E3 is here! We’re heading over to the show in a few minutes and we’ll be doing individual interactive streaming broadcasts off our iPhones while there. I’ve embedded my live video feed below. Once I start the broadcast, it will send an automatic message and link out to Twitter to let anybody following me know they can watch the broadcast live. It also sends the video (archived footage) automatically to both my Facebook and YouTube accounts as well. Follow me at @kobrakai if you want to get notified the second I start broadcasting. Also, around 3pm PST, I’ll allow anybody watching the broadcast to basically tell me where to go or what they want to see – all in real time! Of course this all hinges on E3 having suitable Wi-fi since I unfortunately still have the 1st generation iPhone and have to suffer with EDGE.
The embedded video above only allows you to watch my stream. If you want to interact with me at the show during the live broadcast, you’ll need to go to my Qik home page at www.qik.com/mhszymczyk and click the Live Chat tab next to the video window. Anything you type in, I’ll get on my iPhone while broadcasting. We’ll be posting other Zugara members individual embed links shortly.
E3 is finally upon us and for those of you who don’t have a chance to go to the show, fret not, as a few of us at Zugara plan to stream live from the much anticipated gaming event. We’re also going to try a pretty unique interactive experiment – we’re going to use the iPhone beta version of Qik to live stream our individual experiences at E3 and for 10-15 minutes we’ll actually let viewers of our personal broadcasts interact with us and choose what they want to see all in real-time. We’ll announce the exact time tomorrow before we head to the show and broadcast announcements will go out via Twitter the second they start. So basically if you ever wanted to control an interactive agency employee, now’s your chance.
I’m not sure how this will pan out but we’re going to at least try it. So, keep an eye out later tonight or tomorrow for some blog entries that have our Zugara member’s unique individual embed videos that will update as they stream. For now you can always visit my Qik page – www.qik.com/mhszymczyk – or check out the live embed video we have on a previous blog entry here.
If you love getting new tech toys, I just got one that’s ALOT of fun. I previously wrote a post on some mind-blowing technologies from the Streaming Media East conference and Qik was one of those technologies. Well I just got my hands on the Qik application for the iPhone and this thing is SWEET. (This is a BETA application for the iPhone btw and not public – unfortunately.)
In a nutshell, I now have video capability on my iPhone (not jailbroken either) and can stream that video in real-time to my Qik page. I also have Facebook, YouTube and Twitter all setup with my account so that friends, families, business associates, etc. can all get notified right when I’m starting a broadcast.
The application also allows me to see the current numbers of viewers of my broadcast and the delay (if any) of my broadcast to the destination point where viewers can see the video itself. You can see my profile at Qik or check out the embed below which will update any time I broadcast live. The only problem so far is that I was trying this out on EDGE which sucks and is horribly slow. So broadcast delays were about 20-30 seconds. I just ran a recent test on our internal wi-fi with much better results (as you can see from the video below.)
So other than some spontaneous Zugara office moments, expect some cool real-time broadcasts from E3 next week….
P.S. After I’ve played around with this thing for a few weeks, I’ll post a more formal review. On the surface though, this definitely seems to be a game changer in both the mobile and interactive video worlds…
I recently spoke on a panel at the Streaming Media East Conference in New York on Compelling Video Advertising Campaigns and while there had a chance to attend a few other sessions. This is a great conference to attend if you’re interested in anything related to video – digital, streaming, mobile, or other formats. Two real-time video technologies stood out and I wanted to briefly spread the word on each as I think they’re game changers in the world of real-time interactive video.
The first technology was called Qik (pronounced “Quick) and this is an application that allows you to shoot streaming video on your mobile phone and upload it to social communities like Facebook. They demo’d this technology at the conference track I attended and I have to say the quality was pretty impressive – especially when they showed the near high-def video a new Nokia handset was going to be able to stream. They also have an app in beta for the iPhone but nobody is quite sure yet how video will be shot on the iPhone 3.0. With current support for close to 100 mobile handsets, this is definitely a technology that will continue to usher in the era of real-time interactive video while mobile and on the web.
Unfortunately, I could not find any videos to embed but you can go to Qik’s Top Community Users (called Qikkers) and see some of the live and archived broadcasts. And yes, you’ll notice that Mrs. Kutcher is the #1 Qikker. It seems like the Kutchers are bent on domination of the live streaming world…
The second technology was called Mogulus which has recently rebranded to LiveStream.com. Livestream is an application that allows you to broadcast your live feed and chat live with your audience. Similar to UStream, Livestream also allows you to place ads in your broadcast allowing an additional layer of interactivity. To show how serious this application can get, the Pro version (which starts at $350/month) offers all your traditional broadcast tools (overlays, wipes, etc.) so you can literally be your own one man production crew. Though right now most of the Livestream broadcasts are news based, there are some entertaining uses of the live stream platform like below:
We Are Organized Chaos (WAOC) is Zugara’s (www.zugara.com) interactive marketing and advertising blog where we’ll be featuring some great projects and discussing upcoming trends in the digital world. Work — good and bad — will be critiqued. Hope you’ll enjoy reading our insights and thoughts on interactive.
