Get a laugh out of the Benny Lava clip even without a computer nearby.
There is probably always an occasion when friends you're out with start discussing some crazy YouTube video you've watched becomes the topic of conversation. There'd be frustrating efforts to describe how funny that Benny Lava video is to those who haven't caught it.
Eventually, someone with an iPhone will become the hero because his handset has a built-in YouTube application. If you are a Windows Mobile user, you can prevent that Apple fanboy from stealing the limelight. Here are three ways to do so. This list is far from exhaustive, but we have picked out those that require the least amount of work because manually installing applications on a Windows Mobile device can sometimes be a drag.
1. Get a current HTC handheld
HTC has done a decent job putting extras into its handsets and one of these is its custom YouTube application. First found on the Touch Diamond and Touch Pro, this has made its way into the budget-friendly Touch through a software update. One of the best things about this app is that it feels like the full YouTube experience as it recommends featured videos on its homepage and even gives you related video suggestions after you are done watching something.
2. Visit YouTube's mobile site
To do this, just fire up your Internet browser and navigate to m.youtube.com. This brings you to a scaled-down version of the video-sharing site which will load much faster on your device compared to youtube.com. When it first started, the videos hosted on this mobile site were just a fraction of what was available on the main one. This isn't the case anymore and you'll likely find what you see on your desktop hosted here. Tapping on a video should launch an external streaming player and you are good to go.
Some users may get an error message at this point because many Windows Mobile devices may not have a streaming media player installed. There are free streaming media applications you can install to try to solve this problem, like the HTC Streaming Media Player which used to come with some HTC devices. Some users over at XDA Developers have extracted that file for download, but whether this will work for you is not certain. Another option will be to head over to a Windows Mobile application download site like Handango and attempt to search for something that will work for you. But if you have to go to that extent, the next tip might be better for you.
3. vTap
This is a dead simple solution created by a company called Veveo. It is an aggregation site which includes clips from many video-sharing sites including YouTube. When you first visit m.vtap.com, it will prompt you to download its vTap application for viewing streaming video. We tried this out and it worked well with a good Internet connection. Even if you do not wish to install the vTap app, searching for videos on the site itself will also work. In that case, tapping on a video will launch the default Windows Media Player so there is no need to install any other third-party app.
Tags: Microsoft Windows Mobile, Streaming Media, Microsoft Windows, High Tech Computer Corp., video
