We begged. We pleaded. We begged some more. Steve Jobs finally listened — this morning, Ustream made live streaming from the iPhone a reality (pinch me!) with their Broadcasting app.
Yes, the clouds are finally parting. In the last week or so, there’s been a flurry of activity on the streaming-iPhone front: On November 30th, Fring — a VOIP app that allows users to stream one-way video to another iPhone with Fring installed (turning the iPhone into a one-way videophone) — went live at the App Store. One day later, Knocking Live Video allowed two-way video-iPhone-ing.
Now, Ustream Live Broadcaster lets the iPhone broadcast to a mass audience via the Ustream website — and it’s pretty damn cool. And free. It even works over a 3G connection (albeit a bit wonkily — a friend of mine likened it to a NASA broadcast from the shuttle). And because the iPhone’s camera is on the gadget’s backside, using the little guy to stream to a wide audience makes much more sense than does two-way videophoning with it.
So have the floodgates finally opened? And will the next iPhone, rumored to be in the works, bring major advancements in video conferencing (for instance, a camera that isn’t on its butt)?
[ via TechCrunch ]
