With Live Streaming A Go, Qik Rushes Towards The App Store
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).
Like Ustream, Qik did release a version of its app that allowed users to upload videos — but not live videos, until now.
Following Ustream and Qik, you can probably expect other companies like 12seconds to get into the iPhone live streaming game as well. Once all these apps are available, the question is how much will people use them? Services like Qik in particular seemed hot among some of the tech elite last year, but this year have seemed to have large cooled off. Perhaps that’s because people have been ditching their Nokia phones (it seemed like everyone was using the N95 with Qik for a while) in favor of devices like the iPhone. Now that these apps are allowed on the iPhone, will we see a resurgence of links to live streams on Twitter again?
Below find some examples of Qik videos I shot with my iPhone 3GS using the ad-hoc version of the app.
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Kyte’s iPhone App Now Supports Video Record and Upload
Now that the new iPhone does video, we’re likely to see a smattering of apps push out updates to support video upload to the web.
Twitterlator Pro (iTunes link) was the first Twitter app to support video record and upload to Twitter, via yFrog, and just yesterday we learned that Posterous will process 3GS videos via email (regardless of whether they’re shot in landscape mode or not) and post them to your favorite social sites. Now, Kyte is announcing that their mobile app can publish video to the web too.
Kyte’s Mobile Producer (iTunes link), which was previously free, now comes with a $4.99 price tag — the same price as Twitterlator Pro — and supports video recording and upload to your Kyte Channel from the iPhone 3GS. It’s important to note, however, that the app doesn’t support live streaming to the web.
To use Mobile Producer, simply open the app and select to take a video or choose one from your library. If you record video from inside the app, you can also trim or retake as needed. As usual, you can add a show name and append photos and links to the episode. Once you’re done, you can click to broadcast, and the app will upload the video to your Kyte channel. Plus, if you have Twitter enabled in your account settings, the mobile upload will be automatically tweeted to your Twitter network.
On the issue of live streaming to the web, Kyte’s CMO Gannon Hall says that there are currently no plans to support that feature in the iPhone app. According to him, Apple’s SDK has yet to make that feature available, so it’s technically impossible. And unlike Qik, they’re not open to creating a video streaming app that requires an iPhone jailbreak.
Even though live streaming isn’t supported, we do think this is an important development for iPhone video producers already using Kyte, or ones in search of a mobile video provider with support for the iPhone. We’re not sure if it’s going to lure people away from the competition, but it certainly does give Kyte a slight advantage over the other video broadcast services who have yet to create apps that support easy mobile upload.
Reviews: Twitter
Tags: iphone 3g s, iphone app, kyte, video, video recorder

