Viddler’s current lack of any way to record video on a mobile phone, for instance. More specifically the iPhone. I take a lot of mobile photos (more here) on my iPhone. I’ve wanted to shoot videos on my iPhone too. Now I can.

The first step I had to take was to jailbreak my iPhone. Qik’s iPhone application, while not perfect, allows me to shoot video on my iPhone and have it be recorded, live, on Qik’s servers. In fact, if the connection is good enough you can watch me recording the video only a few seconds delayed.

But I wanted my video on Viddler. It is my player of choice. Qik’s player is great, especially since it allows you to watch the video as it is being recorded. It also has some interesting interactive features like chat. But, like MTV – I want my Viddler.

So my second step was to build a bridge from Qik to the Viddler. Once the live session has been saved as an FLV Qik creates an RSS feed with a link to the video file. I’ve built a dead simple PHP script that reads that RSS feed, downloads the FLVs, and then transfers them to Viddler. I then took the liberty of creating a quick bit of code that then Twitters the link to the video on Viddler. I do this for my mobile photos posted to Flickr so I thought why not do that for mobile videos as well.

After talking with Qik about this bridge we’ve both decided to do something a little bit better than what I have hacked together using nothing more than what I had access to. So stay tuned.  Until then, you may have my script that I wrote in an hour to play with.

I wanted to jailbreak my iPhone because I was starting to get pretty tired of the relatively walled-garden that Apple has created inside the iPhone OS. When the App Store debuted I had wished it would have meant an end to how closed a system the iPhone really is, but, that was only partially realized.

The iPhone SDK, its policies, the App Store approval process for applications, non-demoable applications, lack of refund policies, and the numerous rejections that Apple has been handing out lately to hard working iPhone developers – pushed me over the edge.

You see, 1 year and 1 month ago I wrote that I wouldn’t be jailbreaking my iPhone (as was the trend at the time). So why am I doing it now? What has changed? Actually, not all that much.

A jailbroken iPhone, more or less, has the same sorts of things available to it now as it did a year ago. Full applications, themes and customization options, and various utilities to get more out of your iPhone than you can without jailbreaking your iPhone. The reason I wanted to jailbreak was to try out two things.

First, I wanted to use PDAnet. I managed to buy NetShare, a program that does very much the same thing and made it to the official App Store before being removed, for $10. It is a pain to set up (or it was for me). Many people use it a lot and have no trouble. I, on the other hand, never got it to work once. PDAnet worked the very first time I tried to use it and it was fast. In fact, just today the power in my building went out and I didn’t even have to stop working. Thanks PDAnet.

The second reason was that I wanted to try Qik’s video recorder. Another application not-yet-approved by the Apple team. I’m not as familiar with the SDK guidelines as say, John “I can make anyone look like a Jackass” Gruber, but I’m sure there is a valid reason that Qik’s video application is not in the App Store.  It works though. I streamed two videos already. And, I’ve already built a bridge between Qik and Viddler (coming soon) to transfer those files to Viddler.

All of the other frills are just icing on the cake. Being able to choose to have my favorite photo as a background on my home screen, rather than just black. Being able to remove applications that I don’t want! Hiding application icons. So on and so forth.

Sure, not all of the things that jailbreaking your iPhone can do should end up back in the official product and software. But my next wish list for the iPhone would have to be that Apple select 500 people that have jailbroken their iPhone, create a matrix of all of the things they did the most and why, and then build the iPhone OS 3.0 off of some of those ideas.

As of: May 1, 2008

Somewhat recently, according to this graph (pictured), the Apple iPhone has taken over the top spot as Flickr user’s use it more than any other camera phone to publish photos to Flickr.  The Nokia N95 had a demanding lead over every other camera phone, while the iPhone took the lead with an amazing upswing.

This is not suprising to me, giving the ease of uploading from the iPhone to Flickr through email.  For those that have “jail broken” their iPhones there is also an application they can use to upload photos directly to Flickr.  I shutter [sic] to think what this graph will look like once version 2 of the iPhone software comes out, and there is an official application, or many applications, for uploading photos to Flickr.

Source: Flickr: Camera Finder.

Not only does Twinkle allow you to follow your friends, it also allows you to “follow” those geographically close to you. I expect, come June, to see tons of location-aware applications for the iPhone.

Source: Twinkle for iPhone lets you surf Twitter by location | Webware : Cool Web apps for everyone.
Via: Josh’s Viddler video.

My iPhone, is one of these
Photo credit: Erik Kastner

Sure, it seems like a fun little project (especially now with only needing to visit jailbreakme.com on an iPhone) to crack your phone and install all sorts of neat tweaks and full applications that let you do interesting things – but so far it has seemed unappealing to me.

Most of the applications that I’ve seen has been from me messing around with someone else’s iPhone. However, with that little bit of experience I’ve seen that most of the applications currently available were not applications that I felt warranted me hacking my iPhone. Don’t get me wrong – I think it is really cool that you can use Terminal, Remote Desktop, Apache, and a whole slew of other applications in the palm of your hand – but I don’t need those applications in my palm of my hand.

So, perhaps for most of the people that have installed some of these applications, games, and fun user-interface tweaks it has been a matter of entertainment. They figured they could, so why not? But I think that starting in February/March of 2008 we’re going to see much more refined applications that have value to nearly all iPhone users rather than just a small portion of those that like to edit configuration files on remote servers while eating dinner at a restaurant.

iPhone application wish list

What do I see coming? I’m sure my imagination isn’t powerful nor creative enough to speculate but I can say what I’d like to see. Here is a short list of the things I’d like to do with my iPhone:

• Contact sharing via Bluetooth to iPhone and non-iPhone alike.
• The ability to delete all photos!
• File system access via Safari for file upload processes.
• Quick, easy, screenshots. Skitch mobile?
• Hack Safari and add a better cache!
• When on wifi; be able to stream music from other iPhones/iTunes.
• Oh, I almost forgot. Flash that doesn’t rob battery. (I know, a pipe dream).

Useful applications for the masses will be available on the iPhone in short order and I’m looking forward to it. Any experience the developers of the applications that are already in existence can gather before an official SDK is released in February will only make them better – so I am ok with letting everyone else work the bugs out for me. Strange, I’m normally an early adopter, but this time I’ve decided to sit it out and watch the others play.

Have you hacked your iPhone? Have you found any compelling applications? What would you like to see next year?