Vimeo launched their official iPhone app last year and, since the launch, Android users have been anxiously waiting in the sidelines for their chance to take Vimeo for a spin on their mobile devices. Well now the wait is finally over. Yesterday at CES Vimeo launched brand new mobile apps for Android and Windows Phone 7 devices.
Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews. 
I’ve written about thousands of apps for Android, iPhone, iPad and Windows Phone here. If you ever wondered which of these third party apps (not part of the mobile platform) actually made their way to the start window for each of my devices, wonder no more. I usually leave the default apps in-position on their respective home pages “just because.” This list does not indicate how “important” an app is. It says more about how frequently they are accessed on a daily basis.
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Evernote is one of the most useful services around. I use it everyday on a variety of devices using both its web interface as well as native clients which are available for a number of desktop and mobile devices. Evernote just updated its Windows Phone app to take advantage of that platforms unique features.
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The independent Google Operating System blog took note of the improvements to YouTube’s HTML5 player. The HTML5 interface is in an opt-in trial period that you can enter and leave at will. Once you opt-in, Adobe Flash becomes unnecessary when using a browser that supports HTML5. The question I had and answer here is: How does the YouTube HTML5 interface work with mobile browsers?
YouTube’s HTML5 Player Gets Better
The Google Operating System blog noted that YouTube HTML5 player improvements include the ability to enable annotations and captions, a contextual menu to let you copy embedding code and a video’s URL, 480p and 1080p options for WebM videos and full-screen support when using developer builds of the Firefox or Chrome browser.
The YouTube HTML5 player provides a mobile friendly interface too. This worked on the iPhone, Android and Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) devices I tried with it. The mobile interface allowed giving a video a thumbs up or down (if enabled), adding to a list, sharing via Twitter, Facebook or email and deselecting high quality (HQ) mode (which is the default when available). Most importantly, full screen video viewing worked in the mobile browsers (including the Windows Phone 7.5 Internet Explorer browser). The controls you see in the second screenshot here appear when you tap the display while a video is playing.
Nokia is making a multi-billion dollar gamble with its switch from Symbian to Microsoft’s Windows Phone smartphone platform. Now that Nokia’s Windows Phone 7.5 based Lumia 800 is shipping (but not in the U.S.), Nokia is stepping up its effort to promote what Windows Phone can do and how to do it. Nokia released a series of introductory and how-to (“uncovered”) video clips on YouTube to provide this information.
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Nokia’s Windows Phone 7.5 based Lumia 800 will not be available in the U.S. until sometime in 2012. But, some of the custom software only available for Nokia’s phones can be previewed now. Nokia’s Drive and Maps apps curiously separate the functions of turn-by-turn navigation with map viewing.
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Spotify, the subscription social music service, released an app for Windows Phone this week. The Windows Phone version has a few features surrounding playlists that Microsoft says sets it apart from Spotify for other mobile platforms. Spotify for Windows Phone can create playlists on the phone itself, play friends’ playlists and share playlists via Facebook, Twitter and Windows Messenger. One unique and useful feature is the ability to pin a Spotify playlist as a Live Tile on Windows Phone’s Start screen.
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Nielsen released another of their fascinating reports focused on the mobile world. The report focuses on smartphone use by age categories. And, there are a couple of interesting twists revealed by their data. Overall, 43% of phone owning adults have a smartphone. While it is probably not a surprise to most casual observers that the smartphone penetration rate for mobile phone owning young adults (ages 25-34) is 62%, it may surprise you to learn that the second fastest growing smartphone owning group are people in the 45 to 50 year category. Smartphone ownership by this cohort grew by 5% in just a single quarter.
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How much fun can a game be that has no car chases, weapons fire, thrown birds or violence? The answer is quite a lot if it is the newly released version of a an Xbox 360 favorite Kinectimals. Kinectimals for Windows Phone costs $2.99 and doesn’t require the human player to jump and twist as required when using an Xbox 360 with Kinect. Your fingers, however, will get a workout interacting with the virtual big cat on the screen.
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The Microsoft Windows Phone smartphone platforms currently trails way behind market leaders iPhone, Android and even the troubled BlackBerry. However, if new phones from Microsoft’s primary hardware partner Nokia builds marketshare, new Windows Phone owners will need a way to find great apps for work and play. This was a knotty task after Windows Phone launched in the October 2010. There was not way to see the full app market place on the web and the on-device app store had its share of stability and navigation issues. These problems have been resolved a year later. The new Microsoft Marketplace Extra website provides a curated collection of app recommendations, reviews and videos.
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