Feed-aggregator

Twitter started testing a new way of delivering tweets to users this week. As the videos we posted showed, they’re going to change your Twitter experience  forever.

Some of the changes that User Streams usher in immediately improve Twitter while others will take some getting used to. Having been using the User Stream Preview version of Tweetdeck for a couple of days now, here we bring you an overview of how Twitter will be changing for everyone in coming months.

Real-time tweets: The first thing you’ll notice about User Streams is that you get tweets pushed to you as users posts them. There’s no need to click ‘Refresh’ or wait for for your Twitter client to go pull them in every couple of minutes. With User Streams you see Twitter ‘as it happens’. As more people sart using it, we imagine Twitter will become even more of a ‘chat room’ than it already is. Whereas in the past you had to wait a minute or two for replies to come though, it now possible to have a conversation spanning several tweets in the space of a minute.

See who ‘Favorites’ your tweets: Until now there’s been no easy way to see which of your tweets are being marked as Favorites by other users. Users’ Favorites have always been public (even if some users appear not to have been aware of that fact), now for the first time your Twitter client can tell you instantly when someone clicks the ‘Favorite’ button on one of your missives. As we discussed earlier this week, this could see the ‘Favorite’ becoming Twitter’s equivalent of Facebook’s ‘Like’ button.

All @ replies: An early feature of Twitter was the ability to see every tweet the people you followed sent, even one sent to people you don’t follow. Many users found this a good way of finding new people to follow but as user numbers grew, Twitter had to remove the feature to reduce strain on its servers. User Streams brings the option back for those who want it, although Twitter has been looking at other ways of discovering new people to follow in recent months, including newly announced recommendations.

New follower notifications: Forget waiting for an email to see your latest followers, User Streams can push that information directly to your Twitter app, meaning that there’s no need to make regular trips to the Twitter web interface to see whether it’s worth following them back. Very handy.

Faster search: Simple searches are now real-time. Search for a popular word or phrase and you’ll get a constant rain of tweets back. More complex searches, “eat+sleep -food -chocolate”, for example still rely on the old method of search however so there will still be a delay there.

Speed control: While receiving tweets in real-time makes Twitter a smoother, faster experience; it does take some getting used to. User Streams-enabled Twitter is probably unusable right now if you follow a few thousand people – it will be an unmanageable ‘power shower’ of tweets moving so fast that you’ll struggle to read them. It’s just about manageable when following up to about 1500 people, but you may need to keep your eye on your Twitter app more closely than you’re currently used to.

Twitter app developers will need to think of a way of controlling the continual cascade of tweets. A ‘Pause’ button would be a good start and maybe a slider control for setting the maximum speed of tweets.

Lists: If you do follow a lot of people you may well rely on Twitter Lists to keep track of people that you’re interested in. Sadly, right now Lists aren’t supported by  User Streams. This means that although your ‘All Friends’, ‘Replies’ and ‘Direct Messages’ feeds will all be lightning fast; more specialised lists that you’ve created will seem really slow by comparison. In April when it announced User Streams, Twitter said support for Lists may “perhaps” be introduced in the future.

If you’ve been testing User Streams this week we’d love to hear what your thoughts are. We’d conclude that right now Users Streams make Twitter faster, easier to use and even a little more fun.

If you want to try User Streams you can purchase the premium version of Echofon for Mac or apply to take part in the free User Stream Preview of Tweetdeck. The new technology will be gradually rolled out to further Twitter clients over time.

Original title and link for this post: How User Streams will change your Twitter experience forever

Facebook announced this morning that it is to double the size of its Oregon based data center, expanding the facility before construction has even been completed.

Posting on the Prineville Data Center Facebook page, Facebook added that it will be expanding its 147,000 square foot shell to encompass another 160,000 square feet, the additional area will be built to allow the deployment of more Facebook-specific servers.

“We are making excellent progress on the first phase of our Prineville Data Center and we are hoping to finish construction of that phase in the first quarter of 2011,” said Tom Furlong, Director of Site Operations for Facebook. “To meet the needs of our growing business, we have decided to go ahead with the second phase of the project, which was an option we put in place when we broke ground earlier this year. The second phase should be finished by early 2012.”

Publicly announcing the project at the start of the year, Facebook set to building its facility almost immediately. The construction project will employ between 150 and 200 on any given day and provide full-time employment for 35 workers.

[Source - Via]

Original title and link for this post: To Cope With Demand, Facebook Will Double The Size Of Its New Oregon Datacenter

At his blog, Amir Khella has a thorough post on how to build interactive prototypes of iPad applications using Keynote. In the post Amir shares his Keynote iPad template for download.

Apple's presentation making software, Keynote, is apparently becoming a popular design and prototyping tool. According to Luke Wroblewski, the reason why is that:

- It's efficient to work with
- It has fairly powerful drawing capabilities that allow you to design in high-fidelity
- It's great for showing process flows and interactions
- Its animation tools makes it easy to show how things like transitions and rich interactions might actually work

OK, to start, let’s get past the whole “PC means personal computer so a Mac is a PC” thing. I’m aware. But for the sake of argument and story-telling, I’m going to use PC to refer to a Windows-based machine, whether home built or from a manufacturer.

That said, I have to repent for a sin. Though actually I guess I’m just admitting, because repenting would lead you to believe that I plan on stopping. That’s not the case.

That sin is lust, and the object is a Mac.

I came into this profession as a blogger wielding a plastic-bound Logitech keyboard and 24 inches of widescreen Dell. I was determined to be the one that didn’t change. I was going to profess my love of Windows 7 and the world would know that I was typing every new entry while staring at the beauty of the 4-color Microsoft flag.

It’s not really that I’m a Microsoft fanboy. In fact, I’ve used a wealth of different operating systems, and would move to a flavor of Linux if more of what I do with audio production were supported. But, that hasn’t happened, so I’ve stuck with the old standard.

Conversely, I’m also not an Apple fanboy. I think that the iPhone is pretty, but I don’t really want one. Apple TV is one of the most disappointing products I’ve ever seen and iTunes on a PC is the single worst piece of software I’ve ever been all-but-forced to use.

But then it happened.

I’m a slave to the number pad on my keyboard. I avoid the top row of numbers as if they’re carriers of some highly infectious disease. Unless I’m playing a game, this row of digits is doomed to a solitary confinement, never to be graced by my tender touch.

One day, the 2 on my trusty Logitech bit the dust. Without warning or probable cause, it simply died. I was in shock. I knew that I should have bought two of the things when I got it, but I just neglected to do so. Disassembling the $20 thing was of no use, and they were out of stock at all but the most untrusted sources. I had to face the fact: it was time to buy a new keyboard.

I started my search across the vast keyboard wonderland that is Amazon, reading reviews and trying to decide what was right for me. Time after time, the most highly rated keyboards came from Logitech and Apple. In a moment that can only be described as fiscal insanity, I shelled out $50 for the Apple Aluminum keyboard. The one, of course, with the number pad.

The next day, as the keyboard arrived at my door, I was wary of even plugging the thing in. I carefully unboxed the device, making certain that I’d be able to return it if I didn’t like it. I set it in place, plugged it in and typed my first sentence.

And then it happened…As if in an instant, I suddenly began to understand.

From the first few words, I instantly knew that I was addicted. I had never before felt a piece of hardware that was more responsive. Typing with this newfound friend was like driving a sports car that answered willingly to my every touch. With light flicks across its chicklet-laden frame, I found myself typing faster and with less effort than ever before.

I was hooked. I needed to find out more.

The next instance of my unintended investigation came with the arrival of Ostrich. Being that I’m the editor of a channel entirely dedicated to applications, it was up to me to take a look at Ostrich and figure out if it was any good.

Only one problem: I used Chrome, and Ostrich was the first Twitter extension for Safari. Well, no harm done. I’ll load up Safari for Windows and, give Ostrich its due time and then I’ll be back to Chrome.

I’m guessing that you can already tell what’s going to happen, so I’ll spare you the details. I’ll just say that I’m now firmly into my third week of using Safari and I have absolutely no plans of going back to Chrome or Firefox as of this time.

Why? Because Safari, for me, is just…better. And that’s the confusing part, honestly. I can’t put my finger onto why it is that I like Safari better than Chrome. They’re both Webkit-based and both run essentially the same, but after weeks of using Safari and dealing with a couple of initial frustrations, I keep getting the sense that the browser is more intuitive, more responsive and simply…better.

And so here I sit, typing this missive on an Apple keyboard, using Safari…in Windows 7. Why? Not for lack of desire, mind you. Simply for lack of funds. I’ve finally gotten to the point where I can justify in my mind the cost associated with owning a Mac, but my wallet doesn’t seem to care what my mind thinks.

I now understand the cost. I now also understand why Mac enthusiasts shell out the money for them without a second thought. I’ve used a years-old Powerbook that still ran flawlessly. I’ve seen a friend who still has a Mac G4 Cube in daily service without a hitch. Why? It comes down to build quality, and Apple simply can’t be beaten, in my PC-using opinion.

So there it is. 900-some words later and I’ve finally laid it out there for flames from both sides. So flame on, my Internet-anonymous friends. Don’t mind me, I’ll just be over scraping change out of the sofa cushions to add to my Macbook Pro savings account.

Original title and link for this post: Confessions of a Mac-lusting PC owner.

Casino giant Harrah’s will bring its popular World Series of Poker (WSOP) to Facebook and MySpace in a new partnership announced with Playdom, which was just acquired this week for over $700 million by Disney.

In the deal, Playdom will relaunch its Poker Palace game as the official WSOP game, starting first on Facebook and then moving to other social networks.

WSOP’s VP Craig Abrahams said in a press release, “We will immediately start to work on enhancing the game, bringing unique WSOP promotions and sweepstakes into the offering and ensuring that the battle for WSOP virtual championship bracelets can become a Facebook-friendly endeavor.”

The game will include, “single table play money, virtual cash games and single-table tournaments featuring both full-table and short-handed play,” and will only be played with play money. Users will also get a chance “to enter sweepstakes that award prizes including trips to Las Vegas and seats to live WSOP events”.

Original title and link for this post: Harrah’s and Playdom to bring World Series of Poker to Facebook, MySpace

Today at the CrunchUp in Palo Alto rap all-star Chamillionaire sat down with Michael Arrington and talked about the social internet. Chamillionaire is a noted Twitter user, and actually debuted the lead music video for his upcoming album live on Ustream.

Arrington pressed Chamillionaire, real name Hakeem Seriki, on his use of social media to help his last single reach the top iTunes spot. Facebook helped promote the event, and that combined with Ustream time with the rapper himself exploded the song across the internet. That woke up record executives to the power of an individual really working the ‘tubes.

“I’m an artist, but I call myself a businessman,” Hareem said in a discussion about his life. Chamillionaire is a noted attendee of technology events, even when not speaking, given his wish to leverage technology for business purposes. “I come to the tech conferences to see what’s next,” Hareem said to a big round of applause.

Chamillionaire has an interesting record deal that includes a larger percentage of revenues from sales earmarked for himself. “When I went to the lables I had leverage,” he said.

Chamillionaire is perhaps the most active user of social media tools of any artist online. After pulling out three cell phones Chamillionaire brought down the house.

Original title and link for this post: Rapper Chamillionaire Talks Music, The Internet, And Social Media

You Gotta See This! is a camera app that takes advantage of the gyroscope in the iPhone 4.

Love It: Create a virtual photo collage using iPhone 4’s gyroscope.

Hate It: Photo quality varies by theme and use of the app makes it appear as if you are trying to fend off invisible attackers using your iPhone 4.

Overall: 3/5

You Gotta See This! ($1.99) from Boinx Software, is a camera app using iPhone 4’s gyroscope.  The app is designed to create a montage of photos by snapping multiple pictures and organizing them in one of the app’s 6 themes.

You Gotta See This! uses the iPhone 4’s gyroscope to determine the camera orientation while you record and the app positions the images it takes accordingly on a flat surface to create the spacial collages.

The user interface of the app is very easy to use.  Upon launching the app the user is presented with the view from your camera, a “?” button in the bottom left provides a tutorial, and a gear button in the bottom right allows you to change settings,  To begin taking a picture, press the camera button and you’re off!

To begin your photo montage, swipe the scene up, down, left and right with the camera.  Once complete, choose your theme and save it to your camera roll, or share it via Twitter, Facebook or email.

Several features of the app are noticeably subpar.  For instance, some of these collages work better than others, the button used to start recording can be finicky, and the interface for recording occasionally changed with respect to how the camera image is displayed.

Overall, the app is a neat concept, and an interesting use of the iPhone 4 gyroscope. Given that it is version 1.0 of the app, hopefully the developer will address some of the early bugs and add additional themes.

Original title and link for this post: You Gotta See This! iPhone 4 gyro camera app.

Today at TechCrunch’s Cruchup in Palo Alto, CA,  Jeremy Stoppelman, Yelp’s CEO and John Hanke, VP of Product Management at Google talked about the strain that is building up between Yelp and Google Places.

According to Stoppleman, Yelp is doing very well, now with 12 million reviews, 35 million uniques per month and 2.5 million uniques between its Android and iPhone apps.

Asked if Yelp is like the yellow pages, Stoppleman said that, “Yellow pages are boring, so I don’t know if we want to be that.” Google’s Hanke said that, “The Web [as a whole] is the yellow pages.”

Henke believes that, “The areas that Google can help [in local search] are data and monetization. Over 4 million business are feeding the Places API. The other part of the strategy is monetization.” Henke said that there was a lot of local-focused startups that failed because there, “wasn’t an advertising platform for local-focused startups,” and Google aims to fix that.

“We sell ads, we have 100 sales people – on mobile we haven’t done any monetization there – but we could just add in our search ads,” said Stoppleman. “Our most valuable data is our reviews, which are longer than other sites’ reviews,” continued Stoppleman. He also noted that, “check-ins have been awesome” for Yelp.

Talking about how Yelp’s content shows up on Google, “Our primary concern is what is best for the user. I think there is a real tension [between Google Places and Yelp]. I think Google has to be very careful that they don’t block the best content,” said Stoppleman. Later he said, “That can be difficult for a company like Google to swallow.”

“If the best content on the web is Yelp or the New York Times, we’re [Google] going to show it,” said Henke. Earlier he had said, “The competition isn’t between Google and Yelp or anyone else – the real competition is getting local businesses to advertise in the first place.”

Original title and link for this post: Yelp CEO: “There is real tension” between Google Places and Yelp

Today, Twitter will be rolling out a powerful new feature for its users, helping people connect with the million of other Twitter users by way of the new “Suggestion for You” tool.

Utilizing algorithms developed by Twitter’s relevence team, the Suggestions for You feature will suggest people that a Twitter user doesn’t already follow and prompt them to connect if they find them interesting. The suggestions are apparently formulated by analyzing the people a user follows and in-turn the users they follow.

If the friend suggestion isn’t a good one, the user can click “hide” and they will not be suggested to that user in the future.

Suggestions will be made via Twitter.com and under the Find People page and when browsing the user profiles, Twitter will automatically recommend similar users on that page.

The new features will be available to developers via an API, allowing them to incorporate the new friend suggestions into your popular Twitter clients also.

Twitter’s new additions bear a striking resemblance to Facebook’s “Friends You Might Know” feature, there is no indication if you can opt out of the feature.

Original title and link for this post: Twitter Rolls Out New Friend Suggestion Feature

If you thought that everyone was going to let Kindle grab the spotlight and the e-book market uncontested think again, nearly everyone else in the space is making noise trying to stay relevant.

Massive bookseller Barnes & Noble will roll out 1000 square foot retail sections in their stores this September to promote their Nook reader. The goal of the spaces is to afford consumers the ability to play with a Nook, thus breaking the hump that must people have never yet handled an e-reader.

How do you sell a product to someone who has never touched it? Barnes and Noble calls their strategy of getting the devices into the hands of dead-tree readers “everything.” That and their last price cut should keep the Nook a top two market spot.

Sony, reacting perhaps defensively for its lackluster price cuts and now overpriced readers, claimed publicly that they did not want to “lay claim to the cheapest e-reader.”  What premium edge they may have notwishtanding, Sony intends to fight the war at a price disadvantage. Good luck Sony, keep on keeping on.

Kindle is still in the lead, but competition is alive and well. iBooks, what are you going to do?

Original title and link for this post: Today In E-Books: Sony Hates Cheap and Barnes & Noble Goes To War

A jacket (at right) that doubles as a motorized massager has been equipped with WiFi so that, when stressed, the wearer can push a button which sends a message to other peoples’ WiFi enabled neck-ties – really, this how it works – and then those users can then decide whether to send digital sympathy that, when critical mass is reached –  starts to massage the wearer of the jacket.

The project is called SOS: Stress Outsourced. Leave it to MIT’s Media Lab students to build such a thing. Excellent.

On display at a conference this week, Byron Lahey, the wearable-technology coordinator at the conference (and not related to the project) told TechNewsDaily (MSNBC link), “It’s much more relaxing because you feel a connection with people, not because the massage is so great.”

Our only question: does it come in black?

Original title and link for this post: Jacket Crowdsources Out Your Stress, Then Massages You

TNW US: Media Quick Hit

When Slate launched ‘The Big Money‘ it seemed like a feasible idea, but it has never lived up to its promise. After two years of losing money, and with no quick map to profitability, Slate is pulling the plug.

Many expected the halo effect of Slate’s larger market brand name as a leader in online media to propel the site to success, but it seems that perhaps it became lost in a crowded financial news space. The push from Slate was not a big enough pull for the site to hit its stride.

When The Big Money launched, it did so in the midst of financial turmoil which has subsided somewhat. Perhaps the drop off in front page news was the final blow to the small site. As of this moment, there are still job listings for The Big Money on Slate’s employment page, what that means remains to be seen.

More as it comes.

Original title and link for this post: Slate Kills ‘The Big Money’ Showing Cracks In Expansionist Online Publishing

Launching publicly in August 2006, Twitter has enjoyed a massive amount of growth in its four years of existence.

The microblogging service surpassed five billion tweets in October 2009, smashed past ten billion tweets in March of this year and tomorrow will surpass twenty billion tweets; a huge milestone for the San Francisco based company.

Tweet counting website Gigatweet predicts that the twenty billionth tweet will be posted around 07:30 PDT / 15:30 BST tomorrow and as always, we will do our best to grab the very tweet that breaks that barrier.

To put this in perspective, twenty billion tweets equates to every single living person on the earth tweeting nearly three tweets each. Massive.

Original title and link for this post: Tomorrow, Twitter Will Pass 20 Billion Tweets

Foursquare’s head of business development, Tristan Walker, in a panel today at TechCrunch’s Crunchup conference said that Foursquare focuses on three levels of deals: mom and pop corner stores, retail chains and brands. Regarding brands, Walker said that Foursquare wants to be brands’ “new age experience provider.”

Walker said that Foursquare’s business development team receives between 500-1,000 emails per day of new incoming inquiry, and Walker and his team of five tries his best to respond to all of them. we do charge for sponsored badge promotion

“The check-in enables a lot of everything that happens on the platform. We hope to build the best social expierence for users and merchants.” Walker said that about 25-30% of Foursquare’s deals are mayor deals and then the rest are frequency deals.

“Nobody’s really been able to offer this kind of deals at the retail deals at scale,” he said. Also, Walker believes that, ”yield management is going to be big for us…we just need to build the infrastructure for that.”

“Heatpocalypse” was a recent location that Foursquare created for the heat wave in New York City, and thousands of people checked into the “location”. Walker said that funnily enough, when he checked into that location, a nearby frozen yogurt shop popped up as a deal.

Finally, Walker says, “we want to socialize loyalty in a way that hasn’t been done before.”

Original title and link for this post: Foursquare wants to be “the new age experience provider” for brands

Here today in Palo Alto, startup Blekko just demoed the latest and greatest version of their upcoming search engine; it was an impressive event.

The company has generated significant interest over the last few months as it has garnered coverage from several technology outlets. Today the CEO took the product for a public test drive, and we got our best look yet into just what the company is cooking up in the last 3 years.

Of course, the search market could not be more a difficult place to do business, especially for a company with an odd name like Blekko. Not only are Google and Microsoft battling for marketshare with billion dollar budgets, but the war in the space is so hot that even Yahoo is dodging the load.

So what is Blekko’s secret sauce? For starters, they are not trying to kill Google, or so they say. If that is true will become clearer over the next year, but for now the company is looking to execute searches that you “can’t do anywhere else.” The engine focuses on ’slashtags’ that allow users to search with a certain perspective.

Want to search the internet from a conservative perspective? You can do that. Want do search the web from a Christian view, you can do that too. While Google and Bing want to be the world’s best vanilla search engine, Blekko wants to do the opposite and bring you results with an opinion.

Will consumers use it? If the product when it launches is as interesting as the demo was today, then it has a shot. Every website that has a certain view (DailyKos, the WSJ, FoxNews, etc) is going to want to use Blekko to spoon-feed their readers what they want to see.

The company claims to have hundreds of slashtags, and will allow users to help build new ones once the company is out in the public.

Blekko’s biggest problem is that its basic search results, that it then bends, are not yet top notch. That should improve over time as their coding team has more time to develop and tweak. As Blekko solves that problem, and expands its slashtag idea, they could have a hit on their hands.

Last thought? The company shares its search data that it collects on the sites in its index, meaning that you can dig through reams of fascinating data for free, on nearly every site you could care to. That alone means that I will be on the site.

Original title and link for this post: Blekko Demos Slick New Search Engine

In an interview today at TechCrunch Crunchup, Groupon CEO Andrew Mason called his company a, “kind of like a replacement to the classic city guide.”

“It got better as we started to get better businesses. The businesses definately look at it as the best kind of local advertising that has ever been. 97% of the businesses we feature want to be featured again,” said Mason. He said that they have six month wait lists in some cities of businesses looking to be featured.

Groupon has had to tweak the model many times and started out as a way to crowdsource good ideas. “A lot of it early on was figuring out what types of deals worked, and which ones didn’t.” Groupon’s “stealth strategy” was to focus on Chicago early on.

Groupon certainly leverages the social structure of the Web. “The stuff we are selling is inherently social. By tying into the social infrastructure of Twitter and Facebook, we can create a frictionless way to for people to share,” said Mason.

Mason isn’t really too concerned about all of the Groupon clones (Mason says there are as many as 500) – and one strategy Groupon plans use to compete with other large companies such as Google and Yelp by “personalized deals”.

Asked whether it is easier to get new users on either Facebook or Google, Mason said that it fluctuates between the two.

Mason says that they don’t have a good reason to even think about going public at this time and seems preHere’s our coverage of an earlier talk this year that Mason gave.

Original title and link for this post: Groupon CEO: “97% of businesses we feature want to be featured again”

When the announcement of a partnership between Yahoo! Japan and Google was made, it was no surprise that Microsoft almost immediately cried foul. Now, the Redmond, Washington company says that it plans to present evidence to the Japanese FTC that the deal will do more harm than good.

An article on Silicon Alley Insider states that Google and Yahoo! have a combined force of 98% of the search market for the country. That information, in and of it self, would be enough to bring up allegations of antitrust against the partnership. However, Japan doesn’t seem to care, according to Japanese FTC executive secretary Takahide Matsuyama. Since the business are doing advertising and search separately, Japan appears to be noncommittal on the situation.

Microsoft, however, appears to believe that Matsuyama is wrong, and will be trying diligently to convince him of that fact.

We’ll be following the story as it develops, and let you know any information that comes into view.

Original title and link for this post: Microsoft is screaming antitrust in the Japanese search market.

Occipital, the people who brought you RedLaser, have just changed iPhone photography in a big way. With the announcement of 360 Panoramic, the company has brought real-time panoramic photography to the iPhone.

Now you’ll need an iPhone 3GS or iPhone 4, running iOS, in order to use it, but the results are pretty stellar:

So that’s the gist. You simply tap the screen to start and then turn a slow circle for 20 seconds. As you do, the phone will put your panorama together in real time, using literally every single frame.

You’ll notice, also, that an iPhone 4 isn’t required. That’s because 360 uses the phone’s incoming images to track motion, instead of the phones gyro and accelerometers. There is a benefit, however, to using the iPhone 4. If a frame happens to be dropped while you’re doing your circle, 360 will use the phone’s gyroscope to fill the missing frames.

After your image is completed, which literally happens as soon as you’re done with your circle, all you have to do is tap the screen again to have the image saved to the camera roll. There’s no stitching time required, and the photos look amazing.

You can pick up 360 Panorama from the App Store, as of today, for $2.99.  So get downloading, get spinning and then leave us links to your photos in the comments.

Original title and link for this post: 360 Panorama brings real-time panoramic photography to the iPhone.

Occipital, the people who brought you RedLaser, have just changed iPhone photography in a big way. With the announcement of 360 Panoramic, the company has brought real-time panoramic photography to the iPhone.

Now you’ll need an iPhone 3GS or iPhone 4, running iOS, in order to use it, but the results are pretty stellar:

So that’s the gist. You simply tap the screen to start and then turn a slow circle for 20 seconds. As you do, the phone will put your panorama together in real time, using literally every single frame.

You’ll notice, also, that an iPhone 4 isn’t required. That’s because 360 uses the phone’s incoming images to track motion, instead of the phones gyro and accelerometers. There is a benefit, however, to using the iPhone 4. If a frame happens to be dropped while you’re doing your circle, 360 will use the phone’s gyroscope to fill the missing frames.

After your image is completed, which literally happens as soon as you’re done with your circle, all you have to do is tap the screen again to have the image saved to the camera roll. There’s no stitching time required, and the photos look amazing.

You can pick up 360 Panorama from the App Store, as of today, for $2.99.  So get downloading, get spinning and then leave us links to your photos in the comments.

Original title and link for this post: 360 Panorama brings real-time panoramic photography to the iPhone.