« Tech Tuesday (barely) #2: iPhone Gets Video Embed thanks to Blip.tv - Game Changer? »

One of the chief gripes about the iPhone (other than lack of copy/paste, or mms), is a lack of flash support in the mobile Safari browser.  While some might consider this a feature (no flash banner ads) most remain pining for support of flash video (youtube, MySpace video, etc), and flash based websites.

Wired has the story of Blip.tv's newest feature, "magic" iPhone video embeds.  That will allow for anyone to quickly embed iphone compatible video in their blog or website.  

At first glance this may seem like a game changer, but upon closer inspection it is little more than a glorified work-arround.  Google's Android has support for flash, as do several other mobile browsers yet two years out, it is still woefully absent on the iPhone.  Blip.tv could capitalize on their new trick by wooing bloggers (thier primary target) away from the likes of Youtube, who today upped the ante by growing their default player to 960px in a widescreen format (more on this in a second), or the in-fashion Vimeo.  I see a very real appeal to anyone (like me) who does iPhone app review videos.

I myself switched to Blip.tv for my video hosting needs about a week ago, after running into the filesize-limit-wall posed by other free solutions.  Faced with only 1 HD video upload per week on Vimeo, and the thought of spending anywhere between $60 and $100 to upgrade to a premium membership, Blip.tv's very generous 1GB per video filesize limit was more than enough for me not to think twice about swithching.  

Now that youtube is supporting higher resolution content embeds with out any quirky work arrounds, and has supported the iPhone from the beginning, it may (again) be the best solution for blog embedding.  I'll play arround with it some more, and report back. 

In any case, here is my report on OrbLive, a new video transcoding/streaming app for the iPhone, not in an iPhone supported format...