BitTorrent Live can stream straight from your webcam.

Broadcasters can either start streaming with their webcam, or use an app like Flash Media Encoder to stream their program. Users will have to download the BitTorrent Live plugin to tune into any of the streams on the platform. The BitTorrent Live website can be used to find channels to watch, and broadcasters can interact with viewers through chat rooms on their channels.

BitTorrent hasn’t said yet how it wants to monetize Live, but there may be less pressure to do so than for other live streaming services: Live uses P2P for video broadcasting, so there is little to no overhead to facilitate streaming.

BitTorrent Live is the brainchild of BitTorrent inventor Bram Cohen, who has been working on the underlying P2P protocol for a number of years. BitTorrent started to test the service with a limited number of live events back in 2011, and gradually invited more broadcasters to join. Check out this interview I did interview with Cohen about live streaming all the way back in 2010 below:

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Check out our ultimate guide to watching Super Bowl XLVII live online and mobile devices below:

• CBS Sports will live stream the Super Bowl XLVII on its website in its entirety starting at 6 p.m. ET (3 p.m. PT). The stream will feature multiple camera angles, DVR functionality, real-time stats and curated tweets. Also notable: This will be the first time ever that a network is going to stream the entire halftime show, including Beyonce’s performance.
• Verizon mobile and FIOS customers can also catch the action on NFL Mobile, which is available on Android and iOS devices. But beware: An NFL Mobile subscription costs $5 a month.
• NFL Gamepass streams the Super Bowl to viewers from outside of the U.S.
• Hulu offers videos of many Super Bowl ads in its Adzone.
• YouTube has teamed up with Adweek for its Ad Blitz, offering Super Bowl ads, an animated GIF generator and more.
• Getty Images is going to publish photos of all the Super Bow action as it happens on its Facebook page.
• Intonow will allow viewers to vote on Super Bowl ads in real time. The Yahoo-owned second screen app, which is available for iOS and Android, also integrates with Animal Planet’s Puppy Bowl, promising live polls, video extras, exclusive photos, a real-time meme generator, and of course a puppy overload.
• Ustream proves that there is more than one puppy bowl, after all: The site is streaming Rescue Bowl, featuring adorable shelter dogs, starting Sunday at 2p.m. ET..
• ConnecTV will offer live chats during the Super Bowl as well as the half-time show featuring talent from a number of CBS affiliates as well as YouTube darling Michael Buckley. The second-screen app is available for iPhones and iPads as well as Windows and OS X PC.
• GetGlue will offer exclusive stickers for viewers who watch the Super Bowl ads, and it’s partnering with Hulu to bring videos of the ads to its site.

We will add links to additional apps and sites to this list in the coming days.

For more on how to watch sports and other TV programming without paying for cable, check out my ebook Cut the Cord: All You Need to Know to Drop Cable.

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Check out our ultimate guide to streaming the 2013 inauguration below:

Dates and times: The official swearing-in will occur Sunday at 11:55 a.m. ET (8:55 a.m. PT), and includes Chief Justice John Roberts swearing in President Obama at a ceremony at the White House.

However, the big bash that everyone is going to watch will be one day later: Monday, starting at 11:30 a.m. ET, President Obama and Vice President Biden will take part in the ceremonial swearing-in on the West Front of the capitol. That’s also when Obama is going to give his inaugural address.

Later that day, we are going to see the inaugural parade (2:55 p.m. ET) and the Commander In Chief Ball (8:30 p.m. ET).

The Presidential Inaugural Committee is going to stream all of these events live on its website as well as through its iOS and Android app.

The White House is also going to stream the inauguration live on YouTube on Monday, starting at 11 a.m. ET.

ABC News will live stream the entire inauguration ceremony on its site, starting on Monday at 9:30 a.m. ET.

NBC News will feature a live stream on its site and its iOS app starting Monday at 10 a.m. ET.

CBS News is going to stream Monday’s event on Ustream, starting at 9 a.m. ET.

Fox News will begin its online live coverage Monday at 10:30 a.m.

Univision’s Spanish-language live stream of the inauguration starts Monday at 11 a.m. on YouTube.

CNN is not only streaming Monday’s events starting at 11:30 a.m. ET, but also Sunday’s official swearing-in of President Obama (11:55 a.m.) and Vice-President Biden (8:15 a.m.).

MSN News will stream the inauguration live on its site.

Hulu is featuring live streams from Fox News, ABC and Yahoo News, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. For detailed times, check Hulu’s live streaming page.

C-SPAN will stream pretty much everything on its site, starting Sunday at 7:30 a.m. ET.

The Wall Street Journal will be on YouTube with a live stream as well, which will also be available through its WSJ live apps  on the iPad, on Android devices and various Smart TV platforms.

The Washington Post is live streaming the event on its site as well, and the paper is offering an inauguration grid page with live updates, video and photo from the ground and around the web.

Ustream has links to a bunch of additional feeds, including live feeds from citizen journalists covering the events, on its blog.

Twitter is providing curated tweets on its #inauguration micro-site.

We will update this list frequently until Monday night, so check back often – and feel free to leave any additional links in the comments!

For more on how to watch news and other TV programming without paying for cable, check out my ebook Cut the Cord: All You Need to Know to Drop Cable.

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The debate will be aired by a multitude of TV channels, including ABC, CNN and PBS, starting at 6 p.m. PT (9p.m. ET). Of course, there are also going to be a number of live streams as well as second-screen experiences. Check out our definitive guide to watching the debate online below:

• ABC News will be streaming the debate live on its YouTube channel  as well as the YouTube politics channel and ABC’s iPad app.
• CBS News will stream the debate live on Ustream.
• CNN will stream the debate on its website. The news network will also allow viewers to create clips of their favorite answers and share them with their friends. CNN will also stream to its iOS apps.
• Fox News will be streaming the debate on its site starting at 4:45pm PT, and also feature some insights into the most popular topics of the evening through an exclusive collaboration with Twitter.
• Hulu will feature live feeds from ABC, Fox and The Wall Street Journal, including pre- and post-debate content. The site will also have an archived version of the entire debate available soon after.
• The Wall Street Journal is providing a live feed of the debate on it site as well as through its WSJ Live apps on the iPad, on Android devices and various Smart TV platforms.
• Politico’s website streams the debate as well as some pre- and post-debate coverage, starting at 5pm PT.
• Univision’s live stream of the presidential debate will be translated into Spanish in real-time.
• C-SPAN is going to stream the debate on it site as part of its debates hub. C-SPAN’s live feed comes with closed captions, which can be turned on here.
• The Sunlight Foundation will provide a fact-checked live stream with contextual data as part of its Sunlight Live project.
• Aereo will give New York-based viewers two hours of free access to its TV streaming service to watch live streams of major broadcasters’ debate coverage on their laptops or mobile devices.
• 

  Android users can cheer and boo with their mobile device.

  The Peel companion app will allow Android usersto digitally cheer and boo during the debate, and see how others like the performance of both candidates. The app will also reveal who won the debate amongst Peel’s base of users.

• Ponderoo gives iOS users a chance to provide feedback on the debate with a somewhat experimental, but intriguingly simple interface.
• Al Jazeera English teamed up with Reddit for context and commentary during the debate.
• Twitter is providing curated tweets on its #debates micro-site.
  

We will update this post with new links right up to the start of the debate.

For more on how to watch news and other TV programming without paying for cable, check out my ebook Cut the Cord: All You Need to Know to Drop Cable.

Image courtesy of Flickr user League of Women Voters of California.

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According to Maker-in-Chief Sherry Huss via phone, Google approached Make last May with the idea of setting up a day camp for those interested in Make’s unique approach to do-it-yourself. “Google was looking at growing their Google+ audience,” she said, adding that once they agreed to the project, people from Google came to the Make offices to help plan 30 days of content, featuring 30 unique makers.

Each day of the week was based on a theme:

• Maker Monday
• Tinkering Tuesday
• Weird Science Wednesday
• Theoretical Thursday
• Field Trip Friday

And projects ranged from building a potato cannon to creating animated GIFs to book-binding. Field Trip Fridays included video trips to CERN, NASA and Disney’s Imagineering headquarters.

The structure of each day devoted mornings to individual work on various projects, followed by a Google+ hangout at noon (also live-streamed on YouTube) for the day’s “guest counselor” to discuss the project and answer any questions.

Maker Camp was officially targeted at those over the age of 13 due to Google+ age restrictions, though younger kids were allowed to participate via their parents’ accounts. According to Make senior director of marketing Vickie Welch, feedback received from library programs indicates that the Maker Camp audience leaned towards the 18-year-old age bracket, with adults also enjoying the content.

This week, Make announced via email that Maker Camp will return in the summer of 2013, and looking forward, Huss said that they look to experiment with integrating more with schools and libraries to build audience, as well as continue the Field Trip Fridays hangouts on perhaps a biweekly basis through the school year.

In addition, the possibility of monetizing the program with sponsorship is an option, as Huss cited the Field Trip Friday at Ford Motors as a particularly good example of brand outreach. “Kids were saying, I had no idea Ford was green. I want my first car to be a Ford,” she said.

In the meantime, all of the Maker Camp content remains archived on YouTube and makezine.com. Because learning to make something is always evergreen.

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So what does the cable subscriber get for their monthly fees? I sat down with NBCOlympics.com twice: First, on Friday afternoon, when due to the time difference live-stream options were limited. So initially, I decided to watch an archived event, selecting the bronze medal archery match because allegedly archery is one of the more popular sports this time around.

When I hit the watch button for the match, the site took me to log in with my cable provider (requesting the same login I use for HBO Go) and it was authorized in literally 30 seconds, which was a pleasant surprise.

However, in a Hulu-esque “just because you’re a subscriber doesn’t mean you’re going to escape ads” move, I immediately got hit with a 15-second pre-roll. Then it jumped right into the action with no commentary — minus some loading/buffering issues that could be chalked up to the age of my machine and my internet connection.

After a bit of archery, I switched over to try some live video — while it was 12 AM in London, NBC Sports’ stream was active — and was hit with a 30 second pre-roll on that.

NBCSN was showing more archery, albeit this time with announcer commentary — but two minutes later, the round ended, and the broadcast switched over to not one, not two, but FIVE ads.

The ads weren’t from the broadcast, though, instead being fed through YouTube’s player — made clear when I caught the tail end of a JC Penney ad right before returning to the action.

At that point, archery had lost its luster, but the site’s sidebar showed that the CNBC live stream was showing boxing. I loaded it up in the secondary screen:

And then I swapped it into the main player — just in time, as NBCSN had gone off the air. The screen-switching action was pretty seamless, with the added bonus of being able to keep an eye on the other channel.

However, almost immediately after making the switch, boxing switched to commercials. EIGHT commercials. In the first twenty minutes of my NBC Olympics experience, I saw 15 ads, ranging from 15 to 30 seconds each.

The only positive spin I can put on that kind of ad load? At least there was minimal repetition in the commercials being shown. As any active online video viewer will tell you, the only thing that makes an oversaturated ad experience worse is when it’s the same ad, over and over again.

My second viewing session took place at 9 AM Saturday morning, so that I could check out the live sports being streamed from London — there weren’t a ton of options, but men’s power-walking beckoned. After one 15 second pre-roll ad, uninterrupted coverage of the VERY INTENSE power-walking action began.

The lack of commentary was an issue, as it meant I didn’t know how close the race was to finishing, so I switched over to men’s volleyball. One 15 second ad popped up during a time-out, but then the video went right back to the match.

Ultimately, the technology worked well for me — but man, those ads. While live sports were a lot better in that regard than the network feeds or the archived events, the amount of commercials I encountered in casual browsing easily felt excessive.

For those wanting complete control over their Olympics viewing, the amount of content NBC has made available online is impressive, and the player overall worked well — but especially given the fact that this coverage is limited to those paying $100 or more a month for cable, you definitely feel like you’re paying twice over for the experience.

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Yes, it’d be a major infrastructure demand, but the cameras are already set up, after all, and given the rate at which badges sell out, a paid live-stream offering would likely have no trouble finding an audience. Watching the action of SDCC unfold from the cheap seats this year, though, it seems the reason parent company Comic-Con International has held out is because live-streaming is unnecessary. Its attendees are doing the work for them.

In 2003, I began regularly attending the San Diego Comic-Con, and every year since I found it to be, essentially, pop culture Christmas. From watching Joss Whedon directly address questions about a Dr. Horrible sequel, to gawking at small children in adorable costumes, to finding that one collectable or comic that would be available nowhere else, attending was always worth the humidity, money and inconvenience.

However, this year and last year, I’ve stayed home. And while I miss the people I might meet there, the exclusive swag being passed out, even the enthusiastic crush of excited fans — I honestly don’t feel like I’m missing much.

That’s because observing Comic-Con from afar these days isn’t like listening to your friends talk about a great dinner party you weren’t invited to: Social media and smart phones have transformed Comic-Con from an exclusive, insular event to a big fandom party for everyone. YouTube currently hosts thousands of videos posted just within the past few days. Twitter is lush with quotes and photos. Professional journalists and devoted fans alike are united in sharing the experience online, as fast as humanly possible.

And this is formalized well beyond the bloggers recapping panels and screenings with super-human speed, bringing news about things like Dr. Horrible airing on the CW next year — the studios are in on the game, as well.

The Quicktime release of the Oz the Great and Powerful trailer was timed with its presentation in Hall H. The ABC series Once Upon A Time dropped its season two preview on YouTube as its panel ran. MTV hosted hours of live-streamed interviews on its site — non-geo-blocked, even.

And web originals are just as savvy as the studios, if not savvier. Break Media’s Nerd Machine, streaming live from the so-called Nerd HQ, managed to bring in a number of celebs for some memorable moments.

And at the Geek and Sundry panel on Saturday morning, producer Felicia Day launched the first episode of the channel’s newest series, Written By A Kid — simultaneously launching the trailer on YouTube.

The only content launching at Comic-Con definitely not making its way to the web are the screenings of pilots for shows like Revolution and 666 Park. But given current trends in experimenting with digital release, there’s a half-decent chance that they might be previewed online as well.

In 2003 (those dark pre-YouTube days), there was no handy way to distribute these clips online. The convention center barely had wi-fi. The sneak peeks that fans were getting at Van Helsing and Spider-Man 2 were truly exclusive to the convention; they were part of what made the then-$60 badge price worth it. And with attendance at 70,000 (as opposed to 2011′s 126,000+), it was much more possible to see everything.

Not so these days, when fans resort to camping out days in advance to make sure they see that one special thing. And those die-hards, the ones for whom the first-hand experience is the appeal, will always flock to San Diego. So will media professionals, who have transformed the conference’s after-hours into one of the year’s biggest networking events.

But for the average pop culture enthusiast — the Dexter viewer looking for a sneak peek at Season 7, the casual Community fan who just wants to know what was said during the show’s panel — it’s now enough to follow Twitter and keep up with Tumblr tags. How Comic-Con evolves with this shift is still to be seen. But in the meantime, even if Comic-Con isn’t live-streamed, it’s still possible to feel like you’re there.

Photo courtesy of Nerdpromnomnom, used with permission.

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Adobe is powering the mobile app experience for NBC, and as such it is also responsible for the authentication piece of the puzzle. Still told me during a phone conversation Wednesday that Adobe has agreements with 100 U.S. pay TV operators in place, which should cover 97 percent of all pay TV households. But whether or not you can actually access the games online also depends on your cable bundle: Only subscribers with access to both CNBC and MSNBC as part of their cable bouquet will be able to access any of the live streams.

NBC will offer two apps for each iOS and Android users for the event: One app will offer access to 3500 hours of live programming, while the other will be more of a companion app, offering video highlights and background information about the competing athletes and their performance.

Both apps will be made with Adobe’s Air runtime, so they’ll look consistently across all platforms. And the apps will be interconnected, as long as you have both of them installed. If you read up on a competition in the companion app, you’ll be able to press a watch it now button to tune in live, which will power up the live app. So why not just combine everything into one app? Adobe decided to split up the experience to make sure that users aren’t overwhelmed with features within a single app, Still explained.

Plus the experience might be less frustrating for those users who can’t authenticate even after that one hour grace period is over, one might add.

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“News Alert: #Ustream is inaccessible due to a large scale DDOS attack targeting Russian opposition channels on Ustream.”

The company wasn’t immediately available for additional details. Ustream said via Twitter that it was able to restore services around 6:30am PT, but at the time of writing, some parts remain unavailable.

A Bambuser spokesperson told us via email that the attack against its site started in the early morning hours, adding:

“What we can see is that we are receiving a lot of unusual traffic with lots of small distributed requests which is different to what we normally see. It’s extremely hard to know who is behind a distributed attack like this, nor do we want to speculate about it at this point.”

It looks like Livestream and Justin.tv weren’t affected by the attack. DDOS attacks are regularly used to suppress opposing views and critical citizen journalism, but these attacks tend to be directed against smaller blogs or dedicated opposition websites. Bambuser told us that this marks the first time its site has been victim of a DDOS attack.

This is a developing story, check back for updates.

Update (7:57am PT): We just received the following status update from Bambuser: “We are up since an hour -after being down for almost 4hrs. It’s still heavy load of traffic (requests) but our tech team managed to block parts of it and minimize the effect of the DDOS attack.  ”

Update 2 (9:55am PT): Ustream sent us a more detailed account of the attack, which seems to be ongoing. It apparently started at 5:30am PT and specifically targeted a Russian channel. Most requests originated from Russia, Kazakhstan, and Iran, coming from thousands of individual IP addresses. Ustream CEO Brad Hunstable added: “This is the third DDOS attack in the last few months, specifically targeting Russian citizen journalists on Ustream. This is a actively managed attack of a scale we have never seen that continues to change and iterate as we counter.”

Update 3 (10:57am PT): : Ustream told us that its services are “almost back to 100 percent.”

Update 4 (5:20pm): Ustream has launched its Russian localization ahead of schedule in response to the attack, a spokesperson told us via email: “In light of today’s DDOS attack on Ustream and citizen journalists covering the Russian protests, Ustream has accelerated the development and launch of the Russian language translation and localization feature to help translate the site and empower the voices of those being muted.”

Disclosure: GigaOM has a business relationship with Livestream for delivering its conference content.

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