California streaming

Remember Justin Kan? A year ago, you could follow his life 24/7 on Justin.tv through a webcam attached to his baseball cap.

No more. Justin has hung up his hat, webcam and the backpack with cellular data card, laptop and long-life battery that allowed him to roam anywhere and stream his life live online.

His female successor Justine has tired of that lifestyle as well and Justin.tv today has the look of a collection of regular TV channels interspersed with people addressing their webcams from the safety of their home computer.

If the trend of lifecasting has lost its al fresco appeal and much of its impetus, perhaps software from Qik could give new life to the concept.

Instead of Justin’s inventory of equipment, all Qik needs is a camera phone to stream pictures live onto the internet.

The video blogger Robert Scoble gave me a demonstration last night at a baseball game. Using a standard Nokia camera phone with Qik’s software, he streamed an anecdote from Bill Watkins, Seagate chief executive, a demonstration I gave of my Livescribe digital pen and a bases-loaded situation between the San Francisco Giants and the New York Mets.

I’m not sure how Major League Baseball would view live streaming of its games by spectators onto the internet, but it can rest assured that the technology is currently limited to a couple of thousand beta testers and 24 Nokia phone models.

In Mr Scoble’s opinion, internet viewers prefer these types of three-minute-long conversation pieces compared to constant streaming of the mostly mundane.

Indeed, posting a link to FriendFeed, his favourite lifestreaming service, created a stream of text comments in response.

Lifestreaming, where users aggregate their online activities on sites like FriendFeed, is as hot in 2008 as the trend of lifecasting through Justin.tv was in 2007.

The difference is that the latest buzz, combined with Qik, seems both more palatable and portable.

June 3rd, 2008 in Digital media, Internet, Media, Mobile | Permalink