lifecasting

so when i first met justin kan at a stirr event and he showed me his idea for a new company, i must admit, i was not sold. i thought his idea was totally going to flop. not that he wasn't a possibly interesting guy i would want to watch, maybe i was just turned off by his extremely bad breath (seriously, halitosis!), but i also doubted anyone would want to carry around a backpack battery pack and wear a camera on their heads 24/7. it's really cumbersome and as soon as he told me that i was being broadcasted, i instantly moved to his side so i couldn't easily be seen online. i figured, if that's my gut reaction - to move away from the camera - can't be a good thing because viewers will have nothing interesting to see.

however the company has done an interesting job and is starting to become popular. kind of like youtube but a little better. it takes commenting to a new level because it's real time and you can see the subject you are viewing interacting with others online. i'm especially interested in online commenting interactions due to B1 - i want to implement a similar idea to a niche market. however my initial evaluation for B1 is that live commenting is not really necessary for what i want to do. u know how the saying goes - keep it simple stupid.

i digress...

back to justin.tv. it's seemed to have taken off since it opened up to allow other broadcasters. i like that you can post events live, and i like that anyone with a webcam can start broadcasting. it is addictive - similar to how so many are addicted to reality tv, myself included.

if i were allowed to add to the feature list, this is what i would add.
1) for the archived video clips - i have a tendency to peruse those first before i try to watch the subject live to see if i would be interested in watching a live feed. it would be nice if the chats were recorded and displayed concurrently with archived clips.
2) it would also be nice if users could be visually identified with more than just an icon. for example - if some user's comments were mostly perverted, i want a flag to tell me there is a perv present. because i'd rather block those people immediately. that way it keeps the conversation a lot more interesting that just "show me your boobs" over and over and over. 3) also, they should try to think of other ways of monetizing other than sponsors who are willing to pay individual lifecasters. perhaps there is a way to do an adsense for videos? with some of the things riya.com is doing with sensing text on videos, i'm sure it's quite possible eventually to have an audio filter pick up on spoken words and then display ads in response. for example, you hear someone say -" let's go grab a beer!" then you see a link to heineken pop up on the side bar. ads remain there for a minute. you heard it here first! i will expect my check in the mail when this becomes popular. hah

that's all i have for now, i'm sure i'll think of more later.

btw i'm totally over what happened yesterday, meaning i'm not mad anymore. however doesn't mean i'm letting him get away with it.