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Horizon for iOS records landscape video no matter how you hold your phone
On Vine and Instagram, square-sharing is the name of the game. But when it comes to YouTube or TV, you're going to insult viewers if you present them with a vertical video. Despite six years of smartphone innovation, Apple hasn't really solved what's come to be known as Vertical Video Syndrome, so one app developer is taking it upon itself to fix it. With Horizon, Evil Window Dog believes it can help shape a world with no more black sidebars. Where some developers ask users to hold their iPhone on its side before shooting, like Google tried with YouTube Capture for iOS, Horizon wants to make things a whole lot easier by letting you capture horizontal video from any angle. Horizon works by using your iOS device's gyroscope to auto-level videos, keeping a horizontal focus on the action unfolding in front of you. If you rotate your iPhone 45-degrees, the app simply adjusts the frame to maintain its aspect ratio (it currently supports square 1:1, wide 16:9 and standard 4:3). But that's not all it has to offer. In the app's settings, you can set whether you'd like to rotate as you film, rotate and scale recordings or disable rotation altogether. Video quality can be tweaked to output VGA, 720p or Full HD recordings and there's also an option to mirror videos to your Apple TV using AirPlay. You can even apply one of eight pre-installed filters, if artistically destroying homemade videos is your thing. Horizon is available on the App Store for $0.99 for a limited time -- we just wish Apple and Google had bundled this as standard.
Pioneer debuts new Sound Wing HVT speakers, novel tech touted within
There's a ton of gadgetry that goes into speakers, but the notable thing here is that the Pioneer folks have begun using HVT, or Horizontal-Vertical Transforming technology -- but more on that in sec. This beauty is engineered to reduce unwanted vibration and preserve bass caliber while outputting 100W of sound. Featuring a double diaphragm packaged close together, the Sound Wing gives off omnidirectional sound -- that's 360 degrees of noise. And thanks to HVT, the coils within the speaker have been rearranged to reduce the wasted space in traditional speakers -- though for some reason this particular unit still measures a portly 109mm thick. Seeing that the tech Pioneer has implemented here is novel, we're interested to see how this thing will sound in the real world. You'll find the Sound Wing in Japan for ¥41,000 (about $507) come June.
