This week marks the start of the tech trade show DEMO in Santa Clara, California, and as seems to be happening often these days, mobile apps are garnering a lot of attention.
As NetworkWorld reports, lots of cool new apps for Apple’s iOS platform have been shown off at the show, presenting new and innovative ideas to do a whole lot of different things. New solutions for e-commerce seems to be something of a common thread, but other app developers are finding new and interesting ways to leverage mobile technology.
Take, for example, Arqball Spin. The app’s developer, Arqball, has created a system to make it easy for users to shoot and create spinning three-dimensional representations of objects which can be shared and interacted with on both iOS devices and the web. The app does more than just stitch multiple photos together: it actually shoots lots of photos of a spinning object and analyzes the data in order to create a 3-D representation of it.
It’s possible to create “spins” with spinning platforms like a lazy susan, or even by awkwardly trying to walk around an object as the app does its capturing, but the best results come from having a small rotating stage to get perfect capture data. That said, provided you have a way to rotate the object, the resulting spin is handy for all kinds of things, but eBay sales listings immediately come to mind.
Another app aimed at photography and 3-D captures is TourWrist. The app is designed to shoot panoramic stills using an iPad or an iPhone, which isn’t exactly a new thing. Apps such as Photosynth already make it possible to create dynamic panoramas by stitching together multiple photos. The difference between similar apps and TourWrist, however, is the use of the iOS device’s internal gyroscope.
When you hold up your iPhone in a location and start using TourWrist, the app basically captures photographic data as you move around, almost like shooting a video. When you then go back and look at the resulting panorama the app creates, you can see different aspects and views by moving your iOS device in space, as if it were a window into the place and time where you originally shot it. Augmented reality games have been using this technology for some time now, but TourWrist’s developers seem to have a pretty great idea when it comes to photography.
Other apps make it possible for non-programmer types to make custom iOS apps themselves. Developer iGenApps showed off its my Apps app-making app, which, as you might guess, makes apps. What’s impressive about it is that iGenApps was able to create an app for the DEMO conference inside of six minutes, right on stage.
Even cooler, all three apps – Arqball Spin, TourWrist and my Apps – are available in the iTunes App Store right now.
