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Search results for "glif"

The All-New Glif iPhone Tripod Mount→


The first Glif, an iPhone tripod mount by Studio Neat, was released in November 2010. Fast forward almost six years to today and Studio Neat is back with an all-new version of the Glif that looks like the best one yet.

Having a tripod mount for your iPhone is surprisingly handy. Club MacStories members may recall that just last month, Graham Spencer and I used the Glif for two very different projects. Graham mounted his iPhone to a Glif to take time-lapse movies of the Australian sky, while I used my Glif with a GorillaPod tripod and microphone to record interviews with developers at WWDC. Those projects, which we described in detail in the Club MacStories Monthly Log, were very different, yet perfectly suited for the Glif.

The latest version of the Glif focuses on three areas. The first is a quick-release lever that makes it easier to get you iPhone in and out of the Glif. The second is multiple mounting points that let you mount the Glif in landscape or portrait mode, or attach additional items to the Glif like a light and microphone that can turn your iPhone into a portable movie rig.

Studio Neat introduces two accessories for the Glif, a handle and a wrist strap.

Studio Neat introduces two accessories for the Glif, a handle and a wrist strap.

The third improvement to the Glif is the introduction of two accessories. The first is a handle that screws into one of the Glif’s mounting points. The handle should make it easier to hold your iPhone steady without accidentally covering the camera lens with your finger. The second accessory is a strap that you can loop around your wrist for added protection against dropping your iPhone.

As with previous Studio Neat products, the new Glif is a Kickstarter campaign. Over time, I’ve become more cautious about the Kickstarters I back, especially when it comes to hardware products, but Studio Neat is one of the few companies where I do not hesitate to back a product I want, because it has a solid track record of past success. For a $25 pledge, you will receive the new Glif if the project is funded, while $50 gets you the Glif, handle, and wrist strap. If you want two complete sets of the Glif and its accessories, you can pledge $100.

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The New, Adjustable Glif

In 2010, we wrote about an interesting Kickstarter campaign for an iPhone stand and tripod mount called Glif. Simple and elegant, the Glif allowed you to easily mount an iPhone 4 on a tripod or act as a kickstand to prop it up at an angle. After the Kickstarter success, the duo behind the project, Tom Gerhardt and Dan Provost, went on to form Studio Neat; in the past three years, they have released other products that include the Cosmonaut stylus, iPhone apps, and a book.

Today, Tom and Dan are back with an update to the original Glif (called, in a very iPad 3-esque way, “The New Glif”) that makes it adjustable for practically any smartphone size. From their description:

The Glif will fit virtually any smartphone, between 58.4–86.4mm wide and 3.1–12.7mm thick. Some exceptions include “phablets” like the Samsung Galaxy Note, or phones with incredibly bulky cases.

With the new Glif, you’ll get a 5/32 hex key to adjust the device for your smartphone. Besides non-Apple phones, I think that having an adjustable Glif is a good idea for users who like to keep their iPhones cases that don’t fit with the original Glif design (which is still available for purchase).

The new Glif is $30 and available here.

The Glif For iPhone 5 Now Available

In an email to customers, Studio Neat has announced that the Glif is now available for the iPhone 5 on their online store and will start shipping next week. The standard Glif for iPhone 5 is available for $20, whilst the Glif+ which includes the ‘Serif’ (further secures your iPhone) and ‘Ligature’ (attatches the Glif to your keychain) is available for $30. Originally launched in late 2010, the Glif is quite an ingenious tripod mount and stand for the iPhone and was one of the first Kickstarter success stories.

We are happy to announce that the new Glif and Glif+ for iPhone 5 are on their way to the warehouse and will begin shipping early next week! The new Glif is like the previous version you know and love, just… 5-ier.

Studio Neat has since brought out The Cosmonaut (an stylus for capacitive touch screen devices such as the iPad and iPhone) and Frameographer (an iOS app to make time-lapse and stop motion movies). The duo behind Studio Neat, Tom Gerhardt and Dan Provost also wrote about their experiences launching these products in a book called It Will Be Exhilihariting earlier this year.

Studio Neat, Makers of The Glif, Release Their First iOS App, Frames

When Thomas Gerhardt and Dan Provost set out to reinvent the market for tripod mounts and stands for iPhone in 2010 with The Glif, little did they know their idea would spur a new generation of creators and designers that seek out resources and funds for innovative iPhone-related projects through crowd-sourcing funding platform Kickstarter. Back when Kickstarter was still relatively “small” – the quotes are necessary here, as the site was already well known among creatives, but clearly not as popular as the service that’s now backing projects exceeding $2 million in funding – Studio Neat became an example in the tech and Apple communities of a great idea (tripod mounts for iPhone) combined with a fantastic everyday product (the iPhone’s camera) for a successful funding campaign. And Studio Neat, unlike others, even gave the whole fund-through-Kickstarter thing a second shot, coming back with an equally popular campaign – this time for an iPad stylus, The Cosmonaut. Both The Glif and The Cosmonaut turned from ideas and funding campaigns into commercially available products and feasible businesses, allowing Tom and Dan of Studio Neat to revamp their website and offer their iOS accessories directly to customers, tweaking The Glif’s package along the way with a Plus version that builds on the original vision, adding more iPhone camera-related goodness to the mix. Today, Studio Neat decides to try something new – not another Kickstarter campaign for a new iOS accessory, but a brand new iOS app available on the App Store called Frames.

Clearly meant to work best in conjunction with The Glif, Frames is an iPhone app to create stop motion and time-lapse movies with an intuitive interface. With a beautiful icon and an elegant dark design with thumbnail-based navigation, Frames makes it extremely easy to capture various “frames” – a sequence of still images – to play them back at a certain speed to achieve the effect seen in stop motion movies.

The app itself is fairly simple, and anyone will be able to pick it up immediately without necessarily being an expert in stop motion animations and editing. A main Projects view lets you create new videos and export them to the Camera Roll at 720p in a native format that can later be recognized by apps like iMovie (something you might want to consider as Frames can’t add music or text to your videos). Once in a project, you can scroll through frames at the bottom, and adjust the number of frames per second with a slider – you can go from 1 FPS up to 120 FPS. A Play button lets you roll the video so you can get an instant preview of what you’ve accomplished, whilst tapping on a + button opens the camera interface to add new stills to a project, choosing between stop motion mode (manual shutter) and time-lapse (automatic shutter: you set a time to lapse between stills, and the camera takes care of the rest).

The camera of Frames comes with a grid view, onion skinning, possibility of switching between rear and front-facing camera, AE/AF lock, and overall clear design that explains how many frames you’ve taken in a given amount of time very well.

I’ve been using Frames on my iPhone 4S, and I’m thoroughly impressed by how Studio Neat managed to turn stop motion into a streamlined process that takes advantage of the iPhone’s hardware to produce great results. Whilst you’d be able to achieve similar results with a video editing application if you know where to look and what to tweak, the focused approach of Frames (something that apps generally share) and its $2.99 price tag more than justify the purchase – personally, I can say I’ve been having fun making time lapse movies using Frames’ easy-to-understand menus and options, whereas a full-featured video editing app or manual process would have probably turned me away in frustration.

Frames is a “neat” utility to create stop motion movies without the complexity of regular video editing. You can get the app at $2.99 on the App Store.
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Creators Of “The Glif” Share The Story Behind Their Popular iPhone Accessory

The Glif is a tripod mount / stand for the iPhone we have covered on MacStories quite a few times in the past months. Several accessories are announced and released every day; none of them goes from idea to the market in 5 months. None of them comes from an idea of two guys with no marketing, retail or manufacturing experience.

The Glif quickly jumped from cool Kickstarter project to Internet all-star thanks to the dozens of blogs and publications that thought the accessory was cool and deserved to be noticed by people in order to be manufactured and then sold. The creators have now posted an interesting “behind the scenes” article with all the details, pictures and videos of the Glif, from idea to actual product.

From the beginning, it was clear that simplicity was going to be a key tenet of our design. Not just for philosophical reasons, but to keep the design focused, and quite frankly, achievable. We knew that any complication to the manufacturing (moving parts, assembly, etc.) would make the project less likely to succeed.

After a round of sketching, we arrived at the general shape rather quickly: something that affixes to the corner of the phone and runs along the long edge, with a tripod screw roughly centered on that edge. One key component of our early design was a small peg located inside the shoe of the Glif, meant to be inserted into the headphone jack for extra stability. We were both in love with this feature, but in an example of killing your darlings, realized the design was better served (and more versatile) without it.

In case you haven’t considered a Glif yet, go check out the website here. This neat accessory with double functionality can be yours for just $20.

The Making Of The Glif [Video]

The Glif is an iPhone accessory we’re really looking forward to. It’s a tripod mount / stand for the iPhone 4 we’ve covered quite a few times in the past, and now the project is nearing completion with mass production of the units at Premier Source in Brookings, South Dakota.

The creators of The Glif posted a “making of” video of the product last night, which we have embedded below. Check it out, and go pre-order it if you still haven’t. Read more

The Glif: Now Available→

The Glif: Now Available

Small, simple, and elegant. That’s what we were going for when we created the Glif. But out of this simple design emerges countless uses. Mount your iPhone 4 to a tripod for taking great pictures or making movies. Prop your iPhone up for hands-free FaceTiming or to watch videos.

The tripod mount and stand for the iPhone 4 we’ve come to know and love. You can have one for 20 bucks, and shipping begins in 2-3 weeks.

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The Glif, A Success So Far→

The Glif, A Success So Far

The Glif’s designers hoped to raise $10,000 to produce a few hundred iPhone 4 tripod adapters. Dan Provost and Thomas Gerhardt planned to do most of the fiddly final assembly, packaging, and mailing themselves. Instead, the project brought in $137,417 in crowdfunded contributions via Kickstarter over 30 days. The pair have been scrambling to keep up with success.

Whole post is worth a read. I can’t wait for my Glif to arrive. [via DF]

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The Glif for iPhone 4 Raises $137,417, Will Be Available Soon

The Glif is an innovative tripod mount and stand for the iPhone 4 by Thomas Gerhardt and Dan Provost we first covered a month ago when the NYC duo started a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for the projects. The Glif is based on a pretty expensive manufacturing process called “injection molding” which ensures great build quality and durability.

Unfortunately, the cost of the process was too high for the two designers, so they started a campaign and get covered on many Apple-related publications hoping users would find the idea interesting as much as we did.

Glif is a simple iPhone 4 accessory with two primary functions: mounting your iPhone to a standard tripod, and acting as a kickstand to prop your phone up at an angle.

The idea for the Glif was first formed when we realized the iPhone 4 is literally the best camera we’ve ever owned. With the addition of HD video recording and High Dynamic Range photography, it’s clear Apple is positioning the iPhone as a very high quality portable camera. But because of its small form factor (and Apple’s minimalist design approach) it will never contain a threaded nut for attaching a tripod – standard on almost all photo and video cameras.

The good news is, The Glif campaign managed to raise more than $130k in less than 30 days, while the developers set the initial goal to $10.000. Not a bad accomplishment at all. Thanks to all the users who pledged and supported The Glif, the project is now becoming a reality and will soon be available on The Glif’s official website. You can sign up now to be notified when the product becomes available.

If you missed it, check out The Glif promo video below. [via The Next Web] Read more