Cloud Browse brings Flash to the iPhone… sort of

Apple’s iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad famously can’t handle Adobe Flash content… natively. But Cloud Browse it an app that finds a way around that by essentially letting you control a remote web browser. The audio and video is then transmitted through the internet to your mobile device.

So when you fire up cloud Browse, what you’ll see is Firefox. You can pull up an on-screen keyboard to type, hit the Web button to change URLs, and use the left and right buttons to go backward and forward.

Of course, it’s hard to fit a desktop browser onto a 480 x 320 pixel display, but fortunately you can pinch to zoom in Cloud Brose just like you would with any other application, making it relatively easy to control Firefox.

Now for the bad news. I tested a couple of different online video sites… with mixed results. While I was able to play videos from Vimeo and Amazon Video on Demand, playback was a bit choppy on both sites. And other web sites, including Hulu simply don’t work. I don’t know if Hulu is actively blocking Cloud Browse or if the server that’s actually running Firefox is outside of the US — which would be enough to prevent Hulu videos from playing properly.

I’m not sure Cloud Browse is polished enough to recommend for daily use. But it’s a neat little workaround that you might want to check out.

But my favorite thing about cloud Browse right now has to be the App Store warning that “you must be at least 17 years old to download this application,” due to mature/suggestive themes. Let me repeat, all that Cloud Browse does is let you control a web browser. Sure, there’s plenty of mature and suggestive content on the web, but I don’t remember a warning message popping up the first time I first time I ran Safari on my iPod touch.

Cloud Browse is available as a free download from the App Store.

thanks Lee!