An old Arab saying has it that "When the camel stumbles, the knives come out." Perhaps the modern-day version, applicable to much of the world, should be "When anything happens, the phones come out."
Which is to say, people's first reaction these days to tornadoes, beachside brawls, sporting events, police activity, etc. is to pull their phones out and start recording it. Everyone's looking to capture that million-dollar moment when Blake Griffin posterizes Aron Baynes, and woe is you when you run out of storage space the moment before the twister takes the roof off of the barn or someone's civil rights get violated.
An app called Vaptur takes care of this. It still requires you to train your camera on the scene, but rather than recording continuously and eating up all of your precious gigs, the app essentially buffers real life. On-screen you see what's happening in real-time, but a small picture-in-picture shows real time minus eight seconds; that way when something noteworthy happens, you turn to your device and record from the delayed feed, capturing just the part you want.
Sound confusing? It ain't, as you'll see by this demo:
The app is currently at its introductory price of $1.99, but is slated to go up to $2.99 (presumably when enough of you citizen journalists start downloading it).
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