Scobleizer

The Next Web did a great job of explaining what Occipital’s new Panoramic 360 app does (for iPhone 4, $.99 today only, already #3 on the app store) but I’ve had a few days with the app, so thought I’d add my two cents.

First, here’s some panoramic photos I’ve done with the Occipitalapp:

DogPatchLabs
Outside, Pier 38
Jason Kincaid, inside Techcrunch’s offices
Inside the Half Moon Bay Ritz
Outside the Half Moon Bay Ritz
Along Highway 1
On the beach in Pacifica

Their blog covers why speed matters and how they are using the app.

Why is this “bad ass”? (That’s what Techcrunch’s Jason Kincaid said yesterday when I showed him the app). I recorded an audio clip to explain why this is so cool.

Basically, it is the easiest to use, and most immediate, of all the ways to make panoramic photos. I’ve used a bunch of others, but they all require you to take about 20 images, while spinning around, then using software to “stitch” together the images. This doesn’t always work very well and, while the new 360 Panoramic app, doesn’t always work perfectly — you can see seams in some of my images where I stopped and started — with the new app you get to see the results instantly and can try again, while with other apps you have to wait a minute or two while the processing works.

This is yet another example of how the mobile phone’s sensors are changing what’s possible and I hope we see more examples like this soon.

Some tips?

It works better in bright spaces, especially outdoors. Why? Because the camera can capture images faster which makes it more likely you’ll get a smooth panoramic capture.
2. Try to spin the camera, or yourself holding the camera, smoothly. If you don’t, sometimes images come out with weird jaggies.
3. Panoramic imaging works best if you spin the camera keeping the lens in the same place. I’m experimenting with putting my iPhone on a monopod to make it easier to smoothly spin the camera. Using a tripod probably will be best, to get smooth captures.

This has a lot of implications for real estate agents, by the way, who can use it indoors to capture rooms. Thanks Occipital for letting me try it early, appreciate that!

Yesterday I went to the SF Vitners Market, which was a large event with about 100 wineries. I’m enjoying learning about wine, and while there I met up with the team from SocialGrapes.com, which just released a new version of its iPhone app that turns finding wine into a social experience. I’m quite enjoying the app. It uses the scanning technology from RedLaser to let you scan the barcode of the bottle of wine you’re considering buying and see what your friends have said about it. You can follow me here, although I just started using it.

While there I met Christine Hinkley Trice, who has built a Facebook community with 110,000 members for mothers who want to drink wine. She’s using the app and praises it. Her community has embedded the SocialGrapes’ app into it, so she can share her finds with her community there.

After talking with Christine, I talk with founder Marc Gascon who tells me what they are trying to do with SocialGrapes.

Anyway, some of you are into wine, or are looking for wine for Thanskgiving or holiday parties and this is a great way to learn more.

Badgeville is a badge system for web publishers. What the heck is that? Well, it’s a way for publishers, like TheNextWeb.com, to reward their users for participating on their site. Here I learn more about the gamification system they are building and understand how they are looking to help web publishers get more engagement in their communities.

They also just announced a $2.5 million series A funding round. Shows investors are pretty excited about these kinds of gamification systems and what they can do to help publishers get more participation, and engagement from their audiences. Which, of course, will help publishers get more advertising dollars.

OK, I know I have readers all around the world, but this one is for those who live in the United States.

On Thursday we’re having our Thanksgiving. It’s my favorite holiday because, well, it gives me a chance to cook!

Today Maryam and I are looking around for what we should make.

Last night, while at the best restaurant in Half Moon Bay, Cetrella, I asked the head chef what he’d make. Sounds yummy.

But that got me thinking. What are the best places online to find Thanksgiving recipes? So far I like Epicurious, FoodNetwork, and All Recipes the best.

How about you? Care to share your best recipes? Got any outstanding ones that are easy enough for a geek to make?

You’re seeing more and more Storify links around the web. The Washington Post has used it. So have many other journalists and curators.

Why do we need Storify? Because more and more of our lives and the news events we care about are being covered on Twitter, Facebook, or other new media services.

In fact, on Friday when the founders came to my house to film this video my producer, Rocky Barbanica, called me and said he couldn’t get to my house because of an accident. I went to Yahoo News. Nothing. I went to Google News. Nothing. I did a search on Google, hoping maybe some real-time info showed up there. Nothing. But then I went to Twitter Search, typed “Devil’s Slide” and five tweets popped up saying that both lanes of highway one were closed, due to an injury accident. More and more we’re finding the best and latest info about news is on social networks and, especially, Twitter.

So, if I worked for the local newspaper and wanted to put a bundle of those tweets up on our front page, how would I do it? There are a variety of new curation services and, even, URL shortener Bit.ly has added bundling capabilities in the past week. The others that I’m trying are Curated.by (I’ll have more coverage of them soon, because they are working on a major update), KeepStream, and Bag the Web. I covered the others here.

Here I interview the co-founders of Storify because I’m seeing more of their links being used than the others and wanted to, well, get the inside story. Enjoy!

Are you an outdoors type? I like going for hikes with my family and, even around my house in Half Moon Bay, there are dozens of trails that I haven’t yet tried. How do you find them? Well, AllTrails, a new startup, has an answer.

I sat down with the founder, Russell Cook, and he gave me a demo of this iPhone-only app (more platforms coming soon). It lets you rate trails and campsites and share your favorites with your friends.

There are some other choices, too, like Goby or Everytrail, but I’m liking the approach of AllTrails, what do you think? The service has some 27,000 registered users so far who have logged over 94,000 miles with the mobile app in limited testing.

By the way, this is one of the companies that recently launched at the AngelPad accelerator in San Francisco. Techcrunch covered their demo day, but I have videos of each of the companies that I’ll be running this week.