All Articles Tagged Video

figure 1: Derek, Kristin, and Ken

Apple has posted three new “street” ads. The ads feature Bryce in “Delay”, an airline pilot who used the iPhone to shorten a 3 hour delay into a 30 minute delay (and apparently also flies RC jets competitively); Kristin in “The Winger”, a ballet dancer that uses her iPhone to keep connected to her ballet blog at thewinger.com, and Ken in “My Show”, where Ken uses his iPhone to keep connected to the theatre community via his website at broadwayspace.com.

Apple has finally deviated from the instructional ads, instead moving to a man-on-the-street system of advertising. The three ads are well-done, :

• Doug in “Mankind”, on the miracle of visual voice mail
• Elliot in “Meredith”, on using MobileSafari to remember important things like your Boss’s wife’s name moments before you make some gaffe.
• Stephano in “One Thing”, on the trend of convergence, where he replaced his iPod, a camera, a regular phone, and a text-messaging and email phone, with an iPhone.

It’s a good set of commercials, and it would appear that the folks that are doing these New York ads are actual New-Yorkers and not paid actors, in what is perhaps a nod to some of the earlier Mac commercial ad blitz of “Switchers”. The music track from Orba Squara has also been replaced.

figure 1: All this and more for just 70 Schrutebucks.

If you use a Windows PC as a DVR and are looking to get away from iTunes for syncing your video to your iPhone or iPod, it looks like Beyond TV might be worth a peek. The new version of Beyond TV, 4.7, not only syncs your shows to the iPhone or iPod, but also pulls out your podcasts from iTunes. Not bad!

Someone has posted a YouTube parody video of Apple’s ‘Think different’ campaign. Until folks manage to crack and hack the 1.1.1 firmware, it probably functions as a eulogy for the 1.0.2 firmware that allowed us to install 3rd party applications and unlock our iPhones. There was a nice little ecosystem going on the iPhone for a while, and it was pretty much nipped in the bud.

Steve Jobs was asked at “Mum is no longer the word” press event why there was no 3G on the iPhone. His response was telling; it’s important enough that I transcribed the money quote of his response:

“We’ve got to see the battery life for 3G get back up into the five-plus hour range, before it’s really suitable for [the iPhone]. I think we’ll see that hopefully late next year. But right now, you make a really big tradeoff to go to 3G, and that’s really bad battery life.”

I think it’s safe to say that by “late next year,” he doesn’t mean January or something. Some analysts were predicting a 3G iPhone would be announced at today’s UK media event. I bet those same analysts are thinking “Perhaps he’ll announce some new hardware at Apple Expo Paris next week….”

Struggling to find that YouTube video of cats battling territorial turtles on your iPhone? Fret not.

Veveo has announced the launch of its new service designed for mobile users, called VTap. What this solution does is enable anyone, iPhone users in particular, to search for and view videos right from their mobile device. Just type in a search, hit the the search button, and VTap will aggregate a list of results, allowing you to bookmark or view the selected media on any supported device.

This isn’t the first such service to come along. Another popular mobile video search engine called TinyTube has been around for some time and gained a following among YouTube junkies. But VTap works pretty well, so let’s give these guys a try, shall we?

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iLounge reports that the video out functionality of the new iPods has been restricted — 4G or 5G iPod video out accessories don’t function with the new iPods. If you want video out with them, you need cables that have a special chip inside, like the $49 Apple cables. I wonder if this is the basis of this dock connector exclusivity lockout rumor I heard about a while back.

figure 1:component video cable support

It looks like the Composite AV cable and Component AV cable both officially support the iPhone. This is definitely an exciting new development.

figure 2: composite video cable support

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No bones about it, the Aquapac Waterproof Pro Sports Case (store link, $34.95) isn’t a pretty case. It’s a pretty ugly case. You don’t wear the Aquapac to the beauty pageant though, so this review is less about aesthetics and more about form.

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