If other tablet makers are to believed, all of us with iOS devices are wringing our hands that our devices can’t play Flash-based movies. Now, myself I don’t really find myself missing Flash for movies very often (websites built in Flash are an abomination all of their own, but that’s a different post), but there are times when it would be cool to watch something that hadn’t been converted for the iOS brethren (sisteren?). This is where VideoQ from Skyfire comes in (App Store link) and while I think being able to queue up videos to watch is a great idea I wonder if they might find their true calling as a video discovery engine.
I received a promo code for VideoQ from Skyfire’s PR company to give the app a try and launched it up on the morning it was available. So how do you watch Flash videos on an iOS device? How does VideoQ pul off this heretical notion? Well, technically, they don’t. What you do is that when you come across a Flash video online that you want to see you email the URL to a Skyfire email address and they make a non-Flash version for you. The video is then available in your queue (get it … VideoQ … video queue) to watch. The app is universal for iOS devices and looks pretty good on the iPad. I think they have some rotation issues to work out, but otherwise it’s nice. Here’s my thing though, I don’t come across a lot of videos that are Flash-based. Maybe because I’m not a huge video watcher, but still. However, VideoQ has a really interesting “What’s Hot” section of the app where you can check out popular videos on the standard topics (news, tech, entertainment, etc). See, this, I think, could be the app’s true calling.
Right now the What’s Hot section is powered by the emails people send into VideoQ. Makes sense popular videos would filter to the top. I’m assuming that VideoQ both uses meta data to categorize videos and filters out porn. Yeah I know that’s what all of you have been thinking, so you can stop now. Now I can imagine finding other ways to popular and vote on videos to make a new video-based news app.
Sure I see that VideoQ is trying to solve a problem, but I think it’s a problem that isn’t going to be around much longer. Regardless of the various platform wars (small skirmishes?), iOS is huge online and sites that offer video that haven’t adapted to this reality are missing out on tons of traffic. Oh and apps like VideoQ only make it worse for laggards.
VideoQ is $2 in the app store and if you’re looking for a cool app to watch Flash videos on iOS, this is a good choice. Now if you’re also looking for an app to find cool and interesting videos…yeah I think it’s your app too.
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