With the iPhone 3GS, the possibilities are endless. In July 2009, Harold Smith and Graham Mcbain took the iPhone 3GS, and made the first prototype of the OWLE Bubo, which we covered on CrunchGear. Now, just four months later, the OWLE Bubo is ready to ship to the public. OWLE, which stands for Optical Widgets for Life Enhancement, is aiming to making mobile video much easier, by taking the parts you use on your camcorder, and enabling you to use them on the iPhone.
The Bubo comes standard with a hotshoe mount on top for LED lights, four tripod mounts and standard 37mm lens threading so that you can put your own lenses on it, in addition to the lens that the Bubo comes with.
It’s been quite a journey since the first prototype of the Bubo — Harold and Graham traveled to Yahoo!’s headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif. for iPhoneDevCamp 3, where they won the iFund “Most Promising Startup” award.
The Bubo is going on sale for pre-orders starting tomorrow for $99.95, but TechCrunch readers can pre-order starting today!
Fantastic! The thing looks great. The landscape is going to be pretty interesting when anyone can capture high quality video and post it near instantaneously. Can’t wait to see a map showing the location of everyone broadcasting live video in my city.
Love the name, Bubo (owl) from Clash of the Titans. A nice tip of the hat to the geeks.
haha you are the first post i have seen that noticed it.
glad someone got it =)
Do I win a prize?
Just kidding.
i saw the swine flu app just before this and read the name as bubonic
or maybe that’s what people using these will be called?
Anyone else get the idea that they’re really just polishing the proverbial turd? It’s a nifty idea, but a $100 clamp, $50+ for any kind of lens to change the shot (because I seriously doubt many people own 37mm lenses), tripods, lights, etc, for what? Pretty average VGA video? If I know before hand that I’ll be taking any video, I’ll bring along a little 720p handheld thing with a small tripod. For the money just to buy a clamp (granted, with a lens attached), you’re better off with a Flip. At least there’s instant use with one of those.
And how does the battery life and actually being able to use your phone come into it?
Very good points and i will admit that our product is not for everyone. I can say that we built our product to work with as many readily available accessories as possible. 37mm lenses are the cheapest and most widely available, we included the cold shoe mount to attach any kind of lighting or mics, and the multiple tripod mounts all over so people can come up with their own fun stuff to add.
The big difference between our hardware and for example a flip cam is in the iphone itself. Yeah you can take as much video as you want on a flip, maybe save it, maybe upload it, maybe share it. With an OWLE though that footage is ready to share right away, email, mms, facebook, twitter, youtube all a couple clicks away.
Honestly though the biggest benefit is for bloggers and media. with something like this you can capture great pictures and broadcast quality video, upload it instantly and scoop everyone else.
Mate – you could put real Start Trek transporter in front of some people and they’d still complain that it was a stupid idea.
Your gizmo rocks – Ive built a few basic gizmo’s for my iphone myself and I can say that $100 for what you’ve created seems like excellent value.
Now – sell me one!
you know what? you do! if you order an OWLE send your order ID to harold@wantowle.com and ill hook you up with some upgrades for free =)
Hi Harold
I just tried to buy one of your OWLE’s but your shopping cart has some real issues.
It seems that the form that I need to fill in is in 2 parts – one part asks for my Billing details (address, credit card details, COUNTRY) … but the second part – my Shipping details – assumes that I live in the USA. There is no COUNTRY option.
There is no way that I can complete the purchase process – but I really, really, really want to.
Please fix it.
I am confused. I thought the iPhone was dead now that Windows Mobile 6.5 is out.
I thought that Windows Mobile 6.5 died now that Android is out?
But does it correct for audio distortion? The audio track that is recorded from the iPhone is terrible, particularly if it is recording anything that is remotely loud.
right now the variety of microphones built for the iphone is limited. Loud audio is definitely a weak point but is something we and many others are working on.
expect to see lots of stuff like xlr input, balanced line in, true audio and other crazy gadgets later this year and early 2010.
For now we recommend the Shure iphone mic. sold right at the apple store. yeah its $40 but its awesome.
wow that thing is huge… at first i thought it just clipped on to the back of the iPhone. Then I saw the picture on their site where the phone clips into it!
This article doesn’t say much, like what the heck this thing does that’s different. It looks to be some sort of competitor to cheap, digital video like the Flip, but what makes this different is a mystery from reading the article. What does it have to do with the iPhone? Why does it need 4 tripod mounts?
It’s an iPhone attachment that makes it an instant video camera, I guess.
So, the kicker here is that we are talking about a video upgrade to iphone that essentially argues why carry high quality video separately when Bubo is here? One unit, instead of two. Good idea in this fast pace world of “Where’s my this OR that, more, OR less…
Example., we are in the car YOU are driving and I have the Bubo gadget pointing it forward recording as we approach a stoplight, we are the 3rd car in line on a 4 lane stretch of road WHEN SUDDENLY a thug runs up on a red car that is 1st in line, when he pulls a Desert Eagle Fifty caliber earthquake cannon sticking it to the glass on the driver’s side demanding the car be turned over to him, where upon the driver gets out hands over his wallet as the Thug in GETTING INTO A 2009 PORSCHE 9-11 and speeds away.
We have the entire Emmy Award winning episode right hear in your Bubo… When production value is critical, and a perfect shot of the thug’s fugly scowl has to be in Police hands right away, and YOU are able turn over the data to Police in just Seconds…. Police radio an all points bulletin for the fuitive who they were able to identify with your video. Then, as the traffic light turns green FOUR black & white POLICE CRUISER’S BLOW past everyone, to cut off and capture the violent fugitive. I may be day dreaming, but I don’t think so…
Sounds like it should sellk so
When you checkout, the site’s url is not https and is not secure. Anyway you can change this asap because we want to buy some owle right away but don’t feel secure with the https.
it actually is a https site but its embedded inside our http site.
for a direct link please email me: harold@wantowle.com
Congrats, guys! If we can just get official live streaming support, that’ll make for some great Qikking
Is it just me or is the convenience of any all-in-one device going to be destroyed by having to carry a man-bag fully accessories?
What on EARTH possessed them to name their product after a really nasty disease symptom?
http://en.wikip...a.org/wiki/Bubo
(”A bubo (Greek boubôn, “groin”) (plural form: buboes) is swelling of the lymph nodes. It is found in infections such as bubonic plague, gonorrhea, tuberculosis or syphilis. It is similar in appearance to a huge blister, and usually appears under the armpit, in the groin or on the neck. According to historical records, buboes were characteristic of the pandemic responsible for the Black Death …”)
lol, the true story is tech crunch did an article on us a couple months ago. at that time we barely had finished a prototype. The writer asked us for a product name and we didnt have one yet OR A WEBSITE.
Basically said , “Look the article goes live in 5 minutes, you guys should really come up with a name and get your website up….”
No joke, built the website on iweb in 20 minutes and came up with the product name in 10. Bubo is the name of the mechanical owle in “clash of the titans” and the genus for great horned owls.
Couldn’t you at least have googled for alternate meanings?
I mean, this is on a par with the “Chevvy Nova” (not to mention the 1980’s vintage British sports car called the Triumph Acclaim, which was about to go on sale in Germany before someone spotted the obvious problems of selling a car named “Sieg Heil”) …
Actually I believe the call it the Bubo because it is the latin prefix for all species of owl’s, and since it kind of looks like an owl it makes sense.
@Charlie Stross. Please never use Wikipedia for anything medical. That article has no sourcing, and after 25 years in medicine, I have never heard that word used. I doubt the article is accurate. Once again, never ever ever ever use Wikipedia for medical information.
In this case Bubo is an owl. Actually, I find the story of the naming of this device to be incredibly geeky and absolutely fun. Bubo is one of the several genera of the order, Strigiformes, which encompasses all 200 species of Owls.
Funny how Wikipedia fails miserably in pointing you from a fake medical article to a real article on birds. But that’s typical of a fake encyclopedia with numerous mistakes. Someone will have to add this product in an Wikipedia article!
Well, I’ve been against the poor quality of cell phone videos and photos, mainly because of the $10 lens used. I’m not quite sure how Bubo works, but it uses a real lens. I’m buying one tomorrow or the next day. I’m going to use it in blogging and commentary on my pathetic Los Angeles Kings hockey team.
And if the OWLE folks want to schwag me….well, I wouldn’t complain. LOL.
MichaelWS: Ever heard of bubonic plague?
“Bubo” is a historic term of art, not routinely used in medicine these days. However, it *is* taught in history lessons to just about every school kid in Europe.
Of course my first reaction was to be ridiculous in a post, but today is the first I have seen the Bubo contraption, (where have I been, right?) just what is it that we are talking about here? Functionality?
Are you serious about that? If I have the place for this big thing in my bag, I can get a better camera… The IPhone Chip is just to small and the quality to poor.
Geez, I hope they sell that with a role of duct tape, getting that device properly mounted to your forehead could be a trick…
This is great news. I’m a video blogger and looking for an end to all the big heavy equipment. The iPhone video quality is good. I recently shot video and photos of a health care protest with the iPhone 3GS and edited the clips with Final Cut. I believe this is the future and looking forward to XLR, wireless mike inputs and zoom lens. Below is the link where I used the iPhone to video and photo blog.
http://www.hill...-the-iphone-3gs
I found OWLE (Optical Widgets for Life Enhancement) Bubo very complicated phone compared to HTC, Samsung or Toshiba. These cell phones comes Windows Mobile 6.5 which has great camera quality and awesome resolution for pictures and videos. I would always prefer any of these phones rather than OWLE Bubo.