Derik and I were just last night discussing the difficulty of using the MacBook’s built-in iSight as a point-and-shoot camera. Unlike the old-school iSight, which could easily be perched on top of a notebook pointed outward, the integrated camera means you must quickly spin the whole machine around, risking the losing your laptop into an uncontrolled death spiral.
I briefly wondered if there was a periscope one could rig, but dismissed it as well outside of my ingenuity. Then, this morning, I saw the Huckleberry on Gizmodo. It’s a little mirror that attaches over the iSight using plastic clips and solves this exact problem. Very clever, Mr. Bond Dancey. Apparently it’s set to go on sale at the Mac Expo in London at the end of the month, for £14.95 (~$28). That’s a little on the expensive side, and I’m wondering if the mirror will cause problems with the left-right orientation of the image (not that you couldn’t fix that pretty easily). Still, it’s a brilliant, simple solution to my problem.
Only one question: why the heck is called the Huckleberry?
Ooh I'll have to check that out!
The built in camera's left-right orientation is wrong from the start. If I raise my right hand, the image on the screen is my left hand raising.
wackybit, rest assured that the people on the other end see an accurate reproduction ;-)
You could use iGlasses to mirror the image... I always wondered why iGlasses offered that option :)
Can the inventor add a couple of notes? Thanks!
Regarding the flippiness of the image: some say that Huckleberry turns the picture upside down but they obviously never use the rear-view mirror in their cars.
It mirrors the image left-right as you would expect and we recommend iGlasses to fix that. We've been talking to the iGlasses people so you can expect some news on that front soon.
Regarding the name: well for one we figured you wouldn't forget it and for two: you remember the story about getting the fence painted? Well for "fence" think "marketing" - we have some viral plans.
All I can say is watch out for the Golden Huckleberry Awards.
That's a scoop for MacUser by the way!
Mungai Mirrors and Ecamm Networks are ecstatic, thrilled and impressively enthusiastic to announce that the Huckleberry is to ship bundled with iGlasses - for the original price!
iGlasses is an iSight enhancement utility that does cool things to your video image. Huckleberry and iGlasses were made for each other.
Read all about it on the Huckleberry Web Site.
P.S. The Huckleberry now sports a scary new logo.