Qik Makes Choppy Live Announcement: Qik Roam
Today, streaming-video startup Qik announced a new global service called Qik Roam with Irish Deputy Prime Minister (or Tánaiste) Mary Coughlan and Irish telecom company Cubic Telecom CEO Pat Phelan on hand to kick it off. The service sounds pretty interesting - leveraging Cubic Telecom's mobile SIM technology MAXRoam to allow cell phone users to record Qik streaming video at local cell phone rates no matter where they are in the world. The only problem is, nobody outside of the room knew what was happening until the event was over.
Qik isn't a huge company, so the presentation being held in what looked like Qik's main lobby with Robert Scoble popping in around the edges isn't too surprising. However, they made a couple of unfortunate choices during the presentation. First, using a cell phone (perhaps using Qik Roam technology?) as the primary camera meant the video was shaky and not perfectly in focus, and audio was mediocre at best. Second, the feed did not have a title on it, so visitors hitting the Qik front page only knew that a live presentation was happening - not what was happening or how far along it was. Finally, the video was horribly choppy, obviously suffering from an intermittent connection, which left the viewer waiting interminably for a few seconds of video here and there. The chat accompanying the video (which apparently is not saved after the live session concludes) was similarly full of confused and unhappy viewers.
Of course, after the event ended, the Qik software completed its job of filling in the missing pieces and the finished videos can be viewed here, now more or less unbroken. And, as we said above, the ability to have a SIM card that would allow us to use our phone's data capability and Qik video-streaming abilities anywhere in the world without additional roaming or other surcharges sounds like a pretty good deal! We've all heard of the poor guy who was stuck with the $3,000 phone bill.
On second thought, perhaps it was the fact that Scoble and MG Siegler were also streaming the event using Qik that caused the problems? We might never know.
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Slight correction. Mary Coughlan, not "Coughland".
I have been a maxroam user for a year, and in short, I'm not a user, as the service currently does not work for me. I got their SIM working for a while and I think their product has tremendous potential. However, after recalling all their SIMs they have not yet allowed me to repurchase a US 'calling-in' number for my replacement SIM. Thats how the service works, you can buy local cell phone numbers for different countries, so that people in those countries only dial a local number and your phone will ring, wherever in the world you are.
SIMs come with default only a Belgian calling in number. Unfortunately, none of my business contacts are in Belgium.. :(
So in short, MaxRoam has great potential, but seriously guys, when are you going to get over these tech issues. I've been waiting months already.
The finished video is really shaky, not to mention the second video embeded in this post which made me seasick. The idea behind qik is interesting but I would not hear about about if it was not for RWW and to be honest, after seeing their 'marketing materials' I am not sure if it is worth trying should their service be the same quality...
Thanks for the article, I was actually looking for something like that for a while. This can certainly save me some money when I am abroad.