Bambuser, a live mobile video streaming startup along the lines of Qik, has become something of an underground hit in the last couple of years because of its ability to stream video over poor mobile connections. That’s made it a favourite of emerging markets, in part because it supports over 200 different mobile devices, from cheap Nokias to the latest iPhone. During the Arab Spring last year it was used by protesters to document various uprisings across the region. The platform has lately been used to great effect by anti-government protesters in strife-torn Syria. But this morning the government blocked 3G and desktop Web access to the service.
Yesterday BBC News was carrying Bambuser’s live stream of black smoke billowing from a site in Homs, the scene of much of the uprising against the Syrian regime.
→ Read More
Android-toting Qik fans will have reason to smile today: the Skype-owned company has announced that their Premium service for Android devices has finally been fleshed out with new functionality and services for the discerning mobile videophile. → Read More
Mobile video startup Qik, which was acquired by Skype earlier this year, has previously only offered a fully functional live streaming and chat app on Android via pre-loaded devices. Qik offered a simpler version of its mobile video service in the Android Market which allowed users to record video but this app lacked any chatting capabilities.
Now, Qik is bringing the full featured Qik app to the Android Marketplace, the company tells us exclusively. The app, which you can download here, allows you to live stream video and now conduct live video chats with contacts over 3G, 4G or WiFi. And you can chat between Android 2.1-2.33 phones and any iOS4 devices, including the iPad 2 and iPhone 4. → Read More
It looks like Skype has just picked up mobile video startup Qik. According to a release, Skype has entered an agreement to buy the startup. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed but sources tell Business Insider that deal was around $150 million. We’ve embedded the release below.
At last count, Qik, which enables mobile phones users to record and stream videos in realtime, has 5 million users. → Read More
Qik, which enables mobile phones users to record and stream videos in realtime, has secured a little over $6.3 million in funding, an SEC filing reveals.
We’ve asked Qik for more details on the financing, but are still awaiting a response. Investors listed in the filing are (previous backer) Quest Venture Partners and Russian investment firm Almaz Capital Partners. → Read More
We’ve been tracking the progress of Qik, a service that lets you broadcast movies from your mobile phone directly to the web, for years now. But until now we haven’t been able to get an especially accurate grasp of just how well the service has been doing. Today, that’s changing: Qik is releasing some user stats, for what cofounder Bhaskar Roy says is the first time.
Roy says that Qik curently has 3.5 million users, and is adding nearly 500,000 users each month. The application’s userbase has grown sixfold in the last year, and Roy expects that growth to continue. Much of it will stem from the fact that Qik is included as a default application on millions of devices, including the HTC EVO 4G and Nokia N97. Roy says based on current and upcoming partnerships, Qik will be preloaded on a whopping 75 million devices in the next year. → Read More
When you think about broadcasting live video over the Internet, being tethered to your computer isn’t so much fun. Broadcasting live from your mobile phone, now that starts to get interesting. Today, Justin.tv is joining the mobile party with an Android app for broadcasting live video (which will be available later today). A similar iPhone app is also in the works (it’s current iPhone app is view-only).
While Justin.tv may be a little late to the party, it comes bearing some new gifts. The Android app takes advantage of hardware video encoding, which drains the battery less. It also adjusts the bitrate at which the video is uploaded, depending on the strength of your wireless connection. → Read More
A couple of years ago, it seems all anyone wanted was access to Qik, the mobile live-stream video service. At the time, Nokia’s N95 was one of the hot devices you needed to run it. Since then, while the service has been growing, it has lost some of its luster — perhaps because it couldn’t run on one of the hottest mobile devices out there, the iPhone, until very recently. But now it may be time for Qik to go back on the offensive.
Today, all anyone seems to be talking about is the new HTC EVO 4G, Sprint’s WiMax phone that runs Android. Not only will Qik work on the device, it will come built-in to each one. → Read More
Watching live video on your iPhone is nothing new, but it is becoming increasingly easier to do. More than a year after Ustream launched its live video viewing iPhone app, and followed up with a video publishing app, along with Qik and Kyte, Justin.tv is entering the mobile game with its first iPhone app (which should be available shortly in the iTunes store).
Justin.tv CEO Michael Seibel says they took their time with the app because they wanted to get it right. “We tried not to cut corners,” he says. All the live videos and channels available on the Website can be watched in the iPhone app. You can find videos by looking at the featured channels or by searching. Videos play horizontally in landscape mode, and text chat is built into the app. The chat text is laid across the bottom of the video and can be tapped on to make it disappear. And the audio works both with or without headphones, which apparently isn’t the case with all other iPhone video apps. → Read More
Late last year, Ustream and qik launched iPhone applications that let you stream videos from the iPhone to the web and allow others to watch them as they’re being recorded. And now there is an iPhone app called TwitCasting Live (iTunes link), which offers the same basic functionality, but is – as the name suggests – much deeper integrated into Twitter.
The free app is essentially a live streaming app and Twitter client rolled into one. TwitCasting Live splits the iPhone screen in half, allowing you to view your Twitter timeline, update your status, access the web etc. on the bottom half, while recording (broadcasting) video on the top. → Read More
Mobile streaming video startup Qik has landed a significant distribution deal in the UK.
Vodafone UK customers will now be able to record and share videos from their mobile phone via Qik by texting ‘Qik’ to 97886 (free) to receive a link to the relevant app for their handset (standard data charges apply). Vodafone is the number two mobile network in the UK, behind O2 and ahead of Orange.
Once loaded, videos generated on Qik can be posted to YouTube, Facebook and Twitter and users will be able to send video messages privately via SMS and email, or upload videos to blogging platforms like Wordpress, Tumblr and Blogger.
It remains to be seen how many customers will actually take up Qik however. However, live streaming video from a mobile has yet to take off here and it may well a deal like this to kick off mainstream take-up. → Read More
[Sweden] Bambuser, the Stockholm-based videocasting service that rivals the likes of Silicon Valley’s Qik, has announced a partnership with Finland’s YLE. The public service broadcaster represents Bambuser’s first major customer in 2010 and the company is hoping it will lead to other major media companies adopting its platform.
YLE, which has never been shy of experimenting with social media, wants to better understand how its audience are using consumer-facing services such as Bambuser to break the ‘monopoly’ of traditional media, and to connect with viewers in new ways. The broadcaster is running a pilot in which several teams of journalists will be using the mobile video streaming service as a way to “document everyday work life” as well as to file live reports. → Read More
Last month, we saw the launch of Qik VideoCamera, an iPhone app that brings local video recording to both the original iPhone and the iPhone 3G (neither of which support video recording out of the box). The app’s release was significant given Apple’s longstanding ban on video recording applications, but it left something to be desired. For one, it recorded at a mere 7 frames per second — far less than the 30FPS the iPhone 3GS built-in video recorder can achieve. Today, Qik is releasing a new version of the app that more than doubles that rate to 15 FPS, and includes a number of new real-time effects.
Granted, 15 frames per second is still only half that of the iPhone 3GS rate, but the resulting videos will be far less jerky. And it may make the app the fastest recorder on the market — Qik cofounder Bhaskar Roy says that the fastest competing app only gets to 10 FPS. → Read More
Two weeks ago, Apple opened the floodgates for video recording apps on the iPhone, ending a longstanding ban. Nobody was waiting longer for the change than mobile video startup Qik, which tonight is further building out its collection of iPhone apps with the launch of the Qik VideoCamera. The new app allows the original iPhone and the iPhone 3G to locally capture video — something that only the 3GS has been able to do until recently.
Qik has, of course, made its name building live streaming apps that allow users to broadcast their video directly from their phones to the web. Their live streaming app, which is called Qik Live, was released less than a week ago. → Read More
The live video streaming application Qik has just been approved in the App Store and should be available shortly, we’ve learned. The company submitted the app a couple weeks ago following the approval of Ustream’s live streaming application, and as expected, Apple also had no problem with it now. This marks a change from Apple, which previously was blocking all apps that did live video (recording) streaming.
Apparently, the way these streaming apps work is using a restricted API (a screen capture API) to get around the fact that Apple doesn’t grant them access to the video APIs for live capture and streaming. But Apple has suggested that it will no longer enforce protecting this API and in the future should open more that allow for live video streaming. → Read More
Bambuser, a mobile streaming startup in the same space as Qik and Ustream, has announced that their live streaming iPhone application has been approved by Apple. The news comes only a few days after Ustream’s live video streaming app was approved, ending a 18 month long drought of broadcasting apps on the App Store. The Bambuser application lets anyone use their iPhone to broadcast live video directly to the web. You can get it on the App Store here. [iTunes link]
The release of these apps is a big deal — for a year and a half since the App Store’s launch, Apple consistently rejected any application that allowed users to broadcast video from their iPhones. The exact reason for this ban is uncertain, but has been attributed to (very valid) concerns over AT&T’s ability to handle their heavy bandwidth consumption. → Read More
As we first reported last night, Apple is finally allowing live streaming video applications into the App Store. Apple’s acceptance of the Ustream Live Broadcaster has seemingly paved the way for other live-streaming apps. And one of the best known ones, Qik, is wasting little time to get its app out there. The company writes in a blog post today that they’ve already submitted their app for approval.
I’ve actually had the Qik live-streaming app on my iPhone for a while, thanks to the magic of ad-hoc distribution. Unfortunately, Apple’s policies restrict the number of copies Qik can send this way, so the application remained mostly a proof-of-concept for most people. Given how quickly Qik submitted the app to the store, we expect the official build that will likely get approved to be the same one we have been using, which we reviewed here. It’s solid, but the video quality leaves a little to be desired compared to some competing video apps (none of which did live streaming). → Read More
Services like Ustream and Qik have long offered the promise of live streaming video from your mobile phone to the web — except if you had an iPhone. For those devices, that was only possible if you jailbroke your phone. Not anymore.
The Ustream Live Broadcaster has just gone live in the App Store tonight and yes, it allows you to stream live video from the iPhone to the web. And yes, it even works over a 3G connection. And yes, it’s awesome. → Read More
It’s time for our irregularly scheduled email of the week, where we share the absurdity of our inbox with our readers. Today’s winner is an executive at an ABC affiliate who asks us how they might use video streaming service Qik in their news operation.
I know online streaming video isn’t inherently obvious to everyone in the world, but it should be inherently obvious to a television station executive who’s title is Director of New Media & Operations. And even if it isn’t, Qik has a video, using cartoons, at the top of their home page showing how to use the service.
We’ve removed the name and location of the affiliate to protect this poor guy’s job. But please everyone, we’re not a Q&A service for every aspiring new media director who has no clue what his job is all about.
Here’s the email exchange: → Read More
We like to keep an eye on the adoption of mobile video broadcasting applications around these parts. It’s a mighty competitive space, with Qik, Kyte, Flixwagon, Ustream and a number of others all taking a stab at what is essentially the same idea. While the idea as a whole has yet to really take off as something that everyone does, its one that just about everyone seems to appreciate once it’s explained to them. Therein lies the challenge: how do you tell people that such services exist? One approach is to get it on the handsets right out of the box. If it’s hard to get them to come to you, why not go to them? → Read More
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