There used to be an app on the iPhone called Simplify Media.  What it did was to stream the music that was sitting in your home computer to your iPhone over the air.  No matter where you go you would have access to every song in your library, as long as you have cell reception.  It works as advertised but for my huge iTunes Library, it seems a bit slow.  Not to mention as a New Yorker, I dash in and out of the subway all the time, if I completely rely on this app I would have no music to play.  So I rather sync my music to iPhone the “old-fashion” way.  Then Google bought Simplify Media take it off the app store, and transform it into a streaming music feature on the upcoming android 2.2 OS.

Anyway, that wasn’t really what I want to talk about, I was simply providing a background.  What I want to talk about is an app called Air Video, which does what Simplify Media did to music, but for your videos on the computer!  What’s more amazing is that it does it fast, and not only over wi-fi but 3G as well!!!  In addition, your video don’t even need to be iPhone compatible at all, because it convert the video on the fly! so even if you have videos that are in Real Video, WMV, AVI, MKV, DIVX, you name it, it can show it on your iPhone over the air.  To me it’s like magic!  Seriously I am now able to watch some HD quality video files that are like 2.GB + big that I have in my computer on my iPhone! Now I don’t have to keep two copies like what I used to if I want to have high quality file at home while bring a smaller copy with me on the iPhone!

If you know about converting video files takes time, and yet this app can do it instantly so that you are watching the video on the iPhone right away is what makes it magical!  It’s so easy to access your entire video library from home using this app.  Now I don’t have an iPad just yet, but imagine you use it on the iPad, You can now buy the lowest capacity iPad but can access unlimited videos from your own home computer! Now one slight problem is that it doesn’t work with videos that has DRM, which means, ironically, any videos you bought digitally legally.

For me it just works so well that I think it’s one of the best 3 dollars I spent on the app store!  If you still isn’t convince, you can download the free version and try it out yourself!

Related posts:

1. A Letter to my iPod
2. New iPods
3. Music video for Mac people
4. Thoughts on WWDC Keynote part 2
5. Unboxing iPhone 3GS

Tagged: Apple · Apps · iPhone