My latest weekly wireless communications “Thinkernet” column on CMP’s “Internet Evolution” discusses software and services for cellular phones and on the Web for facilitating citizen journalism (see below). It also poses an interesting question.
How do people know when others are using their cellular phones to stream live videos? Currently, streaming cellular videos is the province of early adopters — mostly the technology/wireless geeks. But what happens when millions of people around the world begin streaming live videos from their cellular phones?
More than three billion people have cellular phones. Of those phones, about one billion are camera phones and a significant percentage can record videos. Just as billions of photos are being taken with camera phone, so will millions — and then billions — of videos be taken.
How do we know?
As people become familiar with shooting videos, they eventually will become more comfortable taking videos that are streamed live to the Web. How will we know when videos we want to watch — right now — are being streamed?
One view of the future might be on Mogulus’ home page that features multiple windows of broadcasts (see above). Mogulus offers free hosting for live broadcasts (that also are archived), although the company doesn’t offer any option for transmitting from a cellular phone. A variety of companies, though, offer live cellular video streaming services.
But whether the broadcasts are transmitted from a cellular phone or from a computer with a camcorder or video cam, how can we pick out the wheat among the chaff of all the live videos? As I write in the “Thinkernet” column, companies like Qik, are offering ways, such as via social networking, to alert potential viewers.
Perhaps new, smarter, search engines will be able to quickly detect key words and concepts to alert us. Perhaps the National Security Administration (see left) could commercialize some of its tools!
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