Monthly Archives: November 2016

Introducing Tiltmatic

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Most security cameras video streams are landscape shaped and mostly phones are held in portrait position. This little mismatch tends to result in Security Camera Mobile apps appearing with shuttering top and bottom of a central video image. Of course you can orientate the phone into landscape for a more well placed image. However doing the landscape orientation manoeuvre is something we naturally resist and it is not easy if you are on the move.

tiltmaticregular

Most Security Camera apps: Shuttering top and bottom with the image in the middle

That is why we created “Tiltmatic”. Clicking the “Tiltmatic” icon maximises the camera stream to the full height of the phone. Going full height causes the full width of the camera stream not to be displayed. Tiltmatic solves this problem by bringing the rest of the image into view when you tilt the phone left and right. The left and right parts of the image roll into view when you tilt. If you tilt just a little bit the image moves over slowly. If you tilt quickly the image zooms to the far left or right position.

Tiltmatic gives you instant large screen viewing of the central part of the video stream while allowing the whole image to be viewed in a simple tilt interaction. It is a more sympathetic phone shaped solution to a classic design problem.

Tiltmatic

Tiltmatic: Full height security video streams in portrait format – tilt to view left and right.

You can try out “Tiltmatic” in our Viewer for Axis Cams app

Form Follows Phone

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The mobile phone can be characterised as the product that has eaten everything. When the phone eats things the things do not die they just change shape. They become phone shaped.
My photo album, TV, email client, compass, map holder, calendar, address book, web browser and alarm clock are now all phone shaped portrait orientated rectangles.

My record collection has become a list on Spotify. I now share playlists! My diary with its flip over paper pages is now a scrolling list whose days appear as I swipe.

Will phone shapes continue to dominate?

There is an interesting trend where phone functions are distributed to a smart watch. This promotes a pause to think of a world that is post phone shaped – a wearable world.
There is also the rise of SIRI and OK Google to consider. Maybe the phone shape will not be so important if we talk to our computers or more fancifully if our phones guess our needs and talk to us. Will we build a talking, auto tweeeting sort of world, or maybe just silence. I think I prefer my computer on mute. These ideas are for the future, yes, perhaps the near future but for now it is hard to see beyond a dominant phone shape – everywhere.

It is certain that much of the physical environment will morph into a mobile phone app. Early candidates for becoming phone shaped are home heating systems, access control, personal fitness and wellness. A clear trajectory is in place where the phone consumes many of our well know physical objects and activities. In this there is a sense of loss that so many things and activities of days past are now phone shaped apps. Time, perhaps for a short lament and then we need to face the challenge.
If things become phone shaped then they should do so wholeheartedly – without pretending to be something else or harking back. Of course we should recognize the limitations of phone shapes and also recognize the opportunities for wonderful new assisted social activities.

There will be a period of growing up in this augmented environment we now share with personal machines. In the early days (we are in that period) there will some poorly judged interactions. For example, just because you can share your toothbrush status does not mean that it is a good idea.