Argh! It's another press release promoting another new application and service for your pocket computer. Many years ago the joke was, that of the ten thousand Palm OS applications available, six thousand of them were on-screen digital clocks - the more advanced ones had an alarm feature as well... Reading about yet another 'innovative product connecting your mobile phone's video to the web' might have pushed me over the edge.
Read on in the full article.
Unlike you, Ewan, I see potential for growth. Today its live streaming. Tomorrow, its streaming of recorded and produced presentations. Had Nokia not removed the great video editor of the N90 and N95-1 from current and future devices, users could've been doing TV shows and movies of their own. Maybe the streamers can add a format conversion and editing suite to stream our own movies to the world. Right now its targeting the budding journalist. I see a bigger use, as future directors and producers go around the studios and use these apps to gather an audience. I so can't wait for the video editing capabilities of our devices to return to its former glory. We use our devices for text and audio and photo sharing, but utilization of the video of our devices is underserved. We can't share the videos except by uploading them somewhere. Can't even do MMS anymore, thanks to Nokia! What purpose is video capture anyway. This is all we have so far. We need more and better, more versatile video services.
Ewan, why did Nokia remove the full video editor of the Nseries? How can we send MMS videos without being able to downscale them? My N90 was a mini movie studio and MMS video messaging beast. My N95-2 has a better camera, and no way to exploit it anymore. And very few reviews have pointed this out. It upsets me when iPhone users say "What good is MMS for video if the video is so big you can't send it? What good is a 5 megapixel camera if the videos can't be shared with basic cellphones?". They have a point.
I think the number of people who would want to record something and upload it to some website in some kind of esoteric self glorigfication exercise, is incredibly few.
A service that I think actually would be used would be iplayer, itv player, channel 4 player on devices, with download capability.
3G is a massive battery hog, and if the idea is that we use these services at home on wifi, then i'll use my laptop or PC thanks very much.
Dynite, I think you underestimate videographers and filmmakers. Until a few years ago, camcorders were expensive and not in the hands of average users, and professional video cameras and broadcasting equipment were prohibitively expensive.
Now, Nokia has high quality video capture hardware in its Nseries models. We've already seen a couple major music videos filmed using Nokia phones. Given the proper editing tools, which Nokia unexplicably removed last year, it'd be a filmmaker's dream.
We've seen the progression from chat to webcams to webisodes and phone movies. Putting the power of creating your own cable channel of user created content in users hands is an idea they should expand on. If YouTube submissions were watched on a pay to see basis, you'd realize the potential. Right now, YouTube and others own users content and get all the monetization from it. These services open the door to take it back and return it to the content creators.
I simply do not agree about there being a massive market for it. To counter, I think you overestimate.
Photos yes, video no.
In the same way that video calling on landlines first and secondly on mobiles hasn't taken off, I can't see that this will either.
Sure it's certainly more accessible than ever before due to camera phones being the norm, but I don't think there is actually much market traction for regular users to create videos.
As far as I understand, youtube generates no income (and I believe that hardly any one would bother if you had to pay.)
How about hidden cam of your boss making an ass of himself.
Live feed of my children on their birthday (my children's grandparents live in North America, but I am in China)
I WILL use live video feeds to scare people...like police who mess with me, or customers who ask for bribes.
And well...there is always live streaming porn from the bathroom of your local wifi-enabled coffee shop for the ambitious pervert. I'm absolutely sure that live outdoor public porn will take off with these services.
Right now, people are just getting used to the idea of video from the phone. There is going to be more and more of it soon though.