It’s not turning out to be such a great day for AT&T (T) and Apple (AAPL), as some enterprising hackers have unlocked the iPhone and made it ready for any GSM network.
Just like AT&T, YouTube
will soon lose its exclusivity on the iPhone. When it does, you’ll be
able to use the phone to watch videos from all over the Web, thanks to Veveo,
an Andover, Mass.-based startup that has developed essentially the
equivalent of a T9 predictive text input system commonly found on
mobile phones that works with their video index. (Screenshot below the fold.)

First, Veveo’s Web crawler crawls the Web for video content; it then
builds a smart index using the company’s own algorithms. Mobile phone
users get this content via an application called vTap, which is where
the predictive nature of the service comes into play.
vTap needs the input of just a few characters (vs. full keywords) in
order to dig up what you’re searching for and present it for viewing on
your mobile phone (right now it works primarily on Windows Mobile
phones.) So for example, if you download the application on your phone
and start typing “Om,” results including videos from “The GigaOM Show” and my recent appearance on “Wallstrip” automatically appear. (See: How it works)
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