My Chromecast arrived yesterday! I was lucky enough to order it via Amazon Prime before they sold out, so I didn’t end up with a weeks-long wait. For those unfamiliar, Chromecast is a new device for televisions to stream content directly from the cloud, controlled by your phone, tablet or computer. It’s about the size of a USB thumb drive and plugs right into an HDMI port, allowing you to stream just about any content on the Internet, straight from the source.
The news from Egypt is exciting & fascinating: the most populous country in the Middle East is working for democracy through peaceful protest & the call for Hosni Mubarak, dictator for 30 years, to step down & the entire government to be restructured. Mubarak’s regime has shut down the Internet in Egypt, and cell phone service has been interrupted on and off. Al Jazeera English has managed to continue coverage throughout the demonstrations, and is making their broadcast available online.
A couple of weeks ago YouTube released their new mobile site, which added some really cool features. The most notable: watch videos directly from the mobile site in a device-native format, without the need for a dedicated app. Aside from this being really cool from a technical standpoint - as an indicator of the true potential for shifting from platform-specific apps to web apps that can run on any device - it’s important from a philosophical & content-centric standpoint.
I just discovered Qik, and it makes me want a phone with a data plan even more. Ever since I got a camera phone that could record video, I’ve wanted to find a way to have live video streams, or ultimately have video calling. Well, Qik has finally answered the call for live video streaming.
Qik is a new service that allows you to stream live video from your phone to viewers around the world via the Internet.
