you need to remember, whether it’s a for sale sign, promotional poster or an advertisement. One of the drawbacks of this process is that once you’ve taken the photo you’ll need to fish it out of your Camera Roll where it’s taking up valuable space among your actual photos and there’s also a good chance that you’ll forget about it altogether.

QuickShot! aims to put an end to these issues by combining your iPhone’s Camera and Mail apps into one slick process. Once the app is setup you can simply launch it, take your photo and push a button to send yourself an email. The process is simple enough that it can take as little as three taps to complete.By default the image isn’t saved to your Camera Roll either so you won’t have to worry about clutter anymore. When sending the email, you can customize it as you wish and also scale the picture before you send. This strikes us as one of those apps you think you wont need until, of course, you actually do and is certainly worth a look. QuickShot! is available on the App Store for $0.99.

Something is going horribly wrong with Apple’s legendary veil of secrecy. Following the highly documented iPhone prototype leaks already this year, it now appears that a prototype iPod touch has escaped into the wild as well. The same Vietnamese website that, to the best of our knowledge, still has an iPhone 4G prototype is now posting images of a prototype iPod touch with a built-in 2 megapixel camera. As before, Tinhte.vn has also posted a video of the device in action that appears to be running some kind of diagnostic tool with some very un-Apple graphics, but it does show the camera working. Last time we posted about Tinhte.vn we mentioned the dramas Jason Chen of Gizmodo encountered when showing off video of an Apple prototype and urged a little caution. The guys in Vietnam obviously missed that post or simply don’t care, this time they even include footage of them walking into their office!

While this is clearly a prototype model, it may not be that new. Apple is alleged to have scrapped an iPod touch with a camera shortly before its iPod event in September 2009 where it instead launched the iPod nano with video. Images circulating on the web around that time also looked very similar to these. Mac Rumors claims that the codename N18 on the sticker one of the images makes this model a third-generation iPod touch prototype, manufactured in June 2009. Whether or not Apple is planning to return to the iPod touch with camera remains to be seen but these pictures at least prove that they have tried it.

And meanwhile, across the South China Sea, more iPhone prototype information is being spilled. Taiwanese website Apple.pro has posted what appear to be shots of the next generation iPhone’s front fascia. This isn’t exciting in itself, given that we’ve seen what we expect to be the finished product already, but what is interesting is one of these front panels is white. Apple already sells the iPhone with a black or a white back panel and, if these images are true, now plans to sell a completely white version as well. We’re not sure we like the idea of an all-white iPhone, especially if the aluminum seen on the black prototype is included on this white version. We may well think differently when we see the final product, however, with Apple being a company synonymous with beautiful products. Then again, Apple used to be a company synonymous with pre-launch security...

[ via Tinhte.vn ]

[ via Apple.pro ]

Even though an iSight camera (or its accompanying UI) wasn't shown off last Wednesday's iPad media event, speculation has now fallen to if the iPad will ship with one. These rumors started when Steve showed the device to the media. For a split second (around the 9:24 mark on the video podcast), you'll see the studio lights catch what appears to be a concealed hole in the top center of the iPad's new bezel. Sure, we've been here before. This could be a number of things, an ambient light or proximity sensor for one.

Granted, this "evidence" is pretty sketchy, and probably likely to be debunked, but it gets better. Mission Repair today started to receive replacement Apple iPad parts of which it posted some shots of on their blog. Among the parts was the iPad's outer frame .. and guess what? It has a molded slot which fits the iSight camera part, perfectly. The photo shows the iPad's outer frame (top), an Apple Macbook iSight unit (middle), and the Macbooks inner frame (bottom).

Wired reports the iPad simulator seeded as part of the iPhone OS 3.2 SDK still features a "Take a Photo" OS action, when adding a contact's photo to Contacts.app, for example. There's even speculation that the reason Apple didn't show the camera at the event was due to its then unfinished supporting UI. This image posted by Shaun supports the rumor, suggesting that Apple didn't just leave in the same UI from iPhone OS, but that it has been modified to look and feel dedicated to the iPad, although as you can tell, it's far from final.

Maybe we'll see another event at the end of March, just before they launch the Wi-Fi iPad model. "One More Thing?" .. Or could this be a design choice for a future iPad model? I'm sure we'll find out soon!

I've personally never really believed it when someone would tell me that the iPhone's camera isn't bad for a phone. After all, I would take picture after picture and the majority would come out, usually with a string of words which I won't repeat, blurry and unrecognizable. As I hustled around CES last week taking pictures and spilling coffee all over myself, it was actually Chris Hall who so graciously pointed out, in between laughs of course, that it was probably my pitifully shaky hands that was the problem and not the camera itself. As it turns out, he was right, for once, and for the past few days I've been using the Blur Tripod and have formed a new opinion regarding my camera phone.

Priced at $14.95, the Blur Tripod is exactly what you think it is, a tripod for an iPhone. A mini tripod to be precise, which stands about 5.5 inches off the ground or up to 8 inches if you extend the legs all the way. The unit itself comes in two separate parts, the legs and the adapter mount. The legs are made of ultra light weight aluminum wich keeps them portable while still remaining fairly durable. The mount is a simple plastic clip which uses a standard 1/4" 20 thread camera screw size which makes it usable on most any tripod on the market. An extremely nice feature of this tripod is it's adjustably, it can truly be manipulated to be able to take photos from nearly any angle you would ever need, however it does become a little unstable when shifted too far to one side. A helpful tip I found though is that while unstable for taking photos shifting the mount all of the way to one side can help in another way by doubling as a steady hand grip for shooting video.

Mobile Mechatronics didn't stop there though, they also put together a $0.99 Blur Tripod app to accompany the tripod.