blip vid on the iPhone
Jen Simmons
I just saw a tweet from blip about this blip.it — a WP plugin that
let's you embed blip code on your blog without worrying about the fact
the iphone doesn't support flash. Working in conjunction with a iPhone-
WP theme, it delievers the h264 version at blip to people's phones.
COOL!
This is a big reason I've continued to use vPIP et al.... mobile
device viewing is an ever growing market, and the iPhone seems to be
one of the first phones (at least in the US where more phones stink)
to get mobile video right.
I'm writing this email before I've had a chance to try it out. Anyone
else tried it yet? Reports?
And..... if most everyone has flash, if flash players are preferred
because they are easy + increasingly standard, AND if flash players
play gorgeous h.264 compress videos that easily blow up to full
screen....... AND then there's an easy way to support the non-flash
iPhone....... why do we want any of the other tools??
Of course, certain segments of the population love their favorite
things. A show for the open source geek needs to provide Ogg, etc
etc.... but when thinking about the masses, about The 50-something in
the corporate office sneaking a peek at the internet between working,
and the teenager at home in their bedroom, and the non-geek people who
simply want everything to WORK the first time, easily. For these
folks, why do we want to provide a quicktime player? or windows? or
the 5 formats? Is it time to retire that model?
And if so, how to the feeds work?
Jen
Cheryl Colan
I've been thinking along these same lines (why are we bothering with all these formats again?) ever since Verdi posted his H.264 in flash proof of concept a few months ago. Right then I decided I won't personally be using vPIP any longer. The only reason I'd want to is the way it fed thumbnails to VideoPress... only that's stalled at the moment and I'm moving on.
To get recent videos thumbnailed I'll need to go back to custom fields ala old school Vlogsplosion, but, when posting, is adding one custom field any more of a chore than adding all those format links into vPIP? I think not.
The feeds will work the same as they've always worked. Except there will only be the quicktime format to cope with. Instead people can focus on topic-based feeds using wordpress categories if they want. I have a new video series coming, based on some conversations I started this year that I forsee will continue on for quite awhile. I'll be assigning these vids a category, and I'll feedburn an rss for that category so that it can have its own icon and its own iTunes category etc. Sorry, I'm rambling. I think my point is that anything WordPress can do with RSS can be rolled through feedburner. I'm also investigating whether the podcasting plugin for wordpress will be able to support multiple, category-based feeds, but I don't think it can. yet.
But some may want the other tools for their audience. Not everyone is on the iPhone. 3G still works for more phones. If you have *any* international audience you want to accommodate them as well. Etc, etc. But right, you're saying for mainstream masses.
I do think it's time to retire the model - at least for me.
Cheryl
Jen Simmons
> all these formats again?)
I think it's valuable to remember the context in which these tools
were developed. And to realize how much things have changed. Remember
when most PCs did not have flash installed?? And flash video was
totally crappy? And anyone with a PC really wanted to use Windows
Media? That era is over.
> To get recent videos thumbnailed I'll need to go back to custom
> fields ala old school Vlogsplosion, but, when posting, is adding one
> custom field any more of a chore than adding all those format links
> into vPIP? I think not.
The Post Thumb plugin (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/alakhnors-post-thumb/
) does a lot of those things, without using custom fields. I've been
using it on a new (not yet launched NDAed) site in a no-video context
and I freaking love it. At some point I'll test it out to see how it
works for a video site.
> The feeds will work the same as they've always worked. Except there
> will only be the quicktime format to cope with.
> anything WordPress can do with RSS can be rolled through feedburner.
So... if I made a site where the main video embedded in the post is
the blip flash player — does that end up in the RSS feed
automatically? What's that mean for iTunes? Will flash videos play in
google reader? What's this blip.it plaugin do about feeds? These are
all questions I have...... just haven't ever really gotten into it,
because none of my past clients know what a feed is or hire me to stay
on top of the technology. I want to learn more.
> But some may want the other tools for their audience. Not everyone
> is on the iPhone. 3G still works for more phones. If you have *any*
> international audience you want to accommodate them as well. Etc,
> etc. But right, you're saying for mainstream masses.
Of course not everyone has an iPhone. But I think the majority of
people who use their phone to watch video are using iPhones. Someone
recently took a (twitter?) poll to find out if *anyone* uses vCast,
for example. And NO ONE said yes. Seems like no one ever uses vCast
(Verizon's video thingy). I think (in the US) most other phones are
*supposed* to be able to stream video, but they stink so bad (or cost
$) that no one ever uses it. Let me know if I'm wrong. Are Nokia phone
users into watching video? Any one else? That will change over time,
yes.... but for now, my sense is that the only mobile video watching
that is really happening is happening on the iPhone.
I'd like to know more about how to support other mobile technologies.
If I wanted to stream my videos on other phones, is there a way I can
do it? Many systems are close.
okbye
jen