Apple Thoughts: Animoto for iPhone Now Available

"Yeah, I gush about Animoto (and so do others). And I'll keep on gushing because they are an example of a startup that just focuses like a laser on doing one thing well. In their case, it's creating slideshows for users from their photos. They just launched their iPhone application. Select 8-16 photos from your photo library, pick some music to play in the background, and it creates a slideshow for you on the fly. Watch it on your iPhone or email it to friends."

Animoto is one of those things; you either love it or you hate it. Me? I think it's stupid. Sure, it's great that you can make a slideshow that synchronizes with the music you choose, and it's definitely a lot of fun to watch all the wacky transitions they use that add that "over produced MTV feel" to everything, but as far as I'm concerned transitions should be minimal. If you've ever watched an Animoto video, it's like visual vomit. Tons of transitions slapped together so that you're spending more time watching how the photos transition from one to the other than you are looking at the photos doing the transitioning.