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2011-05-24

iPhone Gets Panoramic Video With ‘Dot’ Camera Accessory

Apple’s iPhone is widely regarded as a multimedia powerhouse, equipped with two cameras that enable users to snap photos, record videos and video chat. The ability to take panoramic videos, has, however, eluded the iPhone.

Kogeto's Dot attachment enables the iPhone to take panoramic videos
Until now. On May 23, startup Kogeto plans to unveil an accessory that lets the iPhone camera shoot 360 degrees at once. (CANON DIGITAL IXUS 40 battery)The attachment, which snaps onto the iPhone’s back and resembles a short microscope lens, will enable iPhone users to capture the activity in an entire room without rotating the handset or undertaking special effort. Users simply need to place their handsets in the center of the space, on a level surface, such as a table or chair. The attachment’s panoramic camera takes care of the rest, mapping the footage to Cartesian coordinates and then “wrapping it” around a cylinder so that it looks panoramic.
Kogeto Founder and Chief Executive Jeff Glasse wants people to use the device for live broadcasts of everything from parties to conferences. (NIKON EN-EL14 battery)Watching such an immersive video, he contends, would be nearly as interesting as attending an event in person. Video creators, in turn, will benefit from the device’s ease of use, says Glasse. The gadget’s tagline, in fact, is “Put down your camera and enjoy the party.”

“This is about democratizing video capture,” notes Glasse. (SONY a 200 battery)“Most people are not good at framing camera shots. You don’t want to miss an event because you’re too busy capturing it [on camera].”
The gadget, which is named Dot in reference to its diminutive size and circular shape, will cost $99 and be available through Kogeto’s online store later this summer. (The company is taking presale orders now.) Glasse says Dot, which weighs 15 grams and can fit into a pants pocket, is the world’s smallest panoramic camera. For now, it only works with the latest version of the iPhone, iPhone 4, or the iPod touch, but Glasse plans to release versions that will fit popular Google Android phones before the end of the year.(SONY NP-BG1 battery)
The idea for Dot sprung from a different camera project Glasse headed up several years ago. As part of a research study sponsored by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, he developed a high-definition panoramic video camera affordable enough for schools to purchase. That camera, dubbed Lucy, costs $3,500 and was Kogeto’s first product. Kogeto says the 12-lb.(CASIO NP-30 battery) camera is being used in hundreds of schools today.
A longtime iPhone user, Glasse immediately wanted to make a cellphone version of Lucy but couldn’t figure out how to build a device small and cheap enough to appeal to a large number of consumers. Cobbling together and refining the design took him close to a year.
One key realization was not to duplicate functions. (CANON NB-7L battery)Dot taps into a number of the iPhone’s native features, including its camera, audio, battery and video editing software. The piggybacking helps keep Dot compact and affordable. “The iPhone doesn’t know the difference” when Dot is attached, says Glasse. The phone just captures the video as a raw image, he explains. It is Kogeto’s back-end system that “de-warps” it into a panoramic image.
Like the iPhone itself, Dot will launch with an ecosystem, including a mobile app called Looker and a web platform that will host Dot videos for browsing and sharing. (SONY NP-FM50 battery)The basic Looker app will be free but Kogeto plans to charge for premium features like sophisticated editing tools and greater amounts of storage on its site.
Users will be able to view videos on their phones and promote them on sites like Facebook and Twitter but for now the video hosting is limited to Kogeto’s site because Dot videos require special media players.(KONICA MINOLTA NP-900 battery) That’s the main reason why Dot video won’t be compatible with Apple’s FaceTime video chat service or Skype’s popular video conferencing technology. Glasse says he would like to partner with these companies to create an interoperable solution.
Unlike other social photography/video apps like the recently-launched Color, Looker videos will be private by default but can be made public by the user/creator. Glasse is hopeful that people will choose to share their videos and establish the site as a “YouTube for panoramic video.”
One incentive for publicly publishing videos is the ability to create a real-time, comprehensive video view of an event by linking videos being streamed from multiple Dots.(CANON NB-2L battery) Glasse says his software can detect the location and orientation of each Dot from the iPhone’s GPS, compass and gyroscope. If a group of friends at a football game uploads videos from their Dots, Looker can connect the streams, allowing a viewer to hop from one feed to another to watch the game from different perspectives.
Glasse isn’t the only one that sees panoramic video as an important trend. (CANON NB-7L battery)Another U.S. company called EyeSee360 is devising a similar accessory, the GoPano micro, that appears set for introduction around the same time as Dot. The Pittsburgh-based company was spun out of Carnegie Mellon University and its Robotics Institute. (SONY Cyber-shot DSC-W310 battery)Glasse notes that GoPano is bulkier than Dot but says he views the competing company as helping Kogeto create a new market.
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