This is Tech

On Friday I had the pleasure of speaking with Peentoo Patel, Technical Lead at mDialog.  We discussed iPhone application development and his company, mDialog.  mDialog has created a high quality video sharing site built around the open h.264 format.  The upside of mDialog for consumers of video is high rez user submitted content that can be browsed and shared using an iPhone or iPod Touch.  The upside for content creators is a platform that supports broad and narrow casting, and simplified publication of video through integrated RSS.

Social video is a crowded space, and there are some big players spending a lot of money to own the market for user created video.  That said, mDialog is innovating in the way small and nimble startups can.  The iPhone application for mDialog only tells part of the story.  Where the mDialog service really distinguishes itself is in the control that it gives content creators.  On the mDialog website, the upload process is fast and intuitive.  Videos are automatically optimized for a number of devices.  From there, the user can drag and drop their videos into channels that they create.  These channels can be public, or made available to only those that the user invites.  This means I can create a video channel for videos of my family, and make it available just to my family.  With a few clicks, my Dad can subscribe to the channel in iTunes and have the latest family videos synced to his iPod as a podcast. Embedded example below:

Based on the iPhone application alone, it is easy to miss how advanced mDialog really is.  My first impression was that the iPhone application was doing what a lot of other applications and websites have already done.  The difference, it turns out, is that mDialog does a better job with respect to video quality and ease of use for content owners.

If you like to share video, or are considering publishing a video podcast, you should give mDialog a try.  If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch running the v2 firmware, you can find mDialog in the iTunes App Store as a free download.

To hear my interview with Peentoo Patel click the play button below.