AbracadabrApp
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Daily Update for November 27, 2013
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AbracadabrApp: Moleskine meets moviemaking
iPhone fans often seem to have a penchant for two things: Moleskine notebooks and taking copious amounts of pictures or shooting hand-held movies. Barcelona's Honest&Smile has managed to combine three elements -- iPhone, Moleskine and movies -- into one compact "analog image mixer and notebook" called AbracadabrApp (US$38.42). It's an incredibly simple "analog app" -- just take one hardcover Moleskine reporter notebook, drill a hole through it at one point, cut off part of the pages and add a channel that an iPhone can sit in. Then add a mirror with a tiny "arm" that sticks into the hole in the page. That mirror can be adjusted a bit in terms of angle by swiveling it around the arm, but ends up in the field of view of the iPhone's camera. The result? You can take photos or movies showing both what's behind and in front of the camera simultaneously. Think of it as a split-screen app, only there's no app involved. It's all smoke and mirrors, minus the smoke. As you can see for yourself in the photos here and in a number of example videos on the AbracadabrApp web page, the result is enchanting. To add to the fun, there are three little "handyfilters" (orange, yellow and green) that can be placed in front of the iPhone camera lens either singly or stacked to change the tint of the images being captured like an analog Instagram. AbracadabrApp is about as low-tech as you can get, but brings a tremendous amount of charm and fun to capturing video or photos with your iPhone. And hey -- if you need to take notes, you'll always have a notebook at hand... The Moleskine US web page shows this as a "limited edition" notebook, so if you're drooling at the thought of a unique holiday gift, you might want to order one today. Related: I ended up ordering one. I think I need an intervention.
