Mobile Apptitude

(…or other mobile device…)

Since my parents live on the other side of the country and don’t get to see their granddaughter very often, I’ve been exploring ways to use my new BlackBerry Curve to keep them in touch.

First, I discovered the Flickr app for BlackBerry — so now I just take a picture, hit the BlackBerry key, scroll down to “Send to Flickr” and upload it. No computer required…I just start the upload and put the phone back in my pocket…and the pictures are actually pretty good in terms of pixel quality.

Then, I started trying do the same thing with videos. There’s no YouTube app for the Blackberry just yet…BUT, YouTube does provide an email address unique to each account where you can send videos, and they’ll automatically post to your account. So I set it up this morning and it was a breeze.

Just log on to YouTube from your computer, click on account, and then look for a link on the left-hand side called “Mobile Setup.” You may need to specify and/or register your mobile phone number…but at the end of that process, YouTube will tell you a unique email address to which you can send your mobile videos. Save that into your BlackBerry as a contact…and then once you’ve taken a video from your phone, just email it to that address, and presto! Your BlackBerry video is now uploaded to your YouTube account.

I haven’t used it in a social change setting yet, but it’s easy to imagine where/when it might be very handy to get a video right onto the web from my phone. For example, situations like the Oscar Grant shooting…politicians’ “macaca” moments…or, on a broader scale, the very important human rights work done by Witness.org.

(You’ll want to keep an eye on your data usage, however, as videos are usually pretty big in terms of file size. If you want to upload more than one or two videos per month, it’s probably a good idea to get on an unlimited data plan so you don’t have to worry about going over your limit.)