capture 360-degree videos from iPhone

A New York start-up wants you to be able to capture and share 360-degree videos from your iPhone.

Kogeto's is now taking pre-orders (at kickstarter.com) for Dot, a $99 optical snap-on lens attachment that turns the iPhone 4 camera into panoramic video capture device. Kogeto demonstrated prototypes of Dot at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York City.

Dot snaps on top of the iPhone 4 lens; the entire thing looks a little bit like a crippled version of the letter "F." It comes in different colors and is a smaller, lower-quality consumer version of Kogeto's $1,399 Lucy S professional imaging solution.

Since Dot can capture the world around you, the user need not aim the iPhone camera when the device is snapped on. In fact you need not hold the phone at all. In its marketing spiel, Kogeto says to "Put down the camera" (on a table) and "Enjoy the party."

Dot is targeted at consumers who might want to capture panoramic videos during birthday celebrations, weddings, concerts and other family/friend gatherings. "You're not framing pictures," says Kogeto founder and CEO Jeff Glasse. "This isn't like shooting regular videos. We think it will create a whole new kind of blogging and vlogging (video blogging)."

Via the company's free software (which is coming in July), you can upload your panoramas to Facebook and Twitter. And you'll need the software to "unwrap" and play back the images.

On the iPhone you can drag your finger to see the video from a different perspective. Viewers on the Web can click with the mouse to change the view of uploaded panoramas. At the company's TechCrunch booth, video on the iPhone looked better than video demonstrated to me on the Web, but Glasse says Kogeto is still noodling with video compression settings. Another potential nuisance for some: Dot won't snap on above any case you may be using to protect the iPhone.

Glasse says Apple's approval for the app is pending (though he doesn't anticipate snags). He later plans on bringing out an Android version.

By Edward C. Baig, USA TODAY