• by Steve Smith , Staff Writer @popeyesm, July 8, 2010

There are loads of video-enabled apps out there for the various mobile platforms. Most of the major cable networks and broadcast networks have mobilized access to some of their shows or clips. As we saw last week hulu launched its hulu Plus subscription program on iPad, iPhone and Web. But most of these apps are catalogs of recent video clips that your rifle through and choose to view. One of the refreshing things about The Big App show is that it is exactly what the packaging promises, a video show in an app. You open the app and press the big honkin play button in the center of the screen and the day's episode runs.

The show is the brainchild of Mevio head Adam Curry, who was a genuine pioneer in the podcasting space and one of MTV's original VJs. He told USA Today in a recent article that he wants to be the first "AppJ" and is hoping to recreate a bit of the feel of early MTV in the show. Well, in a sense, he is on to something. The show is as simple as can be. It is a short personal demo of a cool smartphone app. And yes there are more than a few app shows already out there. What Curry brings is both polish and personality. Most of the app pod and vodcasts out there are by geeks for geeks. Curry comes at the apps more as a commoner, with some knowledge and a lot of enthusiasm. Like the early MTV VJs he finds a space between the all-knowing FM DJ rock geek and the unctuous marketing-driven voices of Top 40 AM programming. He demos stuff he is genuinely excited about and uses.

But the Big App Show is also a nice example of turning an app into a simple video show. It is constructed top to bottom as a video experience. You can side swipe through full-screen thumbnails of the recent daily shows. In a very smart move I have rarely seen in other mobile video programming, the show plays in portrait mode rather than landscape mode. This may seem a small thing, but reorienting a smartphone just to view a video clip is actually a pain. And the App Show is shot in a way that puts a medium shot of Curry front and center and in your face. It actually feels a bit more like the intimate MTV of old than most video programming.

What is rare and interesting about Curry's foray into mobile video is the way in which in format and content it embodies the personal nature of the cell phone itself. This feels more like a video chat with a friend than "mobile video."