Written by Om Malik
Posted Friday, August 24, 2007 at 11:54 AM PT

 

Veveo Wants to Bring All Video to iPhone

It’s not turning out to be such a great day for AT&T (T) and Apple (AAPL), as some enterprising hackers have unlocked the iPhone and made it ready for any GSM network.

Just like AT&T, YouTube will soon lose its exclusivity on the iPhone. When it does, you’ll be able to use the phone to watch videos from all over the Web, thanks to Veveo, an Andover, Mass.-based startup that has developed essentially the equivalent of a T9 predictive text input system commonly found on mobile phones that works with their video index. (Screenshot below the fold.)

vtapiphone.gif

First, Veveo’s Web crawler crawls the Web for video content; it then builds a smart index using the company’s own algorithms. Mobile phone users get this content via an application called vTap, which is where the predictive nature of the service comes into play.

vTap needs the input of just a few characters (vs. full keywords) in order to dig up what you’re searching for and present it for viewing on your mobile phone (right now it works primarily on Windows Mobile phones.) So for example, if you download the application on your phone and start typing “Om,” results including videos from “The GigaOM Show” and my recent appearance on “Wallstrip” automatically appear. (See: How it works)

The service is quite accurate, and, in my opinion, impressive. Since it’s not possible to download an application on the iPhone, Veveo has put together a special page that is optimized for it. Co-founder Murali Aravamudan showed off an iPhone version of the service to us.

In the demo I saw a very clean grid that displayed the video results, which can then be played back on the iPhone. The servers transcode the videos from the original format (be it Flash, WM, Real etc.) to mp4 format that the iPhone can play. Given the kind of mp4 file format the iPhone supports (it expects to get the entire file’s frame information apriori), there will be a larger latency of transcoding in the iPhone implementation compared with Veveo’s implementation in Windows Mobile or J2ME phones (both of which support “true” streaming.)

Many have been wondering how Veveo is going to survive as a standalone application. Some are also wondering why white-shoe venture capital firms such as Norwest Venture Partners, Martrix Partners and Northbridge Venture Partners would invest $14 million in the company (for a total of $28 million in funding over the last few years).

Veveo’s vTap is a consumer application, but the company’s video search and display technology is particularly useful for large telecom- (and cable-) based IPTV systems. Their video search powers Verizon (VZ) FiOS TV’s new interface, helping people finds tons of videos quickly from the large library of content stored on Verizon’s video storage servers.

Now since I live in San Francisco, I don’t care too much about Verizon’s FiOS TV (it’s not available here), but I do care about the iPhone and videos: Hell, I’m stuck with this thing for the next two years, so I might as well figure out ways to have fun with it.

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Comments & Trackbacks

  1. [...] by Om Malik Friday, August 24, 2007 at 12:45 PM PT | No comments Just like AT&T, YouTube will soon lose its exclusivity on the iPhone. When it does, you’ll be [...]

    GigaOM All Videos Will Soon Play On iPhone « on August 24th, 2007 at 12:46 pm - Permalink

  2. Om, take a look at what the guys at Kulabyte are doing. Mobile HD quality video compression. HELLA good stuff! Hope all is well!

    gwhiz on August 24th, 2007 at 1:57 pm - Permalink

  3. [...] NewTeeVee is reporting that a company called Veveo has created a very good video search engine for mobile devices.  That [...]

    JiveGuru » Blog Archive » Unlocked iPhone… on August 24th, 2007 at 3:33 pm - Permalink

  4. AT&T has had a string of “bad days” lately. Check out my blog to read up on their Censorship of Pearl Jamscandal and potential lawsuit over illegal Surveillance

    Maybe it’s time for their management to rethink how they are running the show. Not that I’m upset about someone cracking thier monopoly of the iPhone.

    Rob D. on August 24th, 2007 at 4:15 pm - Permalink

  5. [...] Veveo Via Newteevee] sb_url_to_rate = 'http://solsie.com/vtap-web-videos-at-your-fingertips/'; [...]

    SolSie.com / The Lighter Side of Mobile Technology » Blog Archive » vTap - Web videos at your fingertips on August 24th, 2007 at 5:21 pm - Permalink

  6. Cool! I can really take advantage of this now. Just check out my first iPhone app for now – http://digitfan.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/share.woa/wa/g_rand?g=11

    Only took me about 3 hrs!

    William Wei on August 25th, 2007 at 11:13 am - Permalink

  7. This is good news to all iPhone owners.

    k.s.reddy on August 26th, 2007 at 3:19 am - Permalink

  8. Hi Om,
    Avot mV (beta) is a mobile video search and discovery solution by which users can search, watch and myFav unlimited number of videos from various user generated video sharing sites. The solution works great on Windows mobile phones.. Please check it out – http://m.avotmedia.com (mobile site) or http://www.avotmedia.com

    Matt C on August 27th, 2007 at 12:35 am - Permalink

  9. As long as you can surf the web… there is no exclusivity at all. You can surf Dailymotion on your iphone via http://iphone.dailymotion.com

    Pierre Foucart on August 28th, 2007 at 3:39 am - Permalink

  10. [...] Buzz on the web Video of our CEO, Murali Aravamudan demoing to Robert scoble vTap Will Revitalise Mobile Video Search – Paul Bennett Vtap, easy mobile search – Matt Marshall Coming soon: Outstanding mobile video search from Veveo – Rafe Needleman Veveo Wants to Bring All Video to iPhone – Om Malik [...]

    Prashanth Ellina » VTap launched! on September 11th, 2007 at 10:04 am - Permalink

  11. This is a cool site, but tinytube.net offer more videos and free porn. I have been happily using tinytube for a while. They get my vote.

    Jordan on September 12th, 2007 at 7:57 pm - Permalink

  12. [...] Via iPhone Atlas e NewTeeVee. [...]

    vTap, Vídeos no seu iPhone! on November 4th, 2007 at 10:12 am - Permalink

  13. Vtap is offering 3 diff video size-resolution for download after a short delay but search is accurate.Tinytube is fast,broadspectrum-porn but search is inaccurate.

    Kingkong on February 25th, 2008 at 2:15 am - Permalink

  14. [...] for mobile phones to the web — usually things go the other direction. The company, which first launched for the iPhone and Windows Mobile last fall, then formatted itself for a WAP version in December, [...]

    vtap Syncs Video Search from Mobile to Web « NewTeeVee on March 30th, 2008 at 9:03 pm - Permalink

  15. Useful iPhone Converter at http://www.iphone-converter-soft.com

    Jenny on April 14th, 2008 at 12:32 am - Permalink

  16. Video search engine will surely meet our needs. The statistics of online video-watching times per day is a sign for that.

    More popular video converters, iPhone/iPod Backup and transfer Tools at http://www.gutensoft.com

    ITfan on November 2nd, 2008 at 11:09 pm - Permalink

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