A video-sharing startup offers a clever way to sidestep the iPhone's video recording limitations.
By Kate Greene
One of the more frustrating aspects of the iPhone is its
inability to record video. While a hacked, or "jailbroken" iPhone can do it, users are still waiting for Apple to add video
as a legitimate feature. But, in
the meantime, the developers at 12seconds, which allows people to record and
instantly post 12-second-long videos on its site, have found an interesting workaround. (See
"Video Microblogging
Has Arrived.")
Today, the San Francisco startup released its iPhone app
that lets people choose three photos from their library of images, record 12 seconds of
audio, and upload them together a mini slideshow to the 12seconds' site. The results are
surprisingly compelling. See a couple of examples below.
The Ken Burns
Effect, in which photos are displayed with a slow pan or zoom,
provides the sensation of actual video.
While the slideshow idea is a neat trick, it has no hope of competing with live video uploading services like Qik that work with non-Apple handsets. This
announcement seems to just be a placeholder project for the 12-second
developers, to get them ready for the day when Apple finally enables video
recording on the iPhone.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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