As a followup to this:

I solved the issue thanks to help from Qik employee Vladimir Chernyshev, on http://getsatisfaction.com/qik/topic...a_feed_on_n900

Turns out some enviromental settings that Qik requires were missing, specifically instead of:

Nokia-N900-51-1:~# printenv | grep OSSO
OSSO_PRODUCT_REGION=Britain
OSSO_SWAP=/home/user/MyDocs
OSSO_VERSION=RX-51_2009SE_2.2009.51-1_PR_MR0
OSSO_PRODUCT_RELEASE_VERSION=2.2009.51-1
OSSO_PRODUCT_FULL_NAME=Nokia N900
OSSO_PRODUCT_RELEASE_NAME=Maemo 5
OSSO_PRODUCT_SHORT_NAME=Nokia N900
OSSO_PRODUCT_HARDWARE=RX-51
OSSO_PRODUCT_KEYBOARD=English, Dutch
OSSO_PRODUCT_WLAN_CHANNEL=fcc/us
OSSO_PRODUCT_RELEASE_FULL_NAME=Maemo 5
OSSO_PRODUCT_NAME=N900

mine was showing

Nokia-N900-51-1:~# printenv | grep OSSO
OSSO_PRODUCT_REGION=<unknown>
OSSO_SWAP=/media/mmc1
OSSO_VERSION=<unknown>
OSSO_PRODUCT_RELEASE_VERSION=<unknown>
OSSO_PRODUCT_FULL_NAME=<unknown>
OSSO_PRODUCT_RELEASE_NAME=<unknown>
OSSO_PRODUCT_SHORT_NAME=<unknown>
OSSO_PRODUCT_HARDWARE=<unknown>
OSSO_PRODUCT_KEYBOARD=<unknown>
OSSO_PRODUCT_WLAN_CHANNEL=<unknown>
OSSO_PRODUCT_RELEASE_FULL_NAME=<unknown>
OSSO_PRODUCT_NAME=<unknown>

Interestingly enough, reinstalling mplayer/sib/kmplayer reset those envs to their normal values which made Qik work as well. I'm not sure if the fault was with mplayer erasing those envs or something else.