This morning I’ve been testing kyte.tv, a new – quite revolutionary – service that allows me to stream live video from my 3G cameraphone (Nokia N70) to a flash video player embedded into any website or blog (see below).
A few weeks ago, in the wake of the Virginia Tech massacre, Jeff Jarvis made the prophetic statement:
“I have no doubt that in a very short time, when the next big news story breaks with reports coming from the scene and from witnesses, it will be live. Video, audio, photos, and text can and will come to the web as the news happens from the people there and we will see it live.”
Well, it’s here almost here. Now Coming soon…
Registering for kyte.tv is free and painless, taking only half a minute or so. Then I downloaded the software to my phone (they send you the link via SMS). There aren’t really any instructions on the site for streaming live video, at least not that I found, but the software is intuitive enough that it’s easy to figure out:
launch the software -> enable it to send and receive data -> login (not necessary after initial login) -> Create LifeStream -> My Channels -> select your channel (which you set up in the registration process) -> you’re live on the web
The up/down key seems to adjust how frequently images from the camera are uploaded. I set my to fastest but that seems to send one image every thirty seconds or so rather than a “live video stream”. After a few minutes of trying to figure out what was wrong (and doing all sorts of stuff, like closing the application , switching my mobile’s camera setting from stills to video, turning of my other phone apps, etc) another kyte user, who it turns out works for a mobile operator with some interest in the service, used the live chat interface to ask if I was having problems. Apparently the team behind kyte is working on the live streaming video feature but it’s very much in the pipeline.
So not as revolutionary as I’d hoped, or as seems to be promised on the site, but the functionality that would make it truly revolutionary is on the way.
The current work-around for getting video on the site is to record it as normal on your cameraphone, then send it via email to the unique email address provided by kyte for this purpose. Unfortunately, I’ve run out of time to test that particular feature but will let you know when I get the chance.
Hopefully someone from kyte will turn up here and tell us a bit more about what they’re got planned for the near future…