MyFlickbooks: DIY Flickbooks Right From Your iPhone
MyFlickbooks is a Swiss company dedicated to converting 15 second videos shot on your iOS device into “high-quality” paper flickbooks. For about $20 you can have you flickbook sent anywhere in the world. While I find my money would be better spent on things like beer and gas, if you are truly a flickbook lover (as so many of us are these days) you may find this to your liking.
If you don’t have an iOS device you can just pop over to the actual website and upload a video file from almost any source. It is then processed by MyFlickbook’s Swiss flickbook elves, printed on rich, corinthian paper, and bound into a wee little book that you may then flip at your leisure. Why you would want to do this is beyond the scope of this argument, but MyFlickbook would like to encourage you to consider it as a low-cost, low-effort gift for a loved one who may not be worth the expense or effort of a real present.
You can download the app here.
Like so many digital-to-print plays on the iPhone (Postagram and Lifecards come to mind), I think the central problem with these apps is the disconnect between shooting the video and then buying the artifact. Just as we always walk by the Build-A-Bear-Workshop thinking “Now there’s somewhere I should take the kids,” the same goes for making a little flickbook: the impetus is there, but we all need that push.
The shooting interface is fairly clean and well-organized but I’d worry that unless your mission was to produce a flickbook for a very important event (a goodbye wave from friends, your wife giving birth, your first trash can fire) you’d probably just take some video and call it a day. Buying a flickbook is one extra, difficult step, especially one that costs 20 smackers. Heck, for $3.99 you can buy a small photo book through iPhoto and painstakingly build your own flickbook. Not the same thing, to be sure, but perhaps MyFlickbook is aiming a bit too high?
But there is hope. As Bill Cosby would say, “This is the flick flick for the books of the flickbooks for flickbook fans” or, to put it more concisely, “Behold, the pale rider! Flickbook fans arise from your slumber and accept your birthright for MyFlickbook is nigh!”
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