Windows Mobile Louisville

Last week, YouTube launched it’s own native Windows Mobile application.  Various HTC devices have a YouTube app already, but this one will work on any WM Phone.

You can get it by navigating to m.youtube.com on your device.

I already tried it, and while it works well, I will stick with the default YouTube app that came on my HTC Touch Pro.  I like the way it works a little better than this latest creation.

A note to folks who already have the YouTube app on your HTC device:  if you download and install this application from YouTube, it will overwrite the default app on your device!  I had to re-map shortcuts to the default application after I uninstalled this latest version (the default app is found in the Windows directory of your device).  Not a big deal, just wanted to pre-warn you!

Today Skyfire has released a new version of their browser for Windows Mobile. Skyfire is a mobile browser that gives you the most feature complete way to view the web on your phone as it would look on your desktop PC. This means YouTube, Hulu, Flash 10, Silverlight 2, Quicktime, AJAX, it’s all in there.

This latest release includes Facebook and Twitter integration, making it simple to share the things you view on your phone. The browser now supports widescreen (up to WVGA 800×480) and adapts font size for text so once you zoom in, you can read without horizontal scrolling. Contextual zoom will fit the text to your screen, and a newly improved rendering system makes this already snappy browser even faster.

Also new in this version is the ability to not just listen to audio, but download it to your phone (if the media is freely accessible), and for Windows Media Streaming audio, you can listen to streaming radio in the background while you keep on browsing.

To install over the air, point your phone to http://get.skyfire.com.

Source: On10.net

Kinoma has launched Kinoma Play to unify media browsing, search and playback, making it the first true mobile media browser. Featuring a user interface inspired by the simplicity and beauty of a digital television, Kinoma Play turns any Windows Mobile smartphone into a digital media powerhouse.

With Kinoma Play, smartphones now have digital media capabilities that meet, and sometimes even exceed, what users can do on their personal computers. Kinoma Play goes beyond organizing and playing a user’s video, audio and picture files, by bringing in media from around the Internet through the built-in Kinoma Guide, the most comprehensive catalog of the freshest, most diverse mobile media available.

Kinoma Play provides on-demand access from your phone to an unparalleled range of content:

• Media files – Play the music, video, pictures, panoramas and audio books on your phone
• Media services – Share your Audible.com, Flickr, iDisk, Live365, and YouTube accounts between your phone and computer
• Internet – Explore a terabyte of constantly updated, free streaming podcasts, music, radio stations, web-cams and audio books from thousands of providers including ClearChannel, CNN, NPR, Reuters, SHOUTcast, TUNED.mobi, and SomaFM
• Home PC – Access the gigabytes of music, video and pictures on your home PC from your phone – both on-demand streaming and download

Kinoma Play is $29.99. You can get it here.  The software is compatible with Windows Mobile 5.0 and higher.

Kinoma is also introducing Kinoma FreePlay as a free download. Kinoma FreePlay shares the same gorgeous user interface and simplicity of use with Kinoma Play. It is a great MP3 player and photo viewer and provides access to much of the Kinoma Guide including Audible.com, Flickr, Live365, Reuters, SHOUTcast, YouTube, and thousands of streaming podcasts.

In previous discussions about viewing YouTube videos, we have mentioned TCPMP and Flash Bundle as a viable solution as well as the the HTC Streaming Media application.  These have been workarounds, but not universal, and not consistent (for example, YouTube frequently changes the code so the Flash Bundle has to be updated).

CorePlayer Mobile is actually the “big brother” to the free TCPMP (which actually stands for The Core Pocket Media Player).  The paid version ($24.95) is much more robust, and along with other things, it plays YouTube videos natively. 

The only downside is there’s no trial version, so you’d have to just take the plunge and drop 25 bucks for it.  Just know that it is the TCPMP application on steroids, so if you’ve tried the free version and like it, you should love CorePlayer Mobile for all your video viewing needs.