Two recently launched applications, Daycap and VideoSlam, make it easy to summarize your day in the format of videos or GIFs, which can then be shared out to social media. Do you need these apps on your iPhone? No. Are you totally going to download them on your lunch break because it’s Friday, they sound fun, and those TPS reports can wait? Yep!
Daycap
The first application, currently being featured on iTunes’ “Best New Apps” section is called Daycap, and it turns all your photos from the day into a GIF slideshow that’s perfect for sharing on Instagram, Facebook or elsewhere.
The idea in theory is fairly solid – it’s a way to turn all those excess photos into a clever, animated summary of your day. However, its real-world use case for the time being is somewhat limited. The problem Daycap suffers from is that it requires you to take photos while in the app, instead of allowing you to also access photos from your Camera Roll.
The app would be a lot more practical if you could pull up your past photos, or if it even suggested your best photos using some sort of smart algorithm that hid those that were blurry, dark, or duplicated, for example.
Still, the app itself is both simple and fun to use.
In addition to snapping photos using its built-in camera, you can also add your location to the GIF, add a title using various font styles, and use an editing utility lets you delete photos you take in Daycap or save them to your Camera Roll.
The app was developed by the team at San Francisco-based Memry Labs, which was founded by ex-Googler Rohan Seth and ex-Microsoftie Rohan Dang, also formerly of Causes. According to LinkedIn, AngelList, and CrunchBase, the startup has an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Khosla Ventures, Resolute Ventures, Curious Endeavors, Marc Bell Ventures, and other angels.
Daycap is a free download on iTunes.
VideoSlam
VideoSlam is a bit more versatile than Daycap, though that also means it has a bit more of a learning curve. As the name suggests, this app isn’t about creating GIFs, but rather videos. Similar to Daycap, VideoSlam lets you combine various photos to turn them into a fast-moving summary of a point in time.
However, VideoSlam differentiates itself by allowing you to grab both photos and videos from the past, instead of asking you to record using the app. It also nicely organizes your past footage for easy access into sections like “Last Hour,” “24 Hours,” “Today,” “Yesterday,” “Last 7 Days,” “This Month,” “Last Month,” and so on. That way, you can quickly assemble a video of your moments with little effort.
The app can also remind you to film by setting an alarm – something that would be useful if you’re doing a larger compilation of sorts.
“More and more people are using mobile video to document their lives and tell their stories and we’d like to build the ecosystem to support them,” explains co-founder Adriaan Stellingwerff who built the bootstrapped app with Mei Olé. The team is split between Berlin and Sydney, he says.
“We are currently focused on developing better creative tools for mobile video with VideoSlam and Kinomatic, a pro video camera app we launched in 2014,” Stellingwerff adds. “In the longer term we aim to go beyond tools to address the other big challenges storytellers face – primarily distribution and finding (niche) audiences.”
The company may also offer VideoSlam hosting as a means of generating revenue in the future, the co-founder tells us.
VideoSlam is free, with in-app purchases ($3.99), on iTunes.
What’s interesting about both these applications is that the hint at the need for more tools that can help us look back on our lives, including our photos and videos, and do so more quickly. That speaks to a problem that hasn’t really been solved. Because smartphones have made it possible to record a nearly unlimited amount of footage, we’re overwhelmed with the output and now tend to treat photos and videos as disposable creations. We share them, then forget them.
Elsewhere, many photo and video archival services today try to re-create the concept of the photo album for a digital age – organizing everything by date and time. Other efforts, like Timehop, Facebook’s “On This Day,” or Google Photo’s “Rediscover this Day,” attempt to surprise us with a brief look back at a single day from a prior year.
These new apps, meanwhile, are attempting to re-imagine how we can explore the past. Whether they make a lasting impression themselves, of course, remains to be seen.
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