Until Adobe and Apple work out their differences (Yeah, right) or the entire Internet miraculously switches to using HTML5 for all video content, the Skyfire browser will always have one steadfast selling point: through some on-the-fly conversion magic, it can play back Flash video content on iOS devices.
The problem: outside of its Flash shortcomings, Safari is great. Most people probably don’t want to replace it entirely. Skyfire gets pushed to the background, waiting for its moment in the sun when the user comes across a video that Safari just refuses to play.
Realizing this, Skyfire has started to think outside of the browser. This morning they’ve released VideoQ, a standalone player for video content that Safari won’t touch. It’s like the Skyfire browser, minus the browser — or, in some sense, like a ReadItLater for mobile video.
Here’s how it works:
- Download VideoQ, then send a quick registration email
- Browse around in Safari. One you’ve found a video that Safari can’t play, you tap Safari’s “Mail Link To This Page” button, and email that link to video@skyfire.com
- Launch the VideoQ app, and the video you sent over will be waiting in your queue for playback.
Alternatively, you can also use a bookmarklet to send the link from your desktop computer to queue it up for playback on your handset.
But that’s not all it does — in fact, one of its secondary features might just be cooler than its main, video queueing trick. Given that Skyfire processes something like 8 million video requests a day, they’ve got a pretty good idea what the masses are watching at any given second — so they list it. The “Hot” tab within the app pulls together a real-time list of the most popular videos from all around the web, and you can drill down to just the content you want by dropping in channel filters like “Technology” and “Animals”. Hurray! You’ll never miss an adorable cat video ever again!
Skyfire’s VideoQ currently goes for $1.99 in the App Store (a buck shy of what they’re asking for with their full-blown browser).
Video Demo:
