Hi all,

Now this may seem a little premature but live mobile phone video streaming from your mobile is here, and available now. Granted, in India there still isn’t a high speed 3G or 3.5G network to easily faciliate live mobile video streaming, but it’s coming and that’s probably when live video streaming from your mobile will start to take its first baby steps in the Indian market space. Both the infrastructure and the software to make it possible are two very important things for the further development and adoption of new technology on the mobile platform and I’ve recently started playing with it here in the UK. Here’s my take and what’s happening and why you early adopters in India should be keeping a keen eye on developments.

Firstly, I really do hope a viable 3G network is established in India by the end of December 2008 but I’m not holding my breath for any major surprises as there’s a lot of red tape to cut through and a lot of spectrum to sell before the transmission masts start going up. My ultimate hope is to be able to live stream from the Jagriti Yatra train so that the world can view out journey as it happens in glorious, all be it slightly grainy video.

So, you’re all wondering by now what the heck I’m talking about. This is how it works. You have a mobile phone which has a camera on it. It’s something most of us have today. Most mobiles can also record video and a lot of you have probably recorded videos on your mobiles already and probably uploaded them on to Orkut, Facebook, Myspace or Youtube. This is the conventional, normal way of doing things. Enter live streaming. This enables you to record a video on your mobile and in real-time transmit it up to the web, either directly to a mass content delivery service like Youtube or to a specialist web site. As this is going on, others anywhere in the world with a fast enough broadband connection can watch your video stream, live. There’s usually a notable amount of delay. Depending on your mobile phones network speed you can get delays of a few seconds, all the way up to a couple of minutes. I’ve experiemented with live streaming from my home wifi network which results in very little network lag.

I’m currently aware of two items of software that’ll allow you to live stream from your mobile. Firstly, there’s QIK . They’re still in alpha test phase so you’ll have to queue up to get an account. For those who don’t know, alpha test phase means that the author of the software has released a very early version of the software and it getting limited number of people to trial it and report back bugs and other problems with the software so that the author can improve things in the software and add new features. To use QIK, you have to go to their web site and sign up. An SMS gets sent to your mobile to verify your mobile phone number and then you wait, usually about 24 to 48 hours to get a link to download the software over the air dirctly to your mobile.  I’m using a Nokie N82 and N95 which both un the S60 operating system on which QIK appears to run smoothly. It may also work on Sony Ericcson phones as well as others, but I’ve not tested this out yet.

Here’s an example of a movie I recorded directly on my Nokia N95 this morning on my way to work:

My first impressions of QIK were good, especially when streaming from the wifi hot spot at home and in my office. Outside in the street when I was on a 3G connection the lag was about two to three minutes. If you’re moving on a bus or in a car the lag dramatically increases. I’ve network seen lag (the time it takes the video to go from your mobile to internet) of up to ten minutes on a few occasions. When I’m within 3.5G coverage the lag is around 20-30 seconds which is quite acceptable, given the nascent stage of this technology. As you live-stream, the video goes up to the QIK web site. Anyone on the QIK home page will see a thumbnail of your video with a “Live” strip across it. If you click on it you’ll start to view whoever it is that’s streaming live at that moment in time. Once you stop recording video it gets archived in your online QIK account where you can tag it and describe it so that others can find your video. The other nice feature is a “private” option which means you can stream up the QIK web site but no one else will be able to watch. This might be useful if you’re just recording something to for others to watch later on. One of the biggest annoyances of QIK is that there’s no way to search for anything on their web site which actually makes it hard to find your own video on the web site unless log in in to your account first. That’s quite annoying when you’re trying to send somebody, who’s not signed up to QIK, a link to your live stream. I’ve still not worked out an easy way to do this. Come on QIK! Sort it out!

The other option to live stream video from your mobile is Flixwagon which is also in early alpha test phase. I’ve yet to get my account confirmed on Flixwagon but one cool feature I’ve noticed on their web site is the ability to live stream directly up to Youtube and also search for video stored in their database. These two features are both missing from QIK. I’m still waiting for my Flixwagon account to be set up so I’ve not got any comments yet about the quality of the service in general. I’ll let you all know how I get on with Flixwagon at a later date.

One thing to keep in mind about both these services and any other like it is that they’re VERY data intensive. Unless you’re on an unlimited data plan, you’re going to rack up a HUGE phone bill. This is luckily something that’s already very sorted in India. You’ve already got a good selection of flat fee, “eat as much as you like” data tariffs. Don’t let this totally put you at ease as most network carries will impose a fair usage policy on your account and give you a number of warnings when you exceed your limits before they’ll get nasty and probably cut you off. Basically, go easy and don’t over do the streaming. In future, the networks will probably increase the data limits but it’ll be a long while befoe you see totally unlimted data capacity.

Live streaming opens up a whole raft of “interesting” questions and concerns. I’m sure you can all think of the REALLY bad things one could do with live mobile streaming but I’m a technologist and I’m not here to preach caution or put the fear of god in to you about the all the BAD things this technology could entail. There are a lot of positive things about live mobile streaming. One one swoop it shrinks the work right down in size and makes us all citizen video journalists. Capture amazing moments in history such as a sports event, show the world around your city, record family occassions such as weddings so that others who couldn’t make it can be part of the special day and use it in many business applications. The list of positive things one could do with live video streaming from your mobile is endless.  As I mentioned at the top of this blog entry, I’m really hoping that the Indian 3G network is up and running by the end of this year. If that happens, expect a lot of live video streaming from the Jagriti Yatra train and from the various places we’ll be visiting at each stop. This is totally cool technology.

Everyone is socializing these days. If it’s not social networking on the Internet then it’s social networking in real life. More recently the social networking bug has started to catch on in the mobile world. A crop of new and not-so-knew services have entered the market and most have been slowly circulating by word of mouth. I guess since this technology is so new - many of the entrants on the mobile social networking scene are still in "beta" test mode and treading causiously with a limited audience to test the waters, so to speak.

I wanted to write about the onset of mobile social networking as I believe it will have a huge impact on the Indian mobile user base. It’s a well known fact that in India there are now more mobile subscribers then land line subscribers and the uptake of mobile phones is sky rocketing on a monthly basis. The pervasive nature of the mobile is far greater than the Internet which still has not reached the large majority of the India population. Even within the middle classes in India, the Internet is a luxury and for those who do have "broadband" services in India, the speed and reliability is not a patch on international services in Europe, USA and parts of south east Asia you’ll find faster, more reliable braodband services and less confusing tariff structures and options. However, where India does have a very robust user base, with good service support is in the mobile phone market. Nokia is by far the dominant hand set manufacturer in the Indian. GSM rules the roost, so most people are still on what’s known as 2G (80% of userbase). There is a growing number of subscribers signing up to the CDMA packages which are on offer as they provide a faster experience on the mobile,. This technology is commonly referred to as 2.5G but this is primarily being used by business users right now in India - especially by those with laptop data cards from the likes of Reliance, Vodafone and Tata Indicomm. The advent of third generation (3G) networks in India has yet to arrive although there has been recent consensus in the Indian parliament on how to carve up the 3G spectrum (as recently as March 2008) although there is hot debate on right now about whether or foreign mobile networks should be allowed to buy up 3G spectrum licenses in the Indian market place. The next few months will prove very interesting for all those who are watching the developments with 3G in India.

How can we, as a social entrepreneurship venture, utilise the mobile social network given that it penetrates the Indian population to such a great (and growing) degree? More specifically, I am really interested to know how we, as an organisaiton, can exploit the mobile services in India to build a mobile community that will glu together our ever growing network of supporters and build a truly awsome mobile social network. Allow me to highlight a number of interesting technologies which almost anyone in India with a modern mobile phone can take advantage of right now.

If you are in India, in possession of a mobile phone and reading this blog entry, then there is one pre-requisite you must know about. Everything I’m about to write about requires that you have a data plan for your mobile. Most Indian mobile networks offer this at a flat fee rate. If you don’t have a data plan then contact your mobile providers customer services and ask them what your options are. You should tell them that you want to access the internet from your mobile. It also helps if you have a modern mobile phone. If you have a Nokia, Sony Ericson, LG, Moto or Blackberry that’s less than 2 years old (as of March 2008) then you’ll probably be able to utlise everything I’m about to tell you about.

First up is Twitter. If any of you have been using Facebook you’ll know what I mean when I say that Twitter is simply the status field of Facebook. You can Twitters away from your computer or even your mobile phone. If you have a Blackberry you can get a great bit of software (free) called Twitterberry which allows you to tweet on the move. Twitter, put another way, allows you to post short 140 character messages to an open or closed group (or groups) of friends and acquaintances. Should you wish to keep your messages within a closed group of friends you can do so, or alternaively you might feel that your dialy life is so immense that the whole twitter community needs to know about it. The option is yours and your privacy is in your own hands. Lets say you get to go to an amazing conference, fully paid up by your employer, but your colleagues and your friend outside your company are so lucky and don’t get to go. Well get them all on your Twitter list and you can send them all regular, brief updates from your conference and make them feel a part of the event. It might sound frivolous but once you get on to Twitter it can become highly addictive!

Next up is Trutap. This is a very young company. They’ve been in business for under a year (as of March 2008) and recently secured some more funding to expand their business. They have a user base in over 100 terriories world wide and have a strong and growing user base in India already. The idea behind Trutap is to unite a number of existing technologies in to one application. Many of you reading this may already have your own blog, a lot of you will have camera phones on which you takes photos and vidoes and post them up to your blogs. Others may like to chat on Instant Messenger platforms such as Yahoo Chat, MSN Live Chat, AOL Instant Messenger and Google Talk. Trutap unifies all their seperated plaforms in one Java application which you can download for free to your mobile. On your mobile just go to http://m.trutap.com to get an over the air download of the application.  Once you’re signed up you can form groups of friends and message them en-mass without incurring the cost of SMS’ing them all individually. You can chat to them all on their own respective favourite IM that they’re logged in to because in Trutap you’re logged in to all of them all at once. Your IMs will go from your mobile to their laptop screens and back to your mobile. You can even use Trutap to write your blog, take photos and post them all up to your blog.  Trutap is in the process of upgrading their current software and when the new version is out you’ll be able to do a whole lot more. You can already download a Facebook application that suppors Trutap and show your IMs and messages from Trutap in your Facebook page. Keep an eye on them as they’re a hot start up with a lot of growth ahead of them.

Finally, there’s a combination which packs a punch. A lot of you may have heard of the photo sharing community called Flickr. It’s popular with the prosumer and professional photography crowd and is arguably one of the best photo sharing web sites in existance today, although there are many alternatives which offer a similar experience. Those of you who own Nokia N-Series mobiles may not know that your phone has the ability to directly upload photos you take on it to Flickr. So if you have a Flickr account check out the Flcikr upload option on your handset. The built in uploader is rather basic so you what you might want to consider is using a free download Java application called Shozu. It is a nifty piece of software which makes the process of taking and loading photos to Flickr (and other places on the web) a hole lot easier and more fun. Using Shozu you can post your pictures up, view the comments people have left on your photos, reply to those comments, tag, title and describe your photos and even manipulate your images.  The other great feature of Shozu is that you can subscribe to feeds which allows your phone to download photos and video in the background and automatically with no user intervention. I ususually have my phone do this over night so that in the morning I have a collection of short news bulletin videos and tech news updates ready to watch or listen to on the train in to work. It’s a really great sevrice and I do encourage you to check it out.

What all this mobile social network enables us as an organisation and you as participants to do is form social networks online and on your mobiles. It allows for the exchange of ideas, photos, videos, opinions and a host of other things. It is what’s known as user generated content. Just image if you’re one of the selected Yatri’s or a registered participant and you’re on the Jagriti Yatra train with all this mobile technology at your fingers tips. You can Twitter about what you’re currently doing and let every one know that you’ve just shaken hands with the CEO of a huge company. You could snap photos on your mobile during the Yatra at every stop, of all the people you are meeting and immediately post it up to Flickr so that everyone can see what you’re going through during the Yatra. How about doing a short video interview on your mobile phone with your travelling buddies and talking about the excitment and discoveries you’ve made and then  posting them up immediately to your blog so that TV, radio and newspaper journalists can get an almost real time picture of what’s going on? How about Trutapping with all your buddies whilst you’re on the train? You don’t need a laptop anymore to send instant messages to your friends on Google talk, Yahoo or MSN. The mobile opens all these doors to you and much more.

We’d like to hear from you about your experiences with the above mentioned mobile social networking services. Download them and play around. Check out the features and report back your findings here on this blog. Perhaps you’ve already been using a lot of this stuff and you know of other exciting services you want to share with us? Go ahead and post your suggestion here.  I look forward to reading your comment.

Kaustav Bhattacharya