Mobile

Over the past month I have seen an increase of 7000 views in relation to the videos I have posted on youtube. The two events that helped make this a reality are the Geneva Lake Parade and the Paleo Festival. For the Paleo Festival scantily clad girls were an attractive proposition. As to the paleo it was taking video I had streamed live on qik and sharing it via a number of video sharing websites of which youtube was one. To give an idea of the audience peaks we saw over 900 views for the Lake Parade footage and over 1300 views for Manu Chao. That’s a respectable audience. The question is whether there are any events you would like me to cover (via live streaming from a mobile phone) and whether that would attract a big enough audience.

You see, 3G is the golden goose for wireless carriers. It’s technology that turns their networks from boring voice systems to multi-functional data systems. They’re going from being a diner offering three specials/day to a restaurant with a huge buffet. This buffet is enticing and offers something for pretty much everyone but you’ll have to pay for it.

source And that’s the part I like. The phone has never been my medium of choice. Too disruptive, too many factors to take into consideration. Looking forward to when the golden goose has de-valued data to such a point it’s as cheap as broadband has become.

Today both a friend and I are among the top qikkers of the day. Whilst Documentally of Ourmaninside.com was in Milton Keynes getting an iphone 3g and streaming a number of videos on the experience I was filming dancers at the Geneva lake Parade. Both these events have appeal for different reasons. We’re used to watching videos of Americans getting the iphone and doing a variety of geek events and for once we had the English experience. It’s not a very visual occurrence but at least it’s been streamed and shared. He also took the opportunity to speak about lifecast, a new way of sharing the media you generate over a day. The Lake Parade is a very different type of event. It’s the type of event photographers and camera oeprators go to in order to get video and photographs of girls dancing to music. It’s only once a year and previous years have been better. I like the fact that I can go to the event with a phone, stream video straight to the web and all without the hassle of a camera and laptop. I’m commenting on the latter because it’s the second time I see someone walking with a laptop in order to do some live streaming of an event whilst I’m very light. I could have shot in high definition but everyone’s doing that. What interests me is going to an event, finding some action, sharing it live as it happens and not have any real post production concerns. In general live streaming from mobile phones is an interesting way of covering events that does not get much publicity. As a result the audiences are not as large as they could be but that will change. It’s just a matter of getting people used to the idea of webcams and live streams being more interesting than a static twenty meters from where the action is happening.

These streams are to illustrate how easily you can record some video as live of a walk and upload them one you get to a wifi hotspot to avoid paying the data rates offered by most mobile operators.Â

After over a month without the macbook pro it finally appears to be working again. Both the motherboard and the superdrive have been replaced. i’ve upgraded to the procare package and I’ve decided to have a secondary machine running linux as a backup.  It’s a shame that apple authorised resellers would take over a month to put my machine right bt now it’s done and I’m not going to think about upgrading mac machines for the next two years… unless I come to a large amount of cash in which case I’d rethink that.  What I am more interested in now though is what can be done with mobile phones and mobile devices. In particular I was really happy to have the N95 8gig because it allowed me to cut out the laptop all together.  The point is that now all devices should be self contained, able to do everything without the need for a laptop. For weeks I couldn’t get the latest podcasts or keep up with feedreading. Even checking e-mail was less practical. Now is the time to see how far we can go in doing everything from a portable device.Â

Whilst some people are perfectly happy sitting at a desk chatting to others via webcams I prefer to be out and about streaming daily life. Today was one example of what I like to do. I went up to La Dole for a walk with the n95 and streamed a few landscapes for people following me on twitter to see. We finally got caught out by some hail and thunder but my phone survived. I want more people to do this type of thing. Come out and have fun, stream life as it happens. Show us what’s outside your living room or home office.

Computing is mobile and as I sit in the garden to type this post someone else is currently streaming some lions live from his mobile phone. It’s not about you sitting at a desk and typing, now it’s about going out, having a nice day and sharing it with others as they enjoy their day.

If this isn’t a hoax then this is pretty fun. A guy claims to have hacked into the video display at a train station and is streaming live.

is an automated service that grabs videos from RSS feeds and converts them to 3gpp for easy download to the N95 and other mobile phones running the s60 OS. There are a number of default shows including MobuzzTV, Zefrank, National Geographic, DiggNation, Rocketboom and a number of other well known shows. In the right hand column you have another four methods of accessing content, searching, browsing according to keywords, highest rated or what’s new. The second option is to browse through the directories they have selected to find the categories that are closest to your particular interests.

Roland Hesz - Apr 2, 2008

This happened to me in the past month. I was surprised, but as I just tried to use the mobile phone version on my new phone, I guessed it was the result of that. The weird thing is that it never happened since then. You have an idea what and where can cause his problem? (Just curiosity. The one that killed the cat.)