One of the things I love doing is experimenting with new software, hardware and other tech, all from multiple perspectives – personal development, personal fun and business communication.

A great example is 12seconds.tv, what can only be described as “a video version of Twitter”: like Twitter, you have only a finite means to express your message, in this case 12 seconds of video.

The service has been in private beta throughout this year and I’ve been using it under that beta for the past few months. It;’s great fun and a neat way of articulating something concisely.

Yesterday, 12seconds.tv came out of private beta and into public beta, so anyone can now sign up. All you need is a webcam to start your first missive.

For me, the most exciting aspect of 12second.tv’s development is the means to do a video on an iPhone.

But the iPhone doesn’t do video, you say. True enough, and 12seconds.tv has a nice little workaround:

[…] With the 12seconds iPhone app you take 3 pictures, record some audio and post it.  We’ll turn it into a video and post it for your friends to see.  There’s no other app in the app store that outputs video so we’re pretty excited about it.  It will cost only 99 cents.  It’s a great value and a great way to support your friends at 12seconds.

Great value indeed (59p in the UK) and you can get it now from the iTunes App Store. I did that early this morning and this is the result of my first video from an iPhone:

[iPhone] iPhone quick morning on 12seconds.tv

The photos are three items on the bookshelf in my kitchen. Not especially exciting and it cuts off at the end (which perhaps indicates that the counter on the iPhone app is out of sync with real time).

But it’s fun and I can see this being widely used for quick personal (and business) video messaging.

Give 12seconds.tv a go, iPhone or not.