Pseudofinn

Jeremiah Anway, aka PseudoFinn, has been around Symbian for nearly as long as TheGuru has, and got his start over at NokiaUsers.net. PseudoFinn hails from Michigan, but previously lived in Finland, hence his name. You can follow PseudoFinn on Twitter at @PseudoFinn.

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  • Video watcher
    I find the video quality to be pretty pathetic. What is the point in finding the video quickly if it is such a poor quality to see and takes forever to load. I would rather see the video on a PC, rather than hurt my eyes. I am doubtful of the "video from everywhere" theme. Mostly all videos for searches I did are from YouTube. The video quality of YouTube's mobile app is much better.
  • @Video Watcher - While the video quality is not stellar, it's roughly what I would expect from any of the typical online video repositories, such as YouTube. Given that, I think vTap accomplishes the goal quite nicely. You're not going to watch any movies or tv shows this way, but if someone asks 'did you see that video of ______?', it's handy to have at your fingertips to join the conversation.
  • By default, the app is set to medium quality- did you set it to high quality? I rather find the quality of the video at the high setting to be quite good on the E71 here. It's a smallish screen, so I'll try it on the N95 too- but I really don't find to to be *that* bad...
  • v-fan
    One new feature was recently added not mentioned here. A very preliminary version of direct video upload and youtube linking -- With your youtube userid and password you can:
    (a) Capture NOW ie Record a video from your phone and upload it straight to youtube.
    (b) You can also browse uploaded videos (public and private) as well as videos you have favorited or channels you're subscribed to in youtube.
    To get to these features you use the Upload Videos on the home page of vTap WebVideos or in Options there is a My Youtube option and another Upload option.
  • Ah yes- I had overlooked that. Thanks for mentioning it- very slick feature indeed!
  • Y-fan
    Pardon me if I sound naive, uploading to YouTube and logging in to YouTube account were already there in the YouTube's own mobile app. 80-90% of the video search results in VTap are also from YouTube. Why is there a need for this app at all for video? Apart from providing publicity and traffic to YouTube what else are they doing that is worth talking about separately? Wikipedia and Wiktionary search don't cut it. May be this a bunch of 2-3 people in a garage trying to do something, but there may be better things to do and leave this video thing to YouTube and Google.
  • It might appear that most of the search results are YouTube with vTap, but I think that is because the YouTube catalog is so large that it stands to reason that most of the results would be from YouTube. It also depends on what video you're searching for. If you're looking for some sort of viral video or other content that is generally associated with YouTube, it's very likely that search results are going to appear very YouTube centric- but if you're looking for something like financial news videos, you'll pull up more results from sources like CNBC and the like. I personally find there to be a large amount of sources other than YouTube- and that's likely just my usage of the app. I like the feed feature, I have many sources for it set up that aren't YouTube, so again- I see many results that aren't YouTube at all. My recommendations are also filled with results mostly *not* from YouTube. I really think it all depends on how you use vTap.

    I also happen to very much like the Wikipedia/Wiktionary support, and having all of these things in one just makes sense to me. If that functionality isn't useful to you and you mostly search for YouTube video- it's indeed likely to limit the relevance of vTap over YouTube's own application.
  • FWIW- I've updated at the bottom of the post with some information passed along by Daren Gill of vTap with regards to the claim that it's mostly YouTube sources. :-)
  • Y-fan
    Given the sampling one can do, out of the 220 Million videos, 210 million videos will be from YouTube. Does this company have the rights to all the other videos it is transmitting around the world? All you need to check is the News page of the company, which is devoid of any content deals (quite the opposite of every other mobile video company). You can't build a video business with no content rights. Content companies have put videos on their PC web site for consumption on a PC with specific geographical restrictions. Not to be transmitted to mobiles on the other side of the world without their permission. Remember the videos served by VTap are coming from VTap's servers and not the content owners' (which may also explain the poor quality).
  • Youtube Youth
    By saying "dinking around with the YouTube app" you have clearly demonstrated that you have not used it. I encourage you to try it. It is very smooth and is lightyears ahead of vtap in usability and user interface. YouTube mobile app is like Mac OS X compared to the MS-DOS command line look of vtap. When I am on the mobile, I am not interested in seeing Sarah Palin (had enough of her on TV). I want something funky and fun. YouTube has it all. The short format of YouTube nicely fits with the mobile viewing - no expectation of high quality, short, and easy on the wallet on data charges. Good journalism is all about listening to real users.
  • Hi, YouTube Youth-

    While I'm sorry that you think my preference for an app differing from your own doesn't constitute "good journalism", I can assure you that I've used the YouTube app a great deal. I don't know why me choosing to use and support an app based on functionality over the looks so clearly demonstrates that I haven't used the latter in your mind- mostly since it's absolutely not true.

    I think the YouTube app is a very nice looking application, I think it clearly proves that YouTube programmers know what they're doing with Java- but it's a little form over function IMO. It's the same reason I don't use an iPhone. Sure it's pretty, sure the UI is a bit nicer than my beloved S60 on a couple of counts, but it doesn't get the job done *for my needs*. With vTap I can search and instantly start playing back content from, literally, a hundred thousand sources. The YouTube app worked well for me, until the S60 vTap application came along. That's all I'm trying to say.

    I cited Palin and the financial woes in my country as a figure of current events, but I should think you get the idea. My needs for a web video streaming application goes beyond that of watching something 'funky and fun'. While that works for you, *and I appreciate that it does*, it doesn't cut it for me. What does cut it for me is being able to view YouTube sources as well as all the others in one application with a decent interface- not the prettiest, but a decent one. The analogy between command line DOS and Mac OS X is a bit out there IMHO... Though, for what it's worth, I do mention that they've got some work to do on the interface, and I've heard back from them on that- a new interface is indeed in the works, but for now I think they were placing more attention on functionality- which I think they've done a fantastic job with at this point.

    In the end, we've both "real users" with difference impressions of things- and that's okay. That's how this whole thing works. :)
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