The folks at the video broadcasting service Livestream have a new tool out for Twitter users called Twitcam that lets anyone with a Twitter account start streaming their own show, complete with live chat.
Each page the service creates gets its own URL, which users can come back to at any point and watch once the live-streaming portion of the show is over.
As for the chat, it's all handled via tweets. Anytime someone replies to one of your tweets where the link to the show is included, the app counts it as a reply. It then aggregates these in one place, so everyone who is watching your show can see the entire conversation. It's not exactly the best way to handle it, since sometimes it's nice to have some basic text chatter that doesn't fill up your Twitter stream with stray tweets, but it's done in a way that keeps everything tightly-organized.
Twitcam lets you turn your Twitter stream into a live stream--for video.
(Credit: CNET)Livestream says that Twitcam was built in about a week and uses new player tools that are going into an updated version of its API that will be released in the near future. The company hopes these will let anyone build a similar service with their own branding, and audience tools--preferably with a chat system that does not require so many tweets.
An archive of the live chat I used while testing this service out is embedded after the jump.
See also: Justin.tv's CamTweet (which is in private beta)
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Live-streaming platform Justin.tv now supports high-resolution videos using H.264 encoding. The codec, which has made headway in consumer electronics, is also a great format for the Web since it can fit high resolutions in relatively small file sizes--making it ideal for something like streaming.
For now there are a few caveats that keep it from being accessible to the average user. For one, videos streamed in high resolution H.264 will not be saved into user archives, and there is no way to do it without using special software to process the stream before it hits Justin.tv's servers.
Users are encouraged to be running a rig with a fast processor and modern graphics card, as it takes some considerable horsepower to crunch down video in real time. Eventually the company hopes to offer such processing power on its own servers, so that you'll be able to get similar results with any commodity high-resolution Webcam and a good connection.
The company has posted how-to streaming guides for Windows and Mac on its blog.
Qik, the mobile phone-based video-streaming service favored by blogger Robert Scoble, is coming to the Windows Mobile platform.
Previously only available for Nokia phones like the horrendously overpriced N95 ($500 unlocked), the service will soon roll out for the millions of Windows smartphones now on the market, like the Samsung Blackjack (free with activation) according to Qik co-founder Bhaskar Roy.
While still in private beta, Qik for Windows will soon be available as an open download. Roy told me that he hopes to sign some carrier deals soon too, getting Qik preinstalled on phones.
Qik turns anyone with a capable mobile phone into an on-the-spot live reporter. The service also records its live streams so users can view events after the fact.
As VentureBeat says, don't get too excited. We're expecting a new 3G iPhone on Tuesday, and who knows what cool video capability will be built into it.
We're wrapping up the last day of the Web 2.0 Expo, on a live stream at about 10:00 a.m. today and at 2:00 p.m. Tune in...
Video is hosted by a Webware media partner, the Blogtropol.us Bloggers' Lounge.
There are seemingly more "livestreaming" services out there than people actually using them, but that hasn't stopped Ustream.tv from raising $11.1 million in Series A funding. The cash comes from venture firm DCM, as well as existing investors Labrador Ventures and The Band of Angels.
To be fair, Ustream has pulled away from the pack a bit: it's the streaming service of choice for some high-profile live Web events like the Digg Town Hall.
With the new cash, Ustream will focus on product development and "meet(ing) growing market demand for an interactive-broadcasting platform." In other words, it's to better compete as the space grows tighter.
New rivals such as Qik have more streamlined mobile capabilities built in, and big tech companies such as Yahoo have started introducing their own in-house streaming rivals.
In some cases it's not a bad thing to be fashionably late. Just ask Steve Chen, co-founder of YouTube.
Earlier this week, while sporting a furry coat at a warm, packed YouTube party in New York City, Chen managed to spill some juicy details about the company's plans while talking to Sarah Meyers, the host of vodcast Pop17. Chen confirmed that live video was coming to the service in "2008" and that the company has wanted to feature it for some time, but have only recently been able to get the ball rolling because of having higher resources as a part of Google:
"Live video is just something that we've always wanted to do, we've never had the resources to do it correctly, but now with Google, we hope to actually do it this year."
It's certainly late in the game to jump in, although YouTube's already got some of the groundwork laid out. Each user already has their own channel, along with a subscription service built in that lets other users link up and get notified on when new content arrives. I'm assuming the process would get reworked a little to provide for real-time notification given the short notice of the medium.
YouTube's also had Webcam functionality since late 2006, which incidentally popped up at the same time as Streams, a product that lets YouTube users chat with one another while watching a video. It's part of YouTube's labs section, TestTube.
Clearly saying 2008 is a bit nebulous here in February, but since rival Yahoo has recently released its Live service, there's a little more pressure to play catch-up.
[via NewTeeVee]
Yahoo dropped on Thursday night a new service on the world: Yahoo Live. Conceptually it's very much like uStream and other live video-streaming products. Anyone can set up a video channel and embed the player (though, oddly, not the text chat that goes with it) on their own page.
One of the really cool features of Yahoo Live is its multi-camera viewing panel. In addition to the video feed you tune in to, four other video channels--of other people watching the same stream you are--appear below the main video. You can jump to those channels quickly, and change the lineup of the secondary video channels by selecting names from the main video's chat window.
Talk to the hand. Not all streaming video channels are fun to watch.
Yahoo is launching the service with an API, allowing people to mash up their own streaming video services. That's very cool, and unusually forthcoming. Most services don't go public with APIs, if ever, until the site has been live for a little while.
Unfortunately, Yahoo Live launched with a serious capacity deficit. I had the service go from functional to "our servers are smoking" several times when the user count broke about 800. Hey, Yahoo: This is why the private beta was invented. If you don't want to put Yahoo-sized capacity into a new product, don't pretend that it's ready for a public viewing.
No word yet on how Google/YouTube will react, or whether a mobile version will appear.
See also: Justin.TV, Kyte, Qik, Flixwagon, Comvu, Mogulus, and Operator11. Care to lay odds on which, if any, can survive independently, or which will get acquired by Google, Facebook, or MySpace?
Track Yahoo Live's progress on the site's blog.
Tom and I discussed blogging ethics on our weekly podcast today. You can watch our studio session (actually, just me) in the viewer below. Or, listen in to the professionally-recorded audio:
Questions over the rights and responsibilities of bloggers are coming more and more frequently. As a blogger, what are your boundaries, and how do you learn journalistic ethics?
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Facebook is making a major platform announcement today at 3:00 PM PDT. We'll be at the press conference and, unless there's a clamp on video rights during the event, we'll be streaming it live, using Veodia (preview) technology.
Update: The press conference is now over. Click the image below for the recording, straight from my laptop's Web cam. There's about 10 minutes of waiting around before Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg takes the stage, so you might want to skip ahead.
Update 2: Ok, sorry, this video is awful. I blame two things: My cheapo Logitech Web cam, and the fact that I used the press conference WiFi, which was overloaded. Next time, I'll use cellular (EV-DO or UMTS), which has slower max throughput than WiFi, but which is much more stable. The good news is, we had a professional camera crew at this event, so we can replace the Webcam video below with the pro tape once it's through production.
See more Facebook coverage on Webware. And Facebook: The social Web utility company, by Dan Farber on ZDNet.
Updates from the conference:
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On our weekly Real Deal podcast today, Tom and I discussed lifecasting (e.g., Justin.tv) and the live streaming tools ordinary people (as opposed to 24/7 exhibitionists) can use to broadcast their own cams in real time: uStream, Stickam, ComVu (review), and Veodia (review).
Here's the show:
How (and why) to put a real-time video of your life online.
Our discussion wouldn't be complete without a live demo of streaming, so Tom and I both streamed ourselves during the taping, using uStream. We had some problems (most related to the ancient laptop I used to record the show, I think), but I grabbed a recording of the stream.
We used uStream, by the way, because of all the live-streaming products I've tested, it's the only one with a good chat function. However, at the moment, the chat function uses IRC ports, which are blocked by many firewalls. A uStream co-founder told me that within a few weeks a new chat technology will roll out on the service, which will route around this problem.
Kyte.tv's (review) chat function actually comes close to uStream's, but it doesn't offer the real-time video, just timed snapshots.
If you want to join the ongoing discussion, come on over to the Real Deal forums .
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