Interesting learning curve

So much of what I cover in my daily dealings on the internets is old ground, been there, seen it, got the DVD and the T shirt.

Thanks to that nutter Steve Mays, I got bitten by a tech bug today and one I am looking forward to testing out the possibilities with.

For a while now from his i phone (there's an app for that), he's been experimenting with live video broadcasting.  In fact a few weeks ago, following his experiments, I had the web page minimised and was away from my desk watching TV.

Suddenly through my PC speakers I heard loud and clear a familiar voice and when I opened up the browser again, there was Mr. Mays at his desk in full colour.

He went off the boil for a while and in the last day or so, has been chirping about it.  I understand he's covering  some government thing and wants to try out live coverage using his phone and their wi fi setup.

Seeing some of today's experiment, I copped hold of him and asked a few questions about the chain which in his case is i phone, WLAN (at the Coffee Zone), interweb and on to your browser.

He recommended I try out www.qik.com which supports a lot of smart phones, not just i phones.

You can download straight to your phone and in my case after a reboot, the app not only logs in to the account you have set up at qik, but the video cam activates and all you need do is start recording.

Your live broadcast (which in my case was a pathetic couple of minutes in a dimly lit room, of Weakest Link on telly) is not only streamed to the qik homepage (which you can share with friends on Twitter, Face Buck etc, but it saves the videos for later viewing too.

So my chain was Nokia E 72, wireless LAN, interweb blah, blah blah.

I'm now fascinated and eager to see what it's like when I am away from my WLAN and the phone goes on to GPRS connection otherwise, It's going to be  down to when I pop in to McDonalds for some brekky or when some kind soul takes me to the White Lion which has free WiFi.  Before I try it, I do have reservations that GPRS will be able to handle video feed, but it will be interesting to see the result.

If the romance continues, I may have to give my new broadcasting habit a name like SoxerVision.

I was a bit chuffed today when Dan, one of the PR's at Walsall Council picked up on my market stall picture and linked to it via the council's Twitter feed.  Quite a techie day in all.