Flash Videos Soon Viewable on Apple Products
VELSHI: In today's "Big I", which we do every day, a Web browser for the iPhone and iPad that allows you to view videos in Flash. We pulled this story from our friends at CNNMoney.com. Now Apple still does not support content that is encoded in Adobe's Flash if you're trying to play it on a iPhone and iPad or an iPod Touch. Adobe says nearly 75 percent of online video is encoded in Flash, but Apple CEO Steve Jobs has said that Flash performs poorly on mobile devices and sucks up battery life. He's not wrong about that, because I use it on my BlackBerry and it does do that. It's not good and it does suck up battery life. So Apple and Adobe have been in this huge fight over whether to allow Flash on mobile Apple products. Now to get around Apple's restriction, no deal has been made, but to get around it, a startup company called Skyfire came up with this innovative solution. When users click on a page that is embedded with Flash video, Skyfire's servers download, render and translate that video into HTML 5, which is what Apple can read. Skyfire then displays a thumbnail that users can click on to stream the video right from the Skyfire's servers. Skyfire's the first application to receive Apple's approval for distribution in its App Store and it goes on sale Thursday at 9am. That means people with Apple devices can now see video that's done with Flash. One major website that Skyfire will not have an effect on, by the way, is Hulu, which blocked the app from downloading it's videos. So if you want to see things on Hulu on your Apple device, you're still out of luck. Hulu hosts TV shows and movies from the major networks and studios. It's free for PC users in the United States, mobile users have to pay $10 a month for a subscription to Hulu plus. But Skyfire estimates that the number of Web sites and videos that Skyfire will open up to iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch users is in the millions. Skyfire says the app received a rigorous review from Apple, but it was approved in less than two months. Apple did not return a CNNMoney request for comment on why it approved Skyfire for its App Store. Skyfire first debuted on Microsoft's Windows Mobile and Nokia phones in 2008. It surpassed 3 million downloads, but the program was criticized for bugginess, sluggishness and for privacy concerns. The company now insists that those problems were fixed with its new release of Skyfire 2.0. Worth trying out. See if it works. OK, we're heading over to the CNN Politics Desk straight ahead for some very last minute polling efforts. We'll see what voters were thinking in the home stretch.