Tag Archives: Video

Innovations in Journalism – live streaming video from mobiles developed by Qik

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We give developers the opportunity to tell us journalists why we should sit up and pay attention to the sites and devices they are working on. Today, it’s live video streamed over the web from mobile phones from Qik.

image of qik website logo

1) Who are you and what’s it all about?
Hi. I’m Bhaskar Roy, co-founder of Qik.

Qik’s vision is to enable anyone with a camera-phone to stream live video from anywhere in the world to the web, TV, mobile phones, and gaming consoles.

2) Why would this be useful to a journalist?
For news – immediacy of information is very important. Qik enables journalists to capture and report news live from wherever they are – without having to wait for the news truck to arrive.

It enables journalists to conduct better interviews by taking questions from anywhere in the world. It provides the ability for viewers on the web to send real-time chat messages to the person streaming the video straight to their phone enabling a high level of interactivity.

As a result journalists are able to conduct richer, better interviews. It also enables journalists to leverage anyone who may be at a particular event to capture the story for them.

3) Is this it, or is there more to come?
We are just getting started! 🙂

In our current invitation-only alpha release, users with Nokia smartphones can stream live video from their phones to anywhere on the web and playback their Qik videos from their phones.

We are working on addressing other smartphones and Java-enabled phones. We are also working on providing the ability to stream live from phone to phone.

4) Why are you doing this?
We truly believe that sharing and experiencing moments of your life with your friends, family and/or your world is invaluable.

5) What does it cost to use it?
We are currently in a free, invitation-only alpha stage.

6) How will you make it pay?
We are at a very early stage of bringing this innovation to market and focused on ensuring that we deliver high value to the billions of camera phone users globally.

BayTSP pilots copyright tracking technology on user-generated content sites

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File-sharing tracking specialist Bay TSP is to begin trials of video and audio fingerprinting technology aimed at monitoring copyright infringements on user-generated content sites.

The trials, which will use search technology provided by Nippon Telephone and Telegraph Corporation (NTT), will allow content owners ‘to monitor and manage how their intellectual property is used online’ focusing on sites like YouTube, Daily Motion, Google Video and Yahoo Video, a press release from the company said.

Central to the tracking of this content is Bay TSP’s ‘fingerprint library’, which uses a series of filters to judge whether ugc on websites includes copyrighted material.

After the testing period is complete, the companies hope to launch a commercial service that will enable content owners to generate audio and video fingerprints for their own material.

“The benefit of our Content Authentication Platform [CAP] is that it works with or without the cooperation of the UGC sites. Preliminary tests have shown that we can provide timely feedback that would allow UGC site operators to remove unauthorized content before large numbers of people can see it,” said Mark Ishikawa, CEO of BayTSP, in the release.

“For UGC sites that want to implement content filtering and negotiate revenue sharing arrangements with content owners, CAP provides independent verification of how the content is displayed, how many people view it, and can calculate revenue sharing using business rules set by the content owner and UGC site operator that can be tailored to each offering.”

BBC London uses YouTube for mayoral questions

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Another news organisation getting in on the online act for next month’s London mayoral elections is the BBC with their BBC London election channel on YouTube.

London residents were asked to post video questions to candidates Boris Johnson, Brian Paddick and Ken Livingstone (not sure why the other parties aren’t included). A selection of these will be put to the runners as part of BBC London’s broadcast coverage this week – the first interview with Ken Livingstone airing tonight at 6:30pm on BBC1.

Here’s a video introduction to the project from BBC London:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTrDqQ4ZNZY]

New York Film Academy teams up with NBC to train digital journalists of the future

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image of new york film school website

The New York Film Academy has teamed up with NBC News to offer a year-long training course in ’21st Century broadcast journalism’.

The course aims to train the next generation of journalists to ‘be prepared to navigate the evolving landscape of digital journalism.’

Students will have the chance to attend ‘master classes’ conducted by NBC news staff and can go backstage on NBC news programmes to learn about production.

Each student produces pre-recorded news projects, using both single and multicamera, which they edit using Final-Cut Pro.

Comprehensive coverage doesn’t come cheap, though. At around £8,500 per semester, there may still be something to be said for learning on the job.

Wired: Interview with war zone video blogger Kevin Sites

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Sites has used his own blog to break new ground in war reporting – the platform has freed him from the limitations placed on him as a freelance or correspondent.

The investigative journalist is a pioneer of multimedia reporting in the field, having led his own online video news show on Yahoo armed with only a laptop, satellite phone and video camera.

Innovations in Journalism – live geo-tagged video broadcast from Seero

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We give developers the opportunity to tell us journalists why we should sit up and pay attention to the sites and devices they are working on. Today, live video streamed over the web with extra geographical information mapped in real-time from Seero.

image of seero’s website

1) Who are you and what’s it all about?
Hello, I’m Justin Cutillo, co-founder of Seero. It’s a geo-broadcasting platform that fuses live and on-demand video with GPS mapping.

Our technology is a response to the convergence and proliferation of video and GPS features in the flourishing mobile device market.

2) Why would this be useful to a journalist?
Seero was built to reflect the core needs of video bloggers and online journalist. The platform incorporates tools for live mobile broadcasting with additional real-time GPS tracking and static location marking.

We also have a geo-information/advertising server. This system allows us to geo-tag specific information to enhance any broadcasts near that location.

For example, if an online journalist was covering a fire in London, we have the ability to upload facts specific to the building and geo-tag them to the exact location. The information is served based on its proximity to the location of the broadcast.

All you need for mobile broadcasting is a laptop and a mobile broadband card. You can add on an inexpensive GPS receiver for the real-time tracking feature or use an Ultra Mobile PC is you don’t want to carry around a full laptop.

3) Is this it, or is there more to come?
We are currently working on some major build items. We should be releasing an embeddable flash player that includes the live video player and the full map functionality within a month. We are also working on a module to add course tracking to previously recorded videos.

Our largest project is to build a mobile broadcasting application for Symbian mobile phones to enable journalist to broadcast live video and GPS right from their Nokia phones.

Beyond that we have a secretive project that could really redefine how people interact with live video on the internet.

4) Why are you doing this?
When it comes down to it we are technology buffs. We came up with the idea on a vacation to San Francisco more than two years ago while thinking of ways to virtually tour a city.

Combining live video and location info opens up new, exciting uses for online video.  Needless to say we are very enthusiastic about the prospects.

5) What does it cost to use it?
Besides the hardware cost, which may be very little if you already have a laptop, the service is completely free to all users.

6) How will you make it pay?
We currently envision three main channels of revenue. The first channel involves white label sites built on the Seero infrastructure for promotional as well as professional and government services.

The second channel is geo-advertising. We have a proprietary geo-advertising system that provides a simple and powerful solution for correlating advertising to site content.

Beyond those revenue streams we also see potential for our geo-advertising system as a stand-alone service.

Social Media Journalist: “Facebook is overrated. The novelty is wearing off and people are getting bored” Matthew Buckland

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Journalism.co.uk talks to reporters across the globe working at the collision of journalism and social media about how they see it changing their industry. This week, Matthew Buckland from Mail & Guardian, South Africa.

image of matthew buckland

1) Who are you and what do you do?
I am Matthew Buckland, the GM of Mail & Guardian Online.

As head of the online division I am responsible for the overall online and mobile strategy, with an overview of editorial, production, technical and online sales.

I am also involved quite heavily in our social media strategies and sites.

2) Which web or mobile-based social media tools do you use on a daily basis and why?
I use Twitter, both web and mobile. I blog on my own blog about online media, web 2.0 and technology, thoughtleader.co.za and sometimes on Poynter’s new media titbits.

I use Mybloglog on my blog quite a bit. I use Facebook web and mobile… but less and less these days. At the end of last year I began using Slideshare to share my presentations and see others. I Digg every now and again, and use a local version, Muti.co.za.

I also keep half an eyeball on Linkedin – but don’t really do it justice. I am an occasional Del.ici.ous user. I use both Flickr and Picasa as online photo albums/photo sharing.

For video sharing I use Youtube, obviously. I’m also a wikipediaholic.

I used SecondLife for about a week, but realised it would be best for my health to shut it down and never look at it again 🙂

Generally I find these social media tools are a good way of networking, sharing ideas and content, and building relationships with people. They also waste a lot of time and create noise in my life.

3) Of the thousands of social media tools available could you single one out as having the most potential for news either as a publishing or newsgathering tool?
I think of all the hyped up social media tools we’ve seen, blogging has shown that it is more than just a fad, but here to stay.

We’ve seen how mainstream online publishers have embraced blogs both as new publishing formats and newsgathering tool with considerable success.

4) And the most overrated in your opinion?
I’m beginning to think Facebook is overrated. The novelty is wearing off and people are getting bored, very quickly.

YouTube videos now available in Google Maps

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youtube videos on google maps

The team of developers responsible for Google Earth and Maps have launched a new feature to show Embedded YouTube videos in Google Maps.

Geotagged YouTube videos have been available in Google Earth since last year – the service has now been extended to Maps.

Newspapers in the UK have been increasingly drawn to the use of interactive maps on their websites as a new way of displaying news to their users.

In the US, where the availability of public data has made mapping a common part of online news reporting, several new innovative news-mapping experiments have recently launched.

In particular, new service Everyblock has been charting a vast range of public information across city maps for Chicago, New York and San Francisco.

The Google Maps developers have pointed out examples of how this new function might work for business – but the application being used for news videos looks like it could be just a step away.

More analytics for YouTube

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More analytics are now available from YouTube following the recent introduction of its YouTube Insight feature.

The video site has added a tool to help users see viewing trends for their clips.

Information on how viewers came to their video (e.g. through a search engine or other website) and what search queries led them to it will be provided.

The Insight service will now show the links of up to 50 external websites directing viewers to videos, a post on YouTube’s own blog says.

Wired: Flickr groups reject new video feature

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Several user groups on Flickr have been set up against the introduction of video to the image-sharing website, which was announced earlier this week.

Users are concerned that there was no pilot stage for the service, which allows ‘Pro’ subscribers to submit 90-second video clips alongside images.

By Thursday the ‘We Say No to Videos on Flickr’ group had more than 22,000 members.