BitTorrent opens up its P2P live streaming service to anyone with a webcam
Watch out, Ustream and Co: BitTorrent officially launched the open beta of its live streaming service at SXSW Tuesday morning. Read more »
Where to watch the 2013 Super Bowl live online
Super Bowl XLVII is once again getting the live streaming treatment, complete with multiple camera angles and the entire half-time show. Check out our ultimate guide for more information. Read more »
Where to watch the 2013 Presidential Inauguration live online
It’s inauguration weekend, and hundreds of thousands are flocking to Washington D.C. to take part in the festivities. Live streams if the event are going to be available on the web, on iPads, mobile phones and connected devices. Read more »
Where to watch the first 2012 presidential debate live online
Are you away from your TV when Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are going to face off during their first presidential debate this Wednesday? No worries, plenty of sites are providing live streams, combined with realt-ime fact checking and mobile cheering and booing. Read more »
Missed Maker Camp? You’ll have another chance next year
To help build its Google+ audience, Google worked with Make Magazine to create Maker Camp — 30 days of DIY tutorials and cool science experiences targeted at kids aged 13-to-18. The camp was so successful that Make has already committed to a repeat in 2013. Read more »
Do you like ads? Then you’ll love NBC’s online Olympics coverage
NBC’s Olympics coverage online, streamed through YouTube, features some quality technology, a deep catalog, a strong user experience — but the ad load on archived and broadcast coverage is massive. Which feels excessive, especially given that it’s limited to cable subscribers. Read more »
Can’t make it to Comic-Con? Internet to the rescue
Many people ask why Comic-Con has held out on live-streaming the panels and events which make up the convention’s core — a paid live-stream offering would likely have no trouble finding an audience. But for now, live-streaming is unnecessary: The fans are doing it for them. Read more »
NBC’s Olympics authentication gives you a break
Adobe introduced the two Olympics mobile apps it made for NBC this week, explaining among other things how authentication for live video streams will work. Viewers will have to prove that they’re subscribers of a pay TV service, but there will be a short grace period. Read more »
DDOS attack: Ustream down, Bambuser under heavy load
Ustream has been unavailable this morning, and Bambuser is seeing huge amounts of unusual traffic due to a distributed denial-of-service attack against both sides. Ustream says the attack was directed against Russian opposition live streamers. Other live streaming services remain unaffected. Read more »
Subscriber Content
Controversy, courtrooms and the cloud in Q1
In the first quarter of 2012 all eyes were on the screen, both big and small. Apple’s new Retina display pushed video streaming, and broadcast-TV streaming service Aereo’s launch was quickly followed with litigation. These events and more are discussed in a new quarterly report. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
YouTube adds pay-per-view to live streaming
Pay-per-view is coming to YouTube: The site announced that publishers with access to its live streaming platform will now be able to charge for live events. YouTube also said that it will eventually give more publishers access to live streaming. Read more »
Where to watch March Madness 2012 live online
March Madness is a go! Once again, games will be streamed online, but this time around, you will have to pay $3.99 to watch – unless you are a Comcast cable TV customer, in which case live streaming is still free. Confused? Check our explanation for details. Read more »
With Starz exiting, Netflix loses access to live TV
As of Wednesday, Netflix subscribers don’t have access to the Starz Play live TV feed anymore, effectively ending what could have become Netflix’s live TV streaming business. Never heard of the ability to watch live TV through the Netflix website? You’re not alone. Read more »
Syrian live streamer killed after being watched by millions
Western media lost an important ally in their attempts to report from Syria today, as citizen journalist Rami Ahmad Alsayeed was killed by armed forcers only hours after streaming live from the city of Homs. Alsayeed’s footage had been used by the BBC and Al Jazeera. Read more »
Syria starts blocking live streams from Homs
Syria blocked access to live streaming site Bambuser on Thursday, cutting off one of the last windows into the embattled city of Homs, which has been under attack for days. This follows similar efforts by other regimes to suppress citizen coverage of the Arab Spring. Read more »
Bram Cohen: My goal is to kill off television
BitTorrent inventor Bram Cohen demonstrated his P2P live sreaming protocol at the SF MusicTech Summit on Monday, arguing that it would be much better suited to stream large sports events that existing CDN-based solutions. “My goal here is to kill off television,” he joked. Read more »
Subscriber Content
Amazon’s DynamoDB: rattling the cloud market
DynamoDB, AWS’ latest effort to rock the technology establishment, has many implications for other players in the big data and cloud computing markets. A new GigaOM Pro research note examines just who is affected, and how. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Subscriber Content
NewNet Q4: Platform mania and social commerce shakeout
The fourth quarter may have lacked a dominating big-event product announcement like Q3’s Facebook platform extension or Q2’s unveiling of Google+, but the NewNet world continued to buzz along. In the battle for mind share, everyone wanted to be a platform. Meanwhile, consumer and social technologies continued to gain momentum, and new vehicles for content and service discovery presented both challenges and opportunities for NewNet companies. And it is hard to ignore the overcrowded but growing world of daily deals. This quarterly report analyzes these trends and others, and it also provides a near-term outlook of trends, technologies and companies to watch in 2012. Companies mentioned in the report include Amazon, Facebook and Socialcast. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
TwitchTV hits 12m uniques and 1000 partners in November
The latest update from Justin.tv live streamed gaming site TwitchTV is in, and it shows pretty impressive growth. In six months since launch, TwitchTV has grown to more than 12 million uniques per month, with visits increasing about 15 percent each month. Read more »
Live streaming the Super Bowl of eSports
The eSports market might finally have reached its tipping point, thanks to broadband connectivity and the ability to live stream tournaments online. And its Super Bowl moment might happen this weekend, as Major League Gaming live streams the final tournament of its pro season. Read more »
Subscriber Content
Connected world: the consumer technology revolution
Connectivity changes everything. That’s the credo driving just about every corner of our day-to-day lives. As human beings, we are now connected to one another through not just our social networks but also our cars, the books we read, the albums we download and even our own health and wellness habits (to name just a few areas). With that in mind, GigaOM Pro has singled out certain areas in the technology industry where we see this shift to constant connectivity taking place most drastically. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
What Apple needs to provide users to make iTV successful
Apple’s television plans are the subject of plenty of recent speculation, and are raising a lot of questions in consumer minds. From the questions I’ve heard about the rumored iTV, here’s a list of five things Apple needs to do to shake up the space. Read more »
Bambuser exec streams live from New York, for 24 hours
Remember Justin Kan, the Justin.tv founder who broadcasted much of his life online to kickstart his company? Hans Eriksson from Swedish Justin.tv competitor Bambuser tries to bring back some of that early live streaming spirit with a 24-hour live tour of New York this week. Read more »
TwitchTV launches an iPhone app for gaming fans on the go
TwitchTV has introduced a new way for video gaming fans to watch live streams of matches on the go, with the launch of an iPhone app. The app gives users HD video as well as the ability to follow favorite channels and chat with other fans. Read more »
BitTorrent starts streaming DJ sets to test live P2P
BitTorrent Inc. is starting to stream a live DJ set out of its office every Friday afternoon to stress-test its new live streaming platform. BitTorrent inventor Bram Cohen and his team have been developing the live streaming platform for close to three years. Read more »
DaCast’s new SaaS business model: Streaming-as-a-service
DaCast is looking to make live streaming easier with a new offering it calls “streaming as a service.” With a flexible pricing model and easy set up, it hopes to find a sweet spot between enterprise platforms like Brightcove and free live streaming services like Ustream. Read more »
Where to watch Occupy Wall Street live online
Occupy Wall Street has grown from a hash tag to a movement with protests in dozens of cities in the U.S. and beyond. Want to keep track of what’s ging on in New York’s financial district? The check out this list of live streams. Read more »
Sneak peak: BitTorrent expands live streaming tests
BitTorrent founder Bram Cohen and his company are moving forward with its P2P live streaming project, expanding field trials and courting indie bands to stress test Cohen’s algorithms. However, it could still take months before BitTorrent Live is ready for prime time. Read more »
Color changes gears, becomes Facebook photo/video app
Some might call it a pivot, but the decision to change Color from its own contained social network into a photo/video extension of Facebook is more like a last-chance effort at achieving relevance. Can Color succeed as a feature where it failed as an app? Read more »
New Bambuser apps optimize mobile live streaming
Swedish live streaming startup Bambuser knows that mobile networks can be unreliable for high-quality broadcasts – but it also realizes that people don’t want to watch a fuzzy video of an archived stream. That’s why it came with a unique technology for its live streaming apps. Read more »
Google adds Hangouts live streaming & Hangouts mobile
Google is bolstering the feature set of its popular Google+ Hangouts video chat service by adding the ability to broadcast Hangouts sessions to an unlimited number of participants. Hangouts users can also now chat with their mobile devices, share their screens and access other Google services. Read more »
What’s next for Ustream? Q&A with founder Brad Hunstable
We got a chance to talk with Ustream president and co-founder Brad Hunstable in the company’s San Francisco office last week to discuss the company’s evolution and opportunities for future growth, as well as how it sees growing competition from some big-name players. Read more »
Finland’s epic backhoe endurance challenge gets live streamed
You think you’ve seen everything? Well, you haven’t. This summer, six Finnish men are competing to see who can live inside a backhoe the longest — an endurance challenge on an epic scale, and one you can follow anywhere in the world thanks to multiple live streams. Read more »
Where to watch Farm Aid 2011 live online
Farm Aid will have an all-star lineup of musicians performing this weekend to raise money for family farms. But those who can’t make it to Kansas City, Kan., this weekend can stream it live on the web and on a number of mobile devices. Read more »
Where to watch the 2011 PGA Championship live online
Tiger Woods is back! Well, back at the Atlanta Golf Club anyway, where he’ll participate in this week’s 93rd PGA Championship. The tournament will be broadcast live online with multiple streams, a 360-degree-camera and a nifty feature that will allow fans to share clips on Facebook. Read more »
YouTube embraces Google+ Hangouts for live streaming
Google+ Hangouts users can now watch live streams from YouTube together, and YouTube wants to improve this integration in the near future by featuring live streams both within Hangouts and on its own website. This could add an interesting real-time social component to live webcasts. Read more »
Video gamers: TwitchTV wants you to quit your day job
TwitchTV just made playing video games a whole lot more lucrative: The site opened up its partner program, offering qualifying gamers the chance to run ads on and make money with live streams of their games. Some participants of the beta already quit their day jobs. Read more »
TWiT starts broadcasting at new studio
Leo Laporte and his TWiT team made the move to their new studio on Sunday, taking the next big step toward turning the podcast network into a 24/7 live technology network. The launch came with a lot of behind-the-scenes info about what makes TWiT run. Read more »
YouTube launches paid live streaming with Willow.tv
YouTube is making its first foray into subscriptions for live streaming content with a cooperation with Willow.tv, bringing live coverage of the India tour of England to Willow.tv’s YouTube channel. This follows a first live pay-per-view event on YouTube, which aired at the end of May. Read more »
Hangouts can turn broadcasts into a two-way medium
Indie singer Daria Musk explored the boundaries of Goole+ Hangouts this weekend when she played a six-hour live concert on Google’s new video group chat service. Musk’s concert and her experiences with Google+ hint at some big opportunities for the future of live streaming. Read more »
