TourWrist: ‘Visually Stunning’ ‘Truly Remarkable’ ‘Blown Away’ ¹⁵

by Dan Smigrod • TourWrist News • Tags: $1 Million IDG Media Prize, TourWrist Wins DEMO Spring 2012 People's Choice Award

Let’s recap. Holy mackerel!

Humbling moments in time (that we will always cherish):

1. TourWrist Founder and CEO Charles Armstrong invited to demo at DEMO Spring 2012 (video, photo and 360 pano)
2. TourWrist wins the DEMO Spring 2012 People’s Choice Award, including $1 Million IDG Media Prize
3. TourWrist Founder and CEO Charles Armstrong honored as DEMOgod
4. The investment community takes note of TourWrist!
5. Potential technology and strategic alliance partners reach out to the TourWrist team in the TourWrist booth in The Pavilion at DEMO
6. (At least one member of the TourWrist team lost his voice screaming (right) with excitement when the $1 Million IDG Media Prize was presented to TourWrist
7. Doors opened for TourWrist executives to take meetings in Silicon Valley
8. Awesome meetings took place over cocktails and meals with awesome new colleagues (and some of our team that attended DEMO)
9. Serendipity moments in time at the DEMO Welcome Party for presenters; during breaks; and in the hallways with major brands
10. A ton of learning and inspiration from peers presenting innovative technologies
11. Media and Blogs wrote, photographed, shot video of TourWrist (and shared it with the world), including:

• VentureBeat – [by Heather Kelly] – TourWrist’s 360-degree Panoramas Add Another Dimension – “The real fun demonstration was the triply planar acceleration controls, which will allow you to physically step forward or back while holding up an iOS device to move between panoramas, go through doors, and check out other linked panoramas or information.”

• Benchmark Capital (Venture Capital firm) General Partner Bill Gurley (speaking on the Sage Panel for DEMO Mobile, DEMO Spring 20121), as quoted by ReadWriteWeb) – (RWW) [by Antone Gonsalves] – ”I find Charles’ product … to be visually stunning. Especially if you get to hold it and play with it, where you’re just like blown away. He’s accomplished something truly remarkable …”

• ReadWriteWeb – [by Antone Gonsalves] – DEMO Report 3: 3 Startups Vie to Take Photo and Video Sharing to the Next Level – “A picture is worth a thousand words, and at the DEMO Spring 2012 conference, [TourWrist was among the] innovative startups … hoping to turn those words into dollars. No doubt with visions of Instagram’s $1 billion payday dancing in their heads, these photo- and video-sharing app makers vied to take the concept to the next level.”

• Forbes –  [by Robert Hof] – [TourWrist Among] 12 Candidates to Become the Next Instagram

• Microsoft BizSpark Group Blog [Douglas Crets] – TourWrist proves we need structured memory to live in the present – “[TourWrist Founder and CEO Charles] Armstrong pulled off a beautiful app that offers great aesthetics, and he delivers a way to package memory into something we can easily articulate. When we talked at [DEMO Spring 2012] he said that having a way to organize memory into graphic mnemonic devices is going to be very, very important in the coming years.”

• InformationWeek – [Patrick Houston] [TourWrist Among] 10 Must-See Tech Product Ideas From Startups – “This may look like a pretty picture. While what you see here is a still photo, in reality it’s anything but. It actually represents a stunning new visual technology that allows anyone to capture and convey a 360-degree image that’s part photo, part video, and part panorama. In far, this new imaging technology from a San Francisco-based startup named TourWrist was so captivating that its founders walked away with $1 million check as the People’s Choice Award winner at last week’s DEMO Spring 2012 event in Santa Clara, CA.”

• CNET – [Rafe Needleman] Giving 3D a Spin at DEMO [Spring 2012] – “Then there’s TourWrist, a mobile app that lets you create panoramas of places you visit. The iPad viewing app that was showed was stunning: it makes your iPad a virtual window into the visual bubbles the app creates. And as you walk with the app held up in front of you, you move into the image. … it’s cool to see innovation in apps that build a 3D data and photography layer on top of the world. It’s been flat for too long.”

• Connected Traveler – [Pat Meier-Johnson] – [TourWrist] The Whole Picture, and Then Some – “Sometimes sharing a single photo of a place you’ve visited won’t give you the entire scene, what is around it. While Instagram lets you tweak and share your photos, TourWrist, dubbed as a “virtual tour platform,” lets you shoot and upload your own 360-degree panoramic images with your smart phone or iPad to get the whole picture … and more. … Another new feature, which the developer says will be available in May, will let you link your hot spots (called PanoSpots) to videos, photo, audio and web pages to provide in-depth information about details in the picture.”=

• Wired Insider – [by WIRED Staff] Send Killer Postcards with TourWrist – “The TourWrist platform is really the ‘killer app,’ as his Steve-ness used to say. All the photos you take are stored free of charge with TourWrist, so you don’t have to fill your phone’s hard drive with 10 photos every time you want to build a pano. TourWrist took home the top prize at this year’s DEMO event. Sounds like they’ve got a lot more up their sleeve.”

• PCMag.com – [by Michael J. Miller] ForwardThinking – DEMO: Security Shines Among Mobile Apps – “TourWrist is a way of capturing and viewing 3D experiences. As near as I can tell, you can capture a 3D panorama from your smartphone or tablet and then move around in the environment as you move the tablet around. It can live on the TourWrist site or can be embedded in other sites, including Facebook. The company offers tools for editing the panoramas. The demonstration said it is like a holodeck or Twitter for experiences, which seems too much of a stretch for me, but it is very neat.”

• Computerworld – [by Colin Neagle] [TourWrist Among] Top Mobile Apps Showcased at DEMO [Spring] 2012 – “… the demonstration previewed some potentially valuable real-world use cases, such as the Grand Canyon for the travel sector and a multimillion-dollar home for real estate.”

• Startup America Partnership – [by Staff] TourWrist is redefining virtual with panoramic genius – “Today’s featured member, TourWrist, rocked the DEMO Conference, emerging as DEMO Gods and the One Million Dollar People’s Choice winners. A huge congratulations from our team, we’re proud to have you as members of Startup America!”

• Startup Weekend MEGA – [by Kelly] DEMO – “One of the standout technologies was a company called TourWrist which is basically an iPad app that gives you a 360 view of picture. Almost as if you’re reliving that moment in time. It’s amazing stitching technology and solid UI made it really stand out. I believe it’s free so I would urge anyone with an iPad or iPhone to check it out. You won’t be disappointed.”

• CMS Wire – [by Anthony Myers] [TourWrist Among] 5 Best New Mobile Apps from DEMO Spring 2012 – “This iOS app is very slick, and it uses a panoramic photography tool with 3-D viewing technology to make incredibly immersive virtual tours.”

• VentureBeat – [TourWrist wins DEMO Spring 2012 People's Choice Award with $1 Million IDG Media Prize] – “Virtual panorama photography app TourWrist gave the DEMO audience a sneak peek of two new features due out in May. First are PanoSpots, which link multiple panoramas together Google Street View-style, and give them more depth by linking to photos, videos, brands, audio, websites, and Facebook profiles. The real fun demonstration was of the trippy planar acceleration controls, which will allow you to physically step forward or back while holding up an iOS device to move between panoramas, go through doors, and check out other linked panoramas or information. As the People’s Choice winner, TourWrist receives a $1 million marketing package from IDG.”

• InformationWeek (Global CIO) – [Patrick Houston] – “[TourWrist among] 3 Examples: Visual Technology Change The Rules – Play with [this TourWrist 360 pano] picture embedded below. [see story] Then come back and read this. Done? Good. Now I can make my point more vividly and in fewer words: A major shift in the information economy is taking place–right before your eyes. Literally. Words, while still a mainstay, are being supplanted by an immersive, deeper, richer, and increasingly widespread visual language–one that includes, but also extends beyond, high-definition photos and video. The implication: Businesses of all shapes and sizes are going to held to a higher standard of customer experience as they try to sell products, or convey content of any kind, for that matter. During the last few months I’ve seen a number of signposts all pointing in the same direction.

• SYS-CON Media [by Xenia von Wedel] – TourWrist’s 360-Degree Panoramas Kept Turning Heads at Demo Conference – “San Francisco-based TourWrist boasted its iPhone and iPad app than can take 360-degree panoramic photos.”

• PC Advisor – [by Colin Neagle] –  [TourWrist Among] Top Mobile Apps Showcased at DEMO 2012

• APP Chronicles – [Editor's Pick: 4/23/12] TourWrist Lets You Tour The World With It’s Interactive, Immersive Panoramic Experience on the iPhone or iPad. Free! – “… where TourWrist really shines is in its ability to see the work of others as if you were in that scene in real life. That is, when you rotate or turn your iPhone or iPad, the screen moves as if it were your very own eyes, giving an incredibly realistic, ‘practically there in person’ phenomenon. With TourWrist’s built in social network of other people’s work that you can browse, you can really draw some inspiration.”

• Appolicious – [by Phil Hornshaw] [TourWrist Among] Lots of Cool, Available Apps Shown Off at DEMO Trade Show – “When you hold up your iPhone in a location and start using TourWrist, the app basically captures photographic data as you move around, almost like shooting a video. When you then go back and look at the resulting panorama the app creates, you can see different aspects and views by moving your iOS device in space, as if it were a window into the place and time where you originally shot it. Augmented reality games have been using this technology for some time now, but TourWrist’s developers seem to have a pretty great idea when it comes to photography.”

• IEEE Spectrum Inside Technology – [by Tekla Perry] – [Video] DEMO Spring 2012: Mobile, Security, 3D and Health Applications Dominate – “[TourWrist among apps] said investor Bill Gurley from Benchmark Capital, are a wakeup call to the camera industry which, to date, does not allow third party developers to build applications for their devices. They’re going to have to open up SLRs and pocket cameras to third parties to compete with smart phone cameras, Gurley said.”

• InvestorPlace – [by InvestorPlace Staff] –  [TourWrist Among] 5 Hot Startups to Watch – “According to VentureBeat, here are the standouts: ”TourWrist: This provides 3D tours on your Apple … iPhone. And yes, you can link these to your Facebook profile.”

• VentureBeat – [Video] The Top 10 Moments from DEMO Spring 2012 [Includes TourWrist] [2:15 minutes in; #1 TourWrist – Our number one favorite moment of DEMO was watching the CEO of winning startup, TourWrist, overwhelmed with emotion as his company's triumph was announced on stage.

• All My Faves – [by Danny Davies] – Top 10: Best Photography Apps for iPhone & Android [Includes TourWrist] – “TourWrist has to be one of the most dynamic photography apps on the appstore.It combines augmented reality technology with the iPhone’s in-built camera to create a 360 degree panoramic tour of whatever’s around you. You can share your tour with friends as well as submit it to TourWrist’s panorama community, filled with tours on anything from hotels and homes to incredible scenery or even someone’s view at the Super Bowl. Click here to get acquainted with TourWrist’s innovative new brand of virtual tourism.“

• ZIPHI – [by Staff Writer] – [TourWrist Among] More Great Photo Apps Shown Off at DEMO 2012 – “... the real cool thing about the application is its social media component. Both the TourWrist website and the iOS app include ‘Tours’ from places all over the globe that were submitted by TourWrist subscribers and that are available for anyone to view.”

• Technology News Bytes (TNB) [by Tracy Chan] – Demo [Spring 2012 Coverage Includes TourWrist] – “[Winner] Virtual panorama photography app TourWrist, for features that link multiple panoramas together and give them more depth by linking to photos, videos, brands, audio, websites, and Facebook profiles.”

• ConnectedTraveler.com– [by Russ Johnson] – DEMO 2012: Russ Johnson’s Eight Top New Tech Picks [Includes TourWrist] –  “Let’s start with the crowd pleaser, winner of The People’s Choice Award at DEMO and, would you believe this, $1M in free advertising from show organizer IDG. It is an app called TourWrist. … TourWrist, fresh out of beta, is something I already knew well. (Disclosure: I featured it at my Connected Traveler show earlier this year.)  It lets you view a 360-degree image of a place by — get this — twisting your wrists and spinning your body. The accelerometer in your iPad or iPhone enables this. It is wild to see. And the free TourWrist app also lets you shoot and stitch together your own panoramas. Also, it lets you create hot spots that will open up into new scenes: Tap on the door of a castle and step inside. At DEMO,  execs said they are adding the ability to add hyperlinks to audio, video, web pages and e-commerce. Not rocket science for game developers, but for photographers and companies that spend big bucks on virtual tours, this is free and do-it-yourself.”

• ForbesOnTech (Jim Forbes) – More Demo 2012 Stand outs – [Includes TourWrist] – “TourWrist is something I suspect will have a huge impact on any organization that uses visualization to help sell or promote products or services. … TourWrist may have been the best technology demonstration I’ve seen at any Demo in the last 15 years and I wasn’t surprised when TourWrist left Demo with the attendee-driven People’s Choice Award and a Demo God Award for TourWrist’s CEO/presenter, Charles Armstrong.”

• Silicon Valley Business Journal BizBlog – [Cromwell Schubarth] [TourWrist Among] 19 Bay Area Startups Pitch at DEMO Spring [2012] Show – ”TourWrist, a San Francisco company that lets iPhone and iPad users shoot and share 360-degree panoramic photos. This also allows people to see 30-degree views of places they may want to travel to.”

• News-Press (a Gannett Company) – [by Charles Onufur] [TourWrist Shows Off] Latest iPad Has Unbelievable Clarity, Resolution – “TourWrist (allows you to take 360-degree virtual tour photos and then upload them to the TourWrist website)”

• YouSpin – [by Erlend Bakke] – TourWrist App – 360 Degree Panoramic Photography; 360 Degree Virtual Tour – “It’s not a photo. It’s not a video. It’s not a panorama. It’s all those three altogether.”

• Blog: Enterprise to Consumer with Love – [by Alex Joseph] – “I tried out the app on my iPhone and found it extremely easy to build a pano.”

• HN Style – [Slovvak-->English via Google Translate] – [TourWrist Among] 10 Tips for the Best Application for your new iPhone

• TouchLab China [Chinese-->English via Google Translate] – [Tim Leaf] – TourWrist Gather Around the Panoramic Photo – iOS Device to Become a Window to Observe the World

DEMO Spring 2012 • TourWrist Video Coverage

• TourWrist Founder and CEO Charles Armstrong Demo at DEMO Spring 2012

• TourWrist Backstage at DEMO Spring 2012 – [Video] – TourWrist Founder and CEO Charles Armstrong Demo at DEMO Spring 2012

• IEEE Spectrum Inside Technology – [Video] – DEMO Spring 2012: Mobile, Security, 3D and Health Applications Dominate

• VentureBeat – [Video] The Top 10 Moments from DEMO Spring 2012 [Includes TourWrist] [2:15 minutes in; #1 TourWrist – Our number one favorite moment of DEMO was watching the CEO of winning startup, TourWrist, overwhelmed with emotion as his company's triumph was announced on stage.

• Connected Traveler – [Video] – [TourWrist Among] DEMO Spring 2012: Tech’s Grand Bazaar

• BFMTV Culture Geek [Video] [French]– Les applications les plus bluffantes du mois

• ChicagoistaLIVE BarbWired Segment – [Video] – If you like photography, you are going to love [TourWrist]

Video: TourWrist Founder and CEO Charles Armstrong demo at DEMO Spring 2012.