Streaming live from your Mobile Phone

Yesterday I blogged about how Applebee's was using videos, continuing the topic, today it's about streaming live videos from your mobile phone.

Thanks to Fred Wilson's blog, I came across www.Qik.com. This site allows you to use your mobile phone as a video camera and stream live videos to friends / family, whoever. The concept is simple, stream videos directly from your phone to the web. The quality is not there yet but as Fred puts it, convenience is way up there.

In my mind, this is a great new space, and the potential is immense. In my last post I talked about the potential of video in today's world - this is another example. However, to my dismay Qik does not yet support Windows Mobile devices, so I had look for a service that does. Thanks to Chris who pointed me to Livecast from ComVu, I have something I can use with my Windows Mobile phone.

During this exercise, I realized this space has a few key players already. I thought it might just help to summarize them in this post:

Company	Details	Phones supported
	Allows controlling video quality, uses GPS data to provide location attributes and ability to post to Word Press blogs, YouTube and send notifications to twitter	This has the largest set (Details)
	This is a good, reliable service and allows for live comments and questions during a web cast. This has twitter integration too. Video: Scooble visits Quik headquarters	Limited to some Nokia phones (Details)
	Pretty much a platform for both live broadcasts and stored videos. It has integration with twitter for notifications. They specialize in high quality broadcasts. They have site widgets to put videos on to your site. It allows real time comments too. Video: Scooble's interview with Flixwagon team	Limited to some Nokia phones
	This is a set of services that includes photos in addition to videos. It allows easy publishing to blogs and sites as well as enables real time video, audio and text chat. Video: TechCrunch on Kyte	Some Symbian phones (Nokia mostly)

The choice for me for now is pretty clear given that only ComVu PocketCaster supports Windows Mobile.

Update (5th Jun, 08): I think I spoke too soon, the latest buzz is Qik is announcing support for Windows Mobile platform tomorrow (source: TechCrunch)

I am exploring this space so if you know of any other great service I have missed, please let me know through comments. I would be happy to add them as updates to this post. Also, thanks in advance for keeping me posted in case you do comment :).