Steve Garfield provides suggestions about, reasons for live streaming cellular videos

Journalist Steve Garfield, a big proponent of using cellular phones for transmitting live videos, provides advice about how to get started with cellular streaming as well as lots of information about video blogging.

On March 18, Bhaskar Roy, co-founder and vice president of marketing at Qik, posted a video of Garfield discussing live streaming cellular video during a meeting of the New England Press Association (see below).

In addition, Garfield recently wrote in one of his weblogs a brief, basic guide to getting starting streaming cellular videos.  In his “Three Steps to LIVE Mobile Broadcasting,” (see below) Garfield writes that the best handset for streaming cellular video is Nokia’s N95–3.

Best cellular video phone?

He’s quite likely correct.  I have the original version, the N95–1 (I guess the first model would be the “1”) and it has been considered one of the best, if not the best, for shooting cellular videos, streaming or otherwise.

However, courtesy of Nokia I recently received the new Nokia N82, which has a five megapixel camera (like the N95) and a Xenon flash (the N95 has an LCD flash).  Photos with the N82, especially when using a flash, are probably better than the N95’s, and I posted some photos in my new N82 photo album.

I posted only one N82 video — taken at night under poor lighting and when it was raining — but I wouldn’t be surprised if the N82 would take better videos than the N95.  With every generation of Nseries camera phones, Nokia typically enhances the imaging capabilities.  I’ll be posting more videos in the weeks to come.

Garfield writes in his weblog that he began video streaming using ComVU’s software and hosting service (that I also tested months ago).  He stopped using ComVU and is now testing Qik (that seems to be his favorite, so far) but also is testing other services — Flixwagon, Kyte.tv and Bambuser (I’m not familiar with Bambuser).

ComVU, Qik and Flixwagon offer live streaming videos from camera phones.  Kyte.tv has begun to actively develop mobile initiatives, but its live streaming mobile platform is still in the early stages (see below).  “Kyte Mobile Producer” is in private beta for Symbian Series 60 phones.

Video blogging guide

Garfield also has posted a guide to video blogging, that’s composed of — naturally enough — videos (see below).  Garfield and several other writers have developed the guide that has seven chapters, including: “Is Videoblogging News?”, “Ethics and Ownership” and “Vlogs as Citizen Media.”

The chapters are about four to five minutes and seem more for desktop video blogging rather than cellular.  I haven’t watched all of them, but they look useful and professionally edited.

Comments

[steve Garfield]

Thanks for posting all that!

[Alan A. Reiter]

Hi Steve,

I was glad to do so. I've written a great deal in this weblog and on other Web sites about the value of live streaming cellular video, and I believe it is truly a revolutionary technology. Too many publishers/journalists (I have an M.S. in Journalism/broadcasting from Northwestern) don't yet understand the ramifications -- local, national and global -- of this technology.

Keep up the good work.

[Bhaskar @ Qik]

Alan - thanks for the post and can't agree more that mobile live video streaming changes the game. Not only for broadcasters and the way it impacts media - but also in ways people communicate. Excitings times ahead of us for sure :)

[Alan A. Reiter]

Hi Bhaskar,

Thanks for the comment. Yep, live streaming cellular video is a game-changer, for business and personal use. It will take a little while for the mass market to catch on, just as it took a while for people to use camera phones -- especially as photo quality improved.

Cellular streaming will be a significant component of mobile communications.