Introducing the iHole: thinking inside the box

I know what you’re thinking. When my colleague Peter Cohen sent me an IM directing me to something called the “iHole,” you can imagine that I too was somewhat trepidatious about clicking on the link (I’ve learned the hard way of Peter’s habit of sending me links to disturbing YouTube videos, a tactic I’ve dubbed “Cohen-rolling”).

But such fears proved to be unfounded. The iHole, created by blogger Scot Hampton, is a pinhole camera built out of an iPhone box. Using nothing but the box, a small piece of foam, tinfoil, tape, a screw, and an Allen wrench, Scot made a perfectly functional camera. Sure, it may not have the megapixels of even your iPhone’s built-in camera, but this, my friends, is art.

Using the box provided one additional feature Scot hadn’t considered: because of the way the top and bottom and box fit together, it creates an impromptu set of bellows. Pretty nifty. If nothing else, it should give you an appreciation of just how futuristic the iPhone is: so advanced that you can even turn its box into an entirely separate piece of technology.

My only disappointment is that I was not able to work “Shut your iHole” into the title of this post. I suppose you can’t have everything, though.