This Just In … From Your Pocket

After broadcasting, narrowcasting, podcasting, screencasting, simulcasting, netcasting, multicasting, Zunecasting, Bluecasting and typecasting I thought, frankly, I was inured to anything ending in casting, but surprisingly I've found one more I'm quite enthused about.

It's called PocketCaster, and it really has nothing to do with transmitting inside your pants, or from your pants. In fact, it could usher in a modest revolution in the way we use our cellphones and get our news.

PocketCaster is the term given by the Canadian company ComVu Media (comvu.com) to its free (for now) software that allows owners of camera phones to transmit video live. Point the camera, fire up the ComVu software and the resulting video (and audio) will stream to a Web page that can be viewed by anyone you want.

ComVu isn't the first to offer live Web feeds. Veodia (www.veodia.com), for example, offers live broadcasts of TV-quality video from your computer, while kyte (kyte.tv) is closer, offering among its services something called LifeStream, which it describes as "a real-time broadcast of your life through your mobile phone."

But ComVu's product works better. I stumbled and struggled with kyte, whereas PocketCaster worked the first time. Downloading and installing the software is straightforward (it works with most Windows Mobile and Symbian S60 camera phones). PocketCaster itself is easy -- just a press of a button, really -- and the video will appear on the Web site after a five- to 10-second delay. All your friends need to do is visit the Web link and they can see the video in progress. (The streaming videos are saved automatically and can also be posted to YouTube and some blogs.)

That said, I didn't really appreciate the work that had gone into the product until ComVu Media executive vice president Olaf Lohmann, who is based in Singapore, gave me a demo in a nearby Starbucks. First off, the software is flexible enough to take into account the different speeds that cellular operators offer their customers. This is important because PocketCaster streams the video to servers using the quickest wireless network available -- choosing from the usual alphabet soup of services that handle data to and from your phone like EDGE, EVDO, UMTS and HSDPA, but also WiFi if it's available, as the handset has a wireless chip inside. If you're on a slow connection, the quality of the video is reduced, but on a fast connection the picture looks surprisingly good. Singapore boasts pretty fast 3.5G connections and we were able to transmit our inane mutterings at an impressive 200 kilobytes a second -- about four times faster than an old dial-up modem could manage on its best day.

But as with all these things, the question arises: What, exactly, would we use this for?

Well, there's the obvious stuff: You could broadcast your status from the top of Mount Fuji to friends and family back home at a prearranged time, or, armed only with a cellphone, transmit a wedding/party/Bar Mitzvah in real time to the Net.

But ComVu's ambitions are greater. A new version of the service they'll be launching next month includes transmitting Global Positioning System (GPS) data along with the PocketCaster, meaning viewers can watch live video from a cellphone, and see the actual location of the person transmitting the video on a satellite map, marked by a blue dot. And if the person on the PocketCaster is moving, the dot turns into a chain of dots. (The soon-to-be launched upgrade of the Web site offers a map of the world with dots showing where the most recent live video feeds are coming from.)

ComVu hopes that is just the start. Mr. Lohmann points out that his software could be used to transmit live music from a concert -- improving sound quality by feeding the sound from the mixing desk through a radio chip that is inside the higher-end cellphones. Journalists could broadcast interviews using it -- and already are. Reuters, for example, is experimenting with a mobile tool kit built around a Nokia N95 phone, a Bluetooth keyboard and ComVu software. (Check out reutersmojo.com.)

Of course some of this has already been done. One or two über-geeks have been doing live video broadcast from their phones, as blogger and cellphone analyst Alan Reiter points out on his camera phone-oriented blog Internet Evolution (www.internetevolution.com). All you need, he says, is a camera phone and software like ComVu's. He calls it serendipitous broadcasting: "You don't need to grab a bag filled with stuff. You've got what you need on your belt, in your purse, or in your pocket."

I like the idea of serendipitous broadcasting. After all, journalism is all about being in the right place at the right -- or wrong -- time. But it's going to require some coordination. After all, you can't expect your friends to monitor your Web page on the off-chance you stumble into a riot/earthquake/orgy. (Although they might, if their lives aren't that exciting.) More likely is the idea that this kind of technology could improve the nascent movement of citizen journalism -- where ordinary folks contribute words, pictures or videos to community sites or mainstream media.

Mr. Lohmann says he believes PocketCaster was tailor-made for this. He points to another part of his company's Web site (http://comvu.com/studio) that allows a news organization, or an individual, to monitor half a dozen "feeds" of live video and then select from one to "broadcast" out over the Web: much as a TV producer might switch between cameras and feeds. Like the rest of the ComVu Web site, the page is clunky, but Mr. Lohmann promises an upgrade soon. With some laptops sporting slots for SIM cards, live feeds could be broadcast direct from the hotzone.

Does all this really work -- and can it replace a real newsroom with expensive equipment run by professionals? Possibly. I know of at least one Asian news Web site that plans to use ComVu's servers and software. But maybe that's not the point. I can't imagine people glued to their Internet browsers hoping to see something exciting happen through someone's camera phone in real time. But when exciting things do happen, camera phones will now be able to broadcast the incident live, further shrinking the distance between us consumers of information and information itself.

This is probably where the revolutionary element lies. Until now, live news as it happened has been the preserve of big news organizations with the reach to get the action and beam it out live. Now any of us can do both ends of this ourselves. Would it have made a difference if protesters on the streets of Myanmar were able to broadcast their images live for us to follow in real time, instead of uploading them to the Web hours later? Next time, we may know.

http://online.wsj.com/article/