Filed under: Software, Odds and ends, iPhone, App Store, App Review
First Look: 12mail Video Messenger for iPhone
The first time I saw the classic movie "2001: A Space Odyssey," I was 10 years old. If the story and the underlying meaning were confusing to me as a kid, the futuristic technology wasn't, and I liked the video communications devices and the flat Newspad.It's almost 9 years late (2010), but we finally have a cool way to communicate with video, and it doesn't require using a wall-mounted AT&T pay phone. 12mail Video Messenger [iTunes Link] for iPhone brings clear, fast video messaging to your device in 12-second chunks.
An offshoot of 12seconds.tv, 12mail Video Messenger grabs up to a 12 second video on the iPhone 3GS and delivers it to your Facebook and Twitter pals with push notification. If your buds don't have 12mail, they can view the video on their Facebook wall or through Twitter.
While there's not a lot you can say in 12 seconds, the app is great for sending friends short video blips, showing them something funny, or inviting them to join you for a drink. Since 12mail uses geolocation, your friends will know just where you sent your message from.
Some folks may wonder about the advantages of 12mail over MMS, particularly since AT&T is supposed to finally "flip the switch" on that service today. Those advantages are the integration with Facebook and Twitter, as well as the fact that this won't use up your text message allotment.
12mail is fairly simple to use, although I had some issues returning a video message to a person who had just been added to my Twitter "following" list. A query to 12mail's tech support got me a quick response, and I found out that I just needed to tap the refresh button in the top left corner of the list of Twitter users to get the latest people that I'm following. One other little bug seems to be that the "tilt iPhone to start recording" function doesn't work, at least not for me. If you don't have an iPhone that supports video recording, you can still record audio and take one picture to illustrate what's going on.
If you're a Twitter or Facebook user, particularly one with an iPhone 3GS, installing 12mail is a no-brainer. It's fun, it's free, and it's a taste of the future. Check out the gallery for some screenshots of 12mail.
Gallery: 12mail Video Messenger for iPhone
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
soxneon said 12:25PM on 9-25-2009
What would be nice is a true, live video conferencing App. I realize the iPhone doesn't currently have a forward facing camera, but maybe it would be good anyway. Obviously it's not going to happen on AT&T's network, but maybe WiFi at least.
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kal326 said 1:30PM on 9-25-2009
Or you could upload a video using the Facebook app, put in the location as a caption and call it a day.
Reply
Nelson Santos said 11:33PM on 10-01-2009
Sorry but I just can't help to mention that if you do not have the 3g s you can still perform this same action by jailbreaking and using Qik. It will send your video to Facebook and it works over 3g. If jailbreaking was not possible I would never have upgraded from from the 2g to the 3g model.
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olga lednichenko said 5:18PM on 10-30-2009
this is really wow.. how can i get it? thanks for being the informer... this is quite innovative... cant wait to have it..and someone mentioned about jailbreak.. is that right?
thanks
olga shulman lednichenko
Reply