Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Ustream and Qik

I read two things recently about live video streaming websites Ustream and Qik that I thought were pretty interesting.  

Here's the first about Ustream.

Ustream just launced a service called Watershed for companies that want to upgrade from the free Ustream video player.  The service will range between $.25 to $1 per viewer hour, based on the number of viewers, and features will include the ability to add a logo, chat, polling, video chat, Twitter integration, analytics and more.  Sometimes I get frustrated by the current Ustream webcasts, so it will be interesting to see if many companies use this new service and make substantial improvements to their webcasts.

Here's the second about Qik.

A few days ago, someone on Qik live streamed a minute of his wife in the hospital while she was giving birth via c-section.  He did not show the actual surgery, just his wife's face, but the hospital had requested that he not record the birth.  Anyways, based on the article's reader comments, it looks like a lot of people have very strong opinions one way or another about whether or not this was appropriate.  We'll see how people's feelings about this change over the years, as I am sure that this will just become more common! 

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