Sony Bloggie Live Streaming at 480 x 270

I just got the Sony Bloggie Live (MHS-TS55) as a gift from Sony.


Image: Sony Bloggie Live(MHS-TS55) Video Camera with 4x Digital Zoom, 3.0-Inch Touchscreen LCD and WiFi Connectivity (New Model) (amazon affiliate link)

Last week I saw it in a Best Buy and noticed that it featured Live Streaming to Qik!


Image: Sony Bloggie Live at Best Buy

Whoa!

My friend Sukhjit at Sony saw my post and sent a Sony Bloggie Live over for me to try out.

I'm excited about this because years ago, I was at Harvard doing a presentation about video. I remember the moment very clearly. I held up my Canon SD100 camera and said, "One day we'll be able to broadcast from the sidewalk with something like this!"

A little while later, Qik came out and allowed live streaming with a Nokia smartphone. I went up to New Hampshire and used the Nokia to live stream reports on the presidential primaries.

I even scooped CNN on a story. I ended up working closely with Qik and investing in the company.


Video: Steve Garfield, Mobile Video Journalist

I love to see the technology progress and am excited to live stream from a pocket hd video camera.

Here's the announcement of this camera on the Qik blog:

Sony Announces New Wi-Fi® enabled Bloggie Live™ HD Camera, featuring Qik™ Video from Skype™:

Stream Live
Using the great new Wi-Fi connection on the Sony Bloggie Live camera, you can broadcast and stream to the web in real-time. View the video on Qik.com, on your favorite social networks like Facebook® and Twitter™, on any website or blog where the live channel has been embedded, and on nearly any device that supports video including: smart phones, tablets and connected through 4G or 3G.*

Here are the specs from the Sony site:

Bloggie Live HD Camera:

Highlights: 8GB, Full HD 1080p video, 12.8-megapixel stills, 3.0" (diag.) touch screen, MP4 video format, Wi-Fi® enabled for easy uploads, live streaming capabilities, flip-out USB arm for uploading/charging

When you open up the Sony Bloggie Live you are directed to the web for easy set up:

sony.net.start/bloggie


After clicking Start Setup, you can click over to Overview of WiFi features.

In there I read this:

Description
* Live broadcasts are recorded at the size set on your Bloggie and stored on the internal memory.
* Notifications of live broadcasts are made according to the Qik web site system.
This is subject to change without notice so please read the Qik web site for details.
* You cannot necessarily use all devices provided with Qik.

* Uploaded images are smaller (movies: 480ｘ270) than the set recording size.

So even though the camera is an HD camera, and Qik does support live streaming in HD with Qik Premium on Android, it looks like the Sony Bloggie Live only supports 480x270 resolution.

That's disappointing, but I'll send a note into Sony to see if HD support is planned.

Until then, some live streaming testing.

Stay tuned.

Update from Sony:

In terms of live streaming, the Bloggie Live concurrently saves an HD copy of the video in real-time, so you’re able to share the HD copy. Plus, streaming in HD can be sometimes be unreliable because of the amount of bandwidth used. We wanted to make sure that the Bloggie Live was as quick and easy to use as possible!

This makes sense.

In fact, Standard Definition (SD) live video streaming looks really good, and I usually stream in SD to save resources on both the computer and network.

I'd be interested in testing out HD streaming on the Bloggie Live if they ever implement it in conjunction with Qik.


Disclosure:
This was a gift from Sony
cmp.ly/2

Announcing My Investment in Qik

Qik announces new financing:

"Qik is pleased to announce that we have closed another round of funding, comprised of investments from Quest Venture Partners, CampVentures, and strategic individuals. A total of $5.5 million has been raised to continue Qik's growth."

That makes me a strategic individual. :-)

As you know, I've been working very closely with Qik since they first hit the market. From the start, the whole team at Qik has been very responsive to my new feature suggestions.

When I was covering the US Persidential primary in New Hampshire with a Nokia N95, they saw my coverage and sent me an N95-3 so I could stream in 3G.

At one point I told them that I would stop using Qik if there was the possibility that my streaming video would be lost. They fixed that.

I've met the Qik team and presented with Bhaskar Roy at the SXSW and Streaming Media conferences.

As someone who is always looking at new technology and working to demystify the process of putting video on the web, I'm a big fan of Qik's live streaming techology which lets you broadcast live video with the push of a button.

A appreciate the opportunity to participate in this new round of funding and look forward to seeing Qik released on new platforms.

Check out my user page on Qik for examples of how I use it.

Scoble says Kyte.tv will kill Qik and Flixwagon in cell phone video space. He's wrong.

Robert Scoble just wrote this post over at Techcrunch, Why Kyte.tv will kill Qik and Flixwagon in cell phone video space:

"I don’t see how Qik or Flixwagon can beat Kyte anymore in the cell phone video game. What do you think?"

I replied:

Robert,
Your title of, "Why Kyte.tv will kill Qik and Flixwagon in cell phone video space," is your opinion, will probably get you a lot of views, but you can't know this as a fact.

You sound like the political reporters who said it would be Hilary Clinton vs. Rudy Giuliani in this year's US Presidential election. They were wrong and could not possibly see the future.

Can't we all just get along?

I've been using Qik for quite a while now. I've met the people behind it and have gotten great support, as have you. Disclaimer, they sent me a Nokia N95-3 after watching my NH presidential primary coverage.

Watching videos on a Nokia
As others have said in the comments, your bullet list has a few facts that need to be corrected including the fact that you can now watch Qik videos on your Nokia device. They have 3GP files.

A Broadcast Studio with Mogulus
When you combine Qik with Mogulus you get the "ability to mix videos from your webcam, live videos streaming from your web cam, recorded videos from camcorders, or from places like YouTube, along with both recorded and streamed videos from your cell phone."

I recently did a presentation with Qik and Mogulus at Streaming Media East. Good stuff.

Here's a video from the session:
http://offonatangent.blogspot.com/2008/05/live-broadcasting-over-mobile-and-wi-fi.html

Multiple Videos in a player with YouTube
Yesterday I streamed videos from Boston City Councillor John Tobin's Parkway Family Day. Each of those videos was automatically sent to YouTube. I then added them all into a playlist and now you can watch all the video from one custom YouTube video player:

http://www.votejohntobin.com/blog/_archives/2008/6/14/3744096.html

Extensive Testing
I've also got Kyte, Flixwagon and Bambuser on my phone, but haven't "extensively tested" tested them as you have because Qik just works for me and the people are super.

Qik is People
It's a lot like the video hosting space. When I first started videoblogging I used a couple of services that had great features, then I moved to blip.tv, where in addition to having lots of features, they have a lot of great people providing support.

Kyte.tv will not kill Qik and Flixwagon in cell phone video space.

The Story of Qik Mobile Video and My Part in It

Great interview in TechCrunch about Qik. I was an early adopter and investor.


Image: Steve Garfield with Nokia Smartphone and Qik

Qik Founder’s Story: Taking Mobile Video Out Of The Garage And Putting It Into The Hands Of Skype

I love this section about technology where Ramu talks about the problem Qik solved of video being lost. They called their solution, the Steve Garfield Fix. ;-0

Bernard: What was unique about Qik’s technology?

Ramu: We built a smart streaming cloud that understood the different types of cell phone videos and the frames that were missed from going to the cloud. It intelligently transcoded the video and made sure the consumer doesn’t see the choppiness or the missing frames. This was our own proprietary technology. We built all the servers and phones, maintained one or two TCP/IP connections to the cloud, and managed everything on them unlike Skype’s peer-to-peer infrastructure. This was a required architectural decision as we went further along, because PCs have more capacity than mobile devices and don’t work off a battery. This is an important tradeoff when you’re building a product for mobile consumers.

The cloud infrastructure we built takes any kind of video from any mobile device and puts it out on any device and/or on the Internet in real-time.

We had built technology in four different areas. How do we do this video in real time without giving up on quality? The first area was real-time video quality. The big tradeoff here was you stream a little less just to fit through the pipe, but if you stream more, it jams the pipe. How do we do this without compromising quality? That’s where we had six patents. Then we had technology, which worked across disparate smartphones. When we started with Nokia it forced us to think of all variances between phones. So we built our client-side technology that could go with all phones and leverage the best quality video and consume the least amount of battery.

We also built our IP with the idea that video should never be lost. When you take a video, your cell connection could drop, your phone battery runs out, and so on. This is where we said: “We have to build technology where our video is never lost.” Our initial users were all journalists and they were really upset if their video was lost. We maintained a journal on the device and the cloud, did periodic checkpoints and a phased commit to ensure the video is archived in its entirety.

Here's a story from my reporting in New Hampshire with Qik in 2008 during the presidential election: Steve Garfield Scoops CNN: Duncan Hunter Does Not Quit

As I was walking down the sidewalk in Manchester, NH I asked what was goign on. The response I got was that Duncan Hunter was going on CNN to make a major announcement. I asked if I could interview him live about it. An aide told me to walk back down the sidewalk and talk to another staff member. I replied, "No. I can interview him RIGHT NOW with this cell phone!" So the aide said, go right ahead. then I ran up to him and started streaming live video from the cellphone.

Best. Moment. Ever.

Learn more about online video in my book, Get Seen:


Here's a nice video report on my use of Qik for reporting by The Uptake:



Here are all the stories from my blog mentioning Qik.

Three Steps to LIVE Mobile Broadcasting

Photo: CC Chapman CC Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic

Eight million people are interested in what I've been doing recently with LIVE mobile broadcasting. Well maybe not eight million, but reporters are interested, and reporters have an audience.

Just yesterday I did an interview with a reporter and at the end of the interview I asked, "Will this be online?"

It turns out that the interview is going into a "pamphlet." It might end up in a pdf... Weird, I know.

So for the benefit of reporters everywhere and anyone who wants to know how to get started in LIVE mobile video broadcasting, here are the THREE STEPS that are required to stream live audio and video from a mobile device. I could call it a cell phone, but Nokia doesn't like that.

STEP ONE - CHOOSE A MOBILE DEVICE



The best device on the market for streaming live video is the Nokia N95-3. This is the version of the N95 that supports 3G on AT&T's network.

I had been using an earlier model of the N95 supplied by Nokia, but the faster the network, the better the quality. The streaming service that I use, Qik, sent me the N95-3 so that when I streamed, I'd be able to broadcast the highest quality.

Other services might support other phones, so check into it and if you have any suggestions, leave a comment.

STEP TWO - CHOOSE A SERVICE

FIRST ATTEMPTS


Back on March 06, 2007 I did my first live broadcast with a cellphone with ComVu. There's a whole page of an archive of videos I did at the time. Looking back on them now I can see a few reasons why I didn't continue with ComVu. The videos stream from their server and are not progressive downloads. There wasn't any way to embed the videos on a web page, they buffered frequently, and I couldn't save them locally to edit.

Read here for more: Streaming, Broadcasting, and Progressive Download:

When a file is delivered over a network or downloaded over the Internet, the entire file is not available immediately, but a typical QuickTime movie can be played while it downloads. This is called progressive download, or Fast Start.

RECENT STREAMING


For a while now, I've been using Qik.com to stream. Qik.com is still in alpha. I've got a great working relationship with them and many suggested changes and enhancements to their service have been implemented such as their integration with Seesmic and Mogulus.

Other sites that you should consider and that I've just started to test are:

Bambuser, Flixwagon, and Kyte.tv. [ my pages on each site ]

Please share your experiences in the comments.

STEP THREE - STREAMING LIVE



Now that you've selected a device and signed up for a streaming service, it's time to broadcast.

You have two choices when going live, WiFi or the cell network. If there is a WiFi network available and your device supports it, I'd suggest streaming over WiFi. I've had great success with it for both quality of the video stream.

If WiFi is not available you'll be using you cellphone carrier's network. In my case it's AT&T. (Thanks AT&T for the trial service).

Also note, you can take the AT&T SIM chip out of an iPhone and use it in a Nokia N95.

On Qik, you run the application and press STREAM. Then you are love streaming to both the Qik.com home page and your personal Qik.com page. Mine is Qik.com/stevegarfield.

That's it. If you start streaming, let me know...

Additional points to consider:

NOTIFICATION



When you start streaming live, you'll want to notify people. With Qik.com, you can set it up to automatically send out a message via Twitter to notify y our subscribers that you'll be going live. You can follow me on twitter over at http://twitter.com/stevegarfield.

You might also want to consider setting up an email list to let your audience know when you are going live. Not everyone is on twitter. I know. Weird huh?

SCHEDULED LIVE STREAMS
If you might know beforehand when you are going to go live, you could put put the word that you'll be streaming at a certain time, and then people can get the word out ahead of time.

I've also set up a webpage with an embedded Qik video, http://www.stevegarfield.com/live/, so that whenever I go live, the stream shows up on that page.

That way, if I was going to an event where I'll be streaming throughout hte day, viewers could leave the page up on their computer and whenever I started streaming, the live video would show up right there.

Join the discussion. Leave a comment.

When to Use Live Streaming from a Cellphone

Veronica Belmont is thinking of ways to use her Nokia N95 and the Qik live streaming service.

She posts: Veronica on Qik: I’ll try to be more exciting, I promise

I've been using Qik for a while and replied with this:

Hi Veronica,

This is a great question.

One thing I love about Qik is that once I press the button to stop streaming, the video is posted to the web and there's no further capture, edit, export, upload, and post procedure to complete. It's a very freeing feeling.

Here are some ways I use Qik:

STORY TELLING
When I turn on Qik, I think of it as crafting a short story, with the emphasis on short.

As an editor, I think about how the whole stream will come together in the end, and shoot that way.

So I first point the camera at what will become the thumbnail, then introduce what is happening. Usually it's an interview, so I'll do a quick interview and then end.

Camera off.

I like seeing this as storycasting vs. lifecasting.

EVENTS
The other time I like to turn on the Qik camera is when I am at an event and want to share it live.

One good example is at an Obama rally in Boston where people could chat back to me and guide my coverage. I loved that two-way experience.

PRESENTATIONS
I've also used it to live stream presentations where they were not being broadcast and people wanted to see the presentation. In those cases it was good to have as an archive too.

BREAKING NEWS
Finally, Qik is great for breaking news. As more people get this technology, we'll see newsworthy events being captured and streamed live.

Looking forward to see what you do!
--Steve

MITX: Internet Video

MITX: Internet Video - Originally uploaded on flickr by stevegarfield.

Qik Live streamed video archives are here:

qik.com/video/19659
qik.com/video/19663
qik.com/video/19667
qik.com/video/19669
qik.com/video/19676
qik.com/video/19677

Qik: Like, totally amazing and groundbreaking!

David Talbot interviewed me for this article in the MIT Technology Review, Cell-phone Streaming: Qik lets tourists--and reporters--broadcast live from phones:

Wandering the streets of Manchester, NH, during the presidential primary campaign, a self-described "citizen journalist" named Steve Garfield bumped into Duncan Hunter, a minor Republican candidate. Garfield pointed his phone's camera at Hunter for a quick interview, whereupon Hunter disclosed that he was about to tell CNN he wasn't quitting the race.

What Hunter didn't know is that Garfield's phone was armed with software from the startup Qik, allowing it to capture video and stream the interview--in real time--on Qik's website and thence to other platforms, including Garfield's Twitter network. Thus, Garfield says, he scooped CNN on this bit of election minutia...

The company is now working on business models. In one, it would sell ads to Web video consumers who text-message replies; in another, it would take a cut from sales of high-end cell phones that capture the best videos (which would come Qik-equipped). Garfield is happy to pay: "Viewers can type in a window while watching, and affect the coverage. That's, like, totally amazing and groundbreaking!"

That quote is accurate... Ha, ha! I'm valley speaking.

Recap of my NH Primary Coverage.
Duncan Hunter, Qik video.

Reporting for The UpTake: Massachusetts Primary

Here's a 23:41 video of my LIVE broadcast from Boston Beer Works on Primary night 2/5/08.

It was the first integrated LIVE broadcast between Qik and Mogulus. I was excited to be able to work with both companies to make this happen. Thanks a lot. It gives us a glimpse of the future.

You can go to the page on Qik for this video and see all the comments I was getting while broadcasting live from my Nokia N95-3 cellphone over the 3G network to Qik. Comments people make while I am online get streamed to the phone where I can read them while shooting the video.

The stream was then directed to Mogulus which broadcast my stream live to The UpTake viewers.

After I ended the stream the video was posted to Seesmic, where people could post video replies around the video and have a conversation about it.

Featured:
Qik Blog: Super Tuesday with Steve Garfield

The UpTake: Massachusetts Primary Qik Cam Coverage

Mashable: Mogulus Integrates Qik Mobile Streaming–Super Tueesday Coverage

A Revolution In Video

[Video] One Step to Putting Video Online by Clicking a Red Button
Recorded with Kodak Zi8, Uploaded to MobileMe via QuickTime.



Nate Riggs Video from IMS09.

Nate Riggs has a great summary on his blog, Steve Garfield Video Experiment at Inbound Marketing Summit:

I’ve never seen anything like this, but it was a really cool experience. Instantly, the social web was flooded with documented experiences from an army of social web publishers, and as I type this post, there are hundreds of uploads and blogs being published at the same time. That Internet presence will be indexed by Google, and will live in the web indefinitely.

Thanks Steve. You kick ass!

Amy Mengel writes about the Video Experiment:

Garfield is a pioneer in video podcasting and spoke to the IMS crowd about mobile video broadcasting, citizen journalism and Jimmy Fallon (they’re buds, sorta). Garfield invited anyone at IMS who was capable of shooting video to come to the front of the room with their device and record. I used my point-and-shoot camera, a Canon PowerShot SD1100.

It was very “meta”, very echo chamber and very absurd, but fun to do nonetheless.

Tyson Goodridge mentions my presentation in his post, Inbound Marketing Summit- Day 2 Recap:

...an inredible display of a flash video mob….nice work Steve!

Here's the Brando mic I used on the iPhone 3GS.

Here's a YouTube Playlist with my video, Nate's Video and some of the first videos to be posted to YouTube:



Join my Get Seen book site forum topic to talk about what you used to shoot your video and where you hosted it, or leave a comment here.

Thanks!

Qik video I streamed live from my Nokia N95 over AT&T.


Disclosure:
Phone provided by Qik, AT&T service provided by AT&T


Video by LilMissSocMedia






Qik - Steve Garfield by @jeffcutler http://qik.ly/j1pf #IMS09 (that's one of two)

Qik - Inbound Marketing Summit Video Madness by @jeffcutler http://qik.ly/j1wz (this is video 2) #IMS09

Derek Wilmot after presentation interview (recorded on iPhone):




(CC) Derek Wilmot. www.derekwilmot.com


(CC) Derek Wilmot. www.derekwilmot.com



@icruisebecause took my advice & posted this video on iReport, from a Delta flight with WiFi, and it got ON CNN.

Watch:
www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-339673

Congratulations

Qik Video Conferencing :)

qik stream with cashhustleinc - Originally uploaded on flickr by stevegarfield.

Bhaskar from Qik writes:

Today I was amazed by what Steve Garfield and CashHustleInc did - live 2-way video conferencing usig Qik.

How you ask? It was ridiculously simple - now that I think about it. Steve had 2 browser windows open side-by-side one with his video stream and the other with the stream from CashHustleInc. and CashHustleInc had the same. It was amazing to watch as they started this and then invited their Twitter friends to chat and all of a sudden we we were all chatting and experiencing the video conference going on between the two.

Here at Qik HQ, we talk about the million and one uses of Qik. Well, thanks to Steve Garfield and CashHustleInc we found yet another one. Pretty darn cool!

Yay!

Reporting snow depth on NECN Live using a cellphone via Qik via Mogulus

Here's a recording of going live on NECN via Qik via Mogulus.



This is a recording of Ted McEnroe of NECN tossing to me Live in Boston on my Nokia N95 via Qik via Mogulus for a report on snowfall accumulations. This was broadcast live on cable TV.

I had my yardstick ready.

It all worked. You could even hear my audio.

Here's the Qik version.

Watch the behind the scenes.

This is very cool. You can see me getting ready to go live on New England Cable News via Qik via Mogulus. Watch the recording of what went on TV. Thanks to Carol for being my camera person and director. Excellent job.



As you can see in the video, the delay wasn't five minutes like I said, but it turned out to be a very slight delay.

Qik version

I'm very excited to show that we have the technology in place for citizen reporters to do live shots via the web to TV. It's only going to get better.

Super Tuesday became a tech tour de force for the UpTake

Julio Ojeda-Zapata writes, Technology A to Z - With easy, affordable tools, anyone can be a video journalist:

Mobile phones. The video cameras in newer cell phones have become live-reporting tools, courtesy of new services that send moving images over the Internet as they're being captured. These services include Qik, Kyte, ComVu and Flixwagon. When paired with certain cutting-edge handsets, such as Nokia's N95, video journalism becomes possible.

Reuters has paired N95s with the ComVu service as part of a Mobile Journalism Toolkit experiment. Minnesota-based Technology Evangelist, which specializes in Web-based video coverage of technology topics, used Qik for live reporting from the Consumer Electronics Show late last year. During the recent Super Tuesday of U.S. presidential primaries and caucuses, MTV sponsored 51 citizen journalists using phones equipped with Flixwagon.

Likewise, the UpTake has harnessed Qik with several N95s for live webcasting on the group's home page. It accomplished this with a first-ever melding of Qik with Mogulus, which permitted N95-packing UpTake correspondents in St. Paul and Boston to zap their video directly to that little window on the group's home page.

Super Tuesday became a tech tour de force for the UpTake.

Chuck Olsen was in a New Orleans bar during Mardi Gras celebrations (Super Tuesday and Fat Tuesday happened to coincide this year), webcasting live via Mogulus and the iSight videocam built into his MacBook Pro laptop. This permitted him to co-anchor the UpTake's national coverage of that night's political mega-event (despite a few technical glitches) alongside volunteers in St. Paul.

UpTake executive director Jason Barnett was in St. Paul with one of the organization's two N95s, transmitting footage of inner-city Democratic caucusing. Video blogger Steve Garfield had the other N95 in Boston, transmitting from a bar near Fenway Park as he solicited the political views of fellow tech-heads. This event was a technical coup for Garfield, a veteran Qik user, who negotiated the agreement between Mogulus and Qik so the services could interact for the first time.

Chief Videoblogger at Berkman at 10

David Weinberger and Colin Maclay asked me to be the Chief Videoblogger for the Berkman @ 10 Anniversary.

It was a fun experience. My task for the two days was to do what I normally do.

Usually that means creating short stories and streaming them live. I've been calling it storycasting vs. lifecasting where the camera is turned on for hours.

STORYCASTING
I recently got a call to let me know that there is a storycasting website. It's got nothing to do with videos or news, it's a site that let's you cast actors for novels. Interesting site.

STREAMING SOME SESSIONS

Micah Sifry at Berkman at 10, originally uploaded by stevegarfield.

What ended up happening at Berkman @ 10 was that I ended up streaming some sessions in real time. There were video cameras at most of the sessions, but they were recording to tape for later posting to the web. Much different than the recent ROFLcon where all the sessions were streamed.

When I go to conference, people want to virtually come along with me. Live streaming of conferences is becoming expected.

TO STREAM OR NOT
If I go to a conference, and the organizers restrict live streaming, I won't stream. If it's an open conference and streaming is allowed, sometimes I'll turn on the camera and stream some speakers.

SESSION ARCHIVES
Here are all the streams I did from Berkman @ 10, archived over on Qik:

Berkman @ 10 - Day 1
Berkman @ 10 - Day 2

CHAT
One cool thing about streaming with Qik, is that it allows viewers to chat directly to the camera while I'm live. You don't need to log on to Qik. After the stream ends though, you need to log on to Qik to leave a comment after the fact.

When I stream live using Qik, the live stream also goes out to my Mogulus and Justin.tv channels.

BostonMarathonBU - Boston Marathon BU Students Coverage Aggregator

My New Media Tools for Journalism Class at BU is covering the Boston Marathon next Monday, April 20th.

They are using lots of new media tools including, YouTube, Utterli, Soundslides, twitter, flickr, Qik, BlogTalkRadio and more.

We'll be aggregating all their content using the new Beta of Friendfeed.

Here's the page:



http://beta.friendfeed.com/bostonmarathonbu

You can watch the page and subscribe to it too.

It was easy to aggregate the student's content since friendfeed has all these services set up to include as feeds:



It also has a Custom Atom/RSS options so you can include sites that are not listed.

I've set up an event page over on Qik for the Boston Marathon too.



Links to all the Qik's sent in by students who attend this Qik event, will also be posted to the friendfeed stream. For those students who set up Qik to auto-post a twitter message, and who gave me thier twitter username, those posts will show up in the friendfeed stream too.

To add BlogTalkRadio, you click the little RSS Icon next to the username on your BlogTalkRAdio page and add that to friendfeed as a Custom RSS/Atom feed.

For Jeanne Amy her BlogTalkRadio page is:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/jeanne-amy

And her feed is:

feed://www.blogtalkradio.com/Jeanne-Amy.rss

which friendfeed wants to read as:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Jeanne-Amy.rss



You can also follow WBZ's Botonmarathon twitter account.

UPDATE:

You can also view the BostonMarathonBU friendfed on the current version of friendfeed:

http://friendfeed.com/rooms/bostonmarathonbu

There you get an option to see realtime updates:

http://friendfeed.com/rooms/bostonmarathonbu/realtime

Steve Garfield Scoops CNN: Duncan Hunter Does Not Quit

Jose Castillo has the story of me scooping CNN on Duncan Hunter's announcement yesterday from Manchester, NH that he is not goign to quit the race:

Kick it Quick with Qik:

Steve Garfield reported 3 minutes ago that Congressman Duncan Hunter will not give up in his bid for presidency. Steve captured this video as he was walking towards the CNN interview. Using his N95 and qik.com, Steve Garfield beat CNN. Watch out news world, here comes instant media.

As I was walking down the sidewalk in Manchester, NH I asked what was goign on. The response I got was that Duncan Hunter was going on CNN to make a major announcement. I asked if I could interview him live about it. An aide told me to walk back down the sidewalk and talk to another staff member. I replied, "No. I can interview him RIGHT NOW with this cell phone!" So the aide said, go right ahead. then I ran up to him and started streaming live video from the cellphone.

Here's a TV Newser report that is reprinted on the Duncan Hunter campaign blog:

Duncan Hunter DOES NOT QUIT, IS SICK OF MAINSTREAM MEDIA KNUCKLEHEADS:

The Hunter campaign alerted the media to a major campaign announcement coming at 2pmET today, which some may have thought involved dropping out of the race. Instead, he used the opportunity to lash out against ABC News and Fox News Channel for excluding him from their debates/forum this weekend.

“Some knucklehead executives in ABC closed me out. Similarly, Fox News decided not to allow me to take part in the Fox News debate on Sunday,” he said.

Hunter said that he picked up one delegate in the Wyoming caucus, which put him ahead, at least until tomorrow night, of candidates like Rudy Guiliani and John McCain.

Hunter wasn’t done. “A guy who actually had some points on the scoreboard, that was myself, was not allowed to attend,” he said. “Knucklehead, arrogant executives in the corporate media world at ABC and Fox News, in some third or fourth story glass offices, decided my campaign was over.”

It wasn’t, as he announced to applause from the gathered crowd. Interestingly, CNN was the only network to pick up the speech live, despite it being advertised earlier in the afternoon on Fox News Channel. MSNBC came in a few minutes after the announcement.

Categories:

I commented:

Hi Duncan,

You might remember me interviewing you on the sidewalk on your way to CNN. I also covered this announcement and streamed it LIVE from the sidewalk of New Hampshire from my cellphone to the internet.

Jose Castillo wrote about it:

http://www.thinkjose.com/kick-it-quick-with-qik/

Citizen media will help cover stories that mainstream media will not. With new technology that allows people to stream live video from cell phones to the web, you start to see more news from the street. Real news.

Thanks again.

All my LIVE streamed reports from Manchester are over here:

http://qik.com/stevegarfield

–Steve

Thanks for Nokia, ATT and Qik for making this possible.

BBC: Qik Videos from the US: the debate

BBC: Qik Videos from the US: the debate, originally uploaded by stevegarfield.

BBC News website readers and Qik users sent their views on the debate as it happened.
This is a summary of some of the videos we received on the Qik BBC Have Your Say website.

HAT TRICK! I made it onto all three videos. Carol made it into one. Yay!

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7649866.stm

A Comcast Customer Success Story using Twitter and Qik

Here's a unique Comcast customer support success story using twitter and qik.

I contacted Frank Eliason, Comcast Director of Digital Care, @comcastcares on twitter, after being unhappy with the support I was getting from Comcast. Someone from headquarters was calling me on the phone and relaying instructions to me from the Comcast/TiVo support people. I was frustrated because the suggestions did not match my problem and something was getting lost in translation.

Frank got me on a conference call with Comcast and TiVo to solve my problem



My initial symptom was that I could not record Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, but in fact I could not record any HD Fox or HD WLVI programs.

There wasn't any detailed program data in the online guide for those two channels.



While on the phone call, I asked them if they wanted me to stream my tv's TiVo display live, so they could directly see the issue

They said yes and I streamed the problem while talking with them on the phone:



http://qik.com/stevegarfield#v=597823

The call and live video helped solidify the issue so that they could go back and solve it.

It was much better than having to talk through an intermediary.

Frank at Comcast deserves a lot of praise for this.

He tweeted about it:



comcastcares @stevegarfield Interesting. I am glad that we had you talk with the right people [link]




comcastcares @stevegarfield That is awesome. You have to love the web 2.0 world [link]

They seem to have resolved my problem by refreshing my box with new guide data. They'll let me know the final results of their research next week when they call back to make sure everything is working.

Live streaming is a great way for remote support staff to see problems first hand.

:-)

Thanks twitter, qik, Comcast and Frank!

Update 11/17/10:

Frank talks about this here - The Role of Video in Enterprise 2.0 and Social CRM.

Variety Story on Qik

Variety Story on Qik, originally uploaded by stevegarfield.

I'm in this Variety story on Qik, alongside Emma Thomphson & Michael Stipe and Jim Long.

"Back in January, blogger Steve Garfield happened to be toting his Nokia N95 mobile phone while he was observing the New Hampshire primary. When he bumped into Republican presidential candidate Duncan Hunter on the way to a CNN interview, he clicked a button on the phone and asked Hunter what he was going to say. Hunter gave him an impromptu pre-interview interview about his intention to stay in the race, and the interview was broadcast live to the Web, using Qik."

I was up in New Hampshire reporting for citizen journalism outlet, The UpTake. I had my Nokia N95 with me on purpose. No stories were planned, but I was ready to document what I encountered up in NH.

I call it happenstance broadcasting. Reporting by walking around.

Variety Article:
www.variety.com/article/VR1117985048.html?categoryid=1009...

Here's the Duncan Hunter video:



This blog post has a report by Chuck Olsen that includes the Duncan Hunter video.

N95 Qik Crash Prevention

From Qik:

The problem with the N95 is that the US version can't switch between 3G and GSM without crashing the phone if there is a load on the DSP (like there is when Qik is running), even if Qik is using WiFi.

The solution is to lock it into 3G mode (which should be fine anywhere in AT&T's 3G coverage cities). In rural areas it can be locked into GSM instead.

Go into tools -> settings -> phone -> network -> network mode -- set to "UMTS" (not "dual mode"). This locks it into 3G mode and prevents it from crashing while streaming when the phone gets the bright idea to switch networks (which it should not be doing so much to begin with). You can also lock it into GSM mode if you're someplace outside AT&T's 3G map.