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Hands-on: Swivl, with which your iPhone becomes your cameraman

Smile! Swivl's camera dock turns your iPhone into a tracking device.

Paul Sloan Former Editor
Paul Sloan is editor in chief of CNET News. Before joining CNET, he had been a San Francisco-based correspondent for Fortune magazine, an editor at large for Business 2.0 magazine, and a senior producer for CNN. When his fingers aren't on a keyboard, they're usually on a guitar. Email him here.
Paul Sloan
Swivl tracks your movements. Paul Sloan/CNET

LAS VEGAS--You move, so does your iPhone. And it's taking a video of you. Crazy, right?

This is the much-talked-about Swivl, and I got to play with it at CES.

It's simple to use. You stick your iPhone or iPod Touch in the dock, and then hang the marker around your neck and off it goes. It works with infra-red light and radio frequency.

The product is the brainchild of Brian Lamb, who a year ago ran a crowd-funding campaign on Indiegogo, a rival to Kickstarter.

He quickly raised $25,000, selling enough preorders to pay for 250 devices. The early versions got some traction on YouTube, and Lamb went on to raise $900,000.

The main audience, Lamb says, is for video bloggers. But Lamb expects lots of home users as well. How else can you take a video of yourself?

The Swivl costs $159 and Lamb is taking orders through his site. He says he'll be shipping them in the first quarter.

Check out the video interview I did with with Lamb.

Watch this: First Look at the Swivl