Yahoo launched a video-viewing iOS app, Yahoo Screen, on Monday, the first major app launch from the company's 10-month-old mobile engineering office in New York City.
The app is a portal to content from Yahoo's video partners, which include ABC News and Martha Stewart, and to its growing portfolio of original content. In conjunction with the app launch Monday, Yahoo is releasing episodes from eight new comedy series, featuring the likes of Jack Black, John Stamos, Ed Helms and Cheryl Hines.
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They will be joined by a variety of licensed content, including 5,000 clips from the last 38 years of SNL, which Yahoo secured streaming rights for in late April.
Yahoo is also announcing on Monday that it has signed a licensing agreement with Viacom, bringing clips from Comedy Central shows The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report to Yahoo Screen. In October, clips from South Park will join the service as well.
Though Yahoo specializes in short videos and clips, which are ideal for web consumption, its Screen app is designed to "feel like a lean-back TV experience," said Robby Stein, a former Stamped co-founder who now heads up Yahoo's mobile engineering office in New York, in an interview with Mashable last week. Streaming video plays the second the app opens, as if you'd just hit the power button on your TV set.
Content is organized into horizontal "channels," including rows for comedy, celebrity and sports. You can access content from each channel without leaving the home screen: Just swipe to the right to explore more videos.

In addition to topical browsing, you can also search across videos. A search for "Obama" yields a screen full of clips from the AP, Reuters, ABC News — and the list goes on. All videos can be shared through Facebook, Twitter and e-mail.
Yahoo Screen will launch without ads. Bart Stein, another Stamped co-founder who now serves as product manager of emerging products and technologies at Yahoo, said the company is still "looking at the most engaging ad format[s] for Yahoo and our users over time."
Several other features are also missing. Videos can't be saved for viewing offline, and unlike many of Yahoo's recently revamped products, no personalization capabilities are available. But Robby said content will eventually be more personalized based on past viewing behavior. An Android version of the app is also on the way, Bart said.
In addition to the mobile app launch, Yahoo Screen has been redesigned for the desktop in a format that closely resembles its mobile counterpart. Where a user would swipe or tap on the iOS app, a desktop user navigates with the mouse.
"Yahoo is a mobile-first company now," Robby said. "We think about how products work on mobile devices first, and how they work on desktop second."
The app is fast, elegant and easy to use, and seems primed for a much larger catalog of content. (We suddenly find ourselves wishing Yahoo acquired Hulu after all.) Given the string of licensing deals Yahoo has signed over the past few months, it seems fair to expect more, though the company would have to overtake the likes of YouTube and Netflix if it wants to become the ultimate portal for video.
Images: Flickr, Sully213
Pudding Camera has a wonderful visual interface. Scroll through little thumbnails and camera icons (rather than text lists) to find the filters and effects you're looking for.
This visual UI is helpful, since the app itself is not entirely in English. The output resolution is full, so you'll be downloading and sharing nice big images after you're done snapping and filtering.
FxCamera has been my go-to Android photo app for a while now. The filter options get very granular, which is great if you're a control freak - not so much if you're hoping to whip out your phone and capture a fleeting moment. Still, the array of choices is impressive for a freebie.
Vignette's framing options and clean UI make it a standout app. You can combine the filter and frame choices for a variety of permutations. The downside is that the output resolution is small, at least with the settings we tried. That's convenient for sharing online, but you may not want to document your entire life with these tiny pics.
Little Photo packs a surprising UI punch. Take a pic and you start with the raw image. A translucent menu then floats over the snap, and you can scroll through your effect choices and preview them on the fly. Mix your effects, hit apply, and share at will. The image processing and output are impressive.
Retro Camera is fun, slick, and has a very "Hipstamatic" feel. You're not scrolling through lists of effects, but selecting the vintage film camera you'd like to shoot with. The UI then becomes the camera (with various additional options appearing as buttons and switches), and you look down into the view finder as you snap away. Photos are then "developed" in the preview gallery where you can scroll through your attempts in a handheld dark room and share them out via Twitter, Facebook, and "Electronic Mail" - whatever that is.
In our testing, we had a few crashes, but not enough to detract from the fun value.
There's also a paid version with more cameras and features to choose from.
Action Snap is a bit different from the others on our list. It has a handful of filters, but the selling point here is the ability to grab a sequence of images and stitch them together automagically. This is great for objects or people in motion.
Set the automatic shutter interval anywhere between .01 and 5 seconds (or a custom speed that you can control manually) and start snapping your moving target. The app arranges the photos sequentially into panels or a grid. The dead-simple interface and lack of bells and whistles means you can focus on your subject in motion.
A World of Photo is not your traditional box of digital filters. It's a social photo game with the potential to be a lot of fun and/or super creepy. Think of it as a mobile, photo-centric version of Chatroulette.
You can jump right in as a guest user or sign up for an account if you plan to play often. Wait to be "located" by another user (who will appear on the map in relation to you). Then it's up to you to snap a photo of anything (within the terms of use and common decency) and send it off to that user. The nice thing is that when you're ready to take a photo, it allows you to use Android's camera, or other photo apps you've already installed. I used Vignette to snap a photo of my coffee cup and send it out to "Guest 8244." I assume he or she enjoyed it immensely.
The recipient can comment or send feedback. When the exchange is done, the app locates someone else, and tasks them to send a pic to you. I received a horrifying photo of a giant insect crawling on someone's foot. Fun!
The interface is still a little rough. I attempted to email the bug-foot photo to myself, but the message came through without an attachment, and the horror was lost to the aether. Still, it's easy to see how a little time spent playing with this app could lead to a lot of time spent playing with this app.
This app doesn't actually take photos on its own - you'll need to access snaps from your gallery. Once you load them in, there are multitudes of effects you can apply. Some of them are a little goofy, but there's entertainment to be had with fisheyes and fun house-type mirrors. The above example uses a lomo filter and a mosaic pattern.
Want Polaroid-style pics without fuss? Grab this free app. The user experience could not be simpler, and the results are impressive.
Take your photo through the Polaroid viewfinder, watch it develop, and write the caption at the bottom in a variety of fonts. You can change the "film type" before or after you shoot, but the variations are simple and clean. Your pics are easy to save and share. The final resolution is decent, but not huge.
Last but certainly not least, Camera360 Free has a full buffet of effects, filters and styles to choose from, including a great tilt-shift option that is often lacking in other Android offerings. The UI has nice big buttons, and once you get into picture-taking mode, there are even more granular options to play with.
Sharing is a little buggy, but if you're looking for a wealth of photo options to experiment with, Camera360 (or its paid version) is a great choice.