Instagram has new camera competitor on iPhone, gets me back to blogging

August 4, 2011 By

For the past month I’ve fallen in love with Google+. Instead of spending time on my blog, I’ve been hanging out there posting long posts and participating in the quickly-growing community there.

Truth is I’ve been a bit bored and the engagement there got me over my boredom. I even reformatted one of my iPhones to see if I could live without any apps (I couldn’t, but the ones I really could live without are fewer than even I expected). One app I’ve become addicted to over the past month is GLMPS, that launches today.

First, we all know Instagram passed 150 million photos uploaded yesterday. That’s amazing for an app that’s only nine months old and that most in the mainstream still haven’t even heard of.

The other apps in this space, Color, PicPlz, Path, seem to me to be struggling to come up to the nice UI and use case of Instagram. To be honest, I’ve been using them a lot less lately because of GLMPS.

So, what is GLMPS?

To the untrained eye it looks like an Instagram copycat.

But I’ve found it to be more engaging than Instagram. Why? Because in addition to shooting a photo and uploading that it records five seconds of video too.

It doesn’t sound that cool, right?

But, chase around your cat, or chase around your babies, or watch your significant other for when he or she does something goofy. Shoot the photo. What you’ll notice is that the five seconds of video ENDS with that photo.

Huh? How did it record video before you push the shutter button?

It is recording in the background on your phone. When you push the button it grabs only the last five seconds and uploads just that and a photo. Nothing else is sent to the servers.

Anyway, here co-founders Paul Robinett and Nicholas Long talk to me about it. By the way, why are they talking to me on Google+ instead of in my house, or me visiting them? Well, they did visit me this week but I screwed up the video somehow. I covered that on Google+ itself. Sorry about screwing that up, but I think this actually worked pretty well, I might use it for other videos in the future.

Filed Under: Web
  • Anonymous

    Cool. There was (probably still is) a feature of Fujifilm digital cameras that would let you start shooting (continuous shots, this was pre-video) ahead of the instant you hoped to capture and would save the 5 (I think) shots up to the point you took your finger off the button. Before my kids dropped it and we upgraded to DSLR this was a surprisingly useful feature and we used it a lot. OI wonder if the GLMPS guys have translated & updated this idea for video/smartphone or came up with it independently? Just curious, it doesn’t matter a jot which.

  • http://www.clipik.com Pablo Lema

    This is tres cool! It’s good to see more companies looking for cool ways to make sharing video easier. Photos we seemed to have figured out 100 ways to share them, but video clips are something more dynamic and engaging and we need to work to find a better way of making them shareable.

  • http://www.jonfmoss.com JonFMoss

    Thanks for the heads up. Trying to play with it, but it keeps crashing. Hopefully they’ll update with bug fixes

  • http://twitter.com/tadaa tadaa

    Perfect timing - you have to try tadaa for iPhone. It’s the fastest cam on the App Store. And Gorgeous UI, Users are obsessed with the point system for their most popular photos. All photos are HD too.

  • Anonymous

    I think Google+ just made Scoble boring:-)

    So this videocamera does what dedicated videocams has been doing fo a while … not even Google would be able to call that idea new!

    On the other hand perhaps I should try the app before shooting at it :-)

  • http://twitter.com/Ken_Rosen Ken Rosen

    The core idea-that the time preceding a decision might have value-has pretty long legs. I first saw this in systems to record golf swings. Obviously, the few seconds before an audible (and sensor-trackable) “click” of a club hitting a ball shows the swing that determines how well the ball flies. I think a few startups could form based on brainstorming what interesting, useful, productive, fun, recordable action happens just before we “click” in other ways.

    Cheers, Ken

  • Anders Olme

    Has google come up with any good solution for the scoble effect ( or other persons who create a lot of messages ) or do we still need to create a new default stream and get all low traffic members to that circle?

  • http://robertscobleizer.com Scobleizer

    Heh, Google+’s Hangout does multi-party video chats, though. For free. Not too shabby! Skype does that but you gotta pay.

  • Anonymous

    7971 :)

  • Boris Borchert

    This will bring us to see a lot of people checking if their zipper is closed. Seriously, do you had a problem with storage capacities?

  • http://blog.nextblitz.com gzino

    Very cool app. Two related ideas:

    1. Audio - record x seconds before to y seconds after the pic. Can think of many cases where I’d rather have the audio than the video.

    2. Snap a few stills before and after as well then give me easy way to only keep the one(s) I want. How many times are we a second early or late on the moment we wanted capture.

  • http://TheChrisVossShow.com Chris Voss

    Love the idea and what I’ve seen. Unfortunately I have iOS 5 beta and it locks up. Hope they read this. Awesome killer idea though.

  • http://www.fattorezero.it Fattore Zero

    OK Cool App, Robert.
    but we must be friends on G + circle? ;)

  • http://www.fattorezero.it Fattore Zero

    OK Cool App, Robert.
    but we must be friends on G + circle? ;)

  • Michael Sullivan

    exactly!

  • http://www.stealthmode.com hardaway

    I tried it at BlogHer. In fact, I had lunch with Esther Crawford, the third co-founder. If you have ever tried to photograph babies or animals, it kicks butt. If it weren’t for the video, I would miss every shot of my dogs and my grandchild. That’s what I consider a use case:-)

  • http://www.stealthmode.com hardaway

    They told me they all met on YouTube

  • http://twitter.com/Vietnam720 Ben Chua

    Cool app. There’s only a tiny problem: because the image is recorded from a video, the quality drops. Not a significant problem except for those looking to save those pictures for documentation purposes.

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  • http://www.socialmarketingdynamics.com/ Sydney @ Social Dynamics

    I guess it works for cutesy stuff, I’m just wondering what can one cover in just under 5secs? I’ll be looking into it anyway, maybe it can be something that I’d really enjoy.

  • http://twitter.com/B3it B3it

    How is this affecting battery life?

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    How is this affecting battery life?

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