Mobile Netcasting

[moblicity]

To All Technical Gods,

Is it possible to use a mobile Pocket PC with a Jornada camera to netcast? I’m giving talks at various locations, and would like to netcast these. In addition, I’d like to internet video conference, maybe through one of the existing conferencing services. Can these two things be done? What do I need?

Regards,
ben

PS If you can't tell, I'm new to mobile Pocket PC's

[Jorgen]

I am not sure what you mean by netcast but assume you need video. The Jornada camera is not a CAM or video, just a very nice, but low-resolution (640*480), camera.

There are newer CF card camera's out there with CAM and higher resolution.

Jorgen

[Martin I Pettinger]

Hi

Now I think it is possible to use an iPAQ with a HP camera via CF and Microsoft Portrait to do video conferencing. I think this is what you mean by a Jornada Camera. I'll post again when I find some links to previous posts on Microsoft Portrait which offers some of the technology I think you are talking about.

Martin

[Martin I Pettinger]

Here is a link to Microsoft Portrait

http://research.microsoft.com/~jiangli/portrait/

Cheers, Martin

[moblicity]

Thanks for all your responses. I am aware of Microsoft Portrait, and have been in contact with members of the MS Research Group (they referred me to this site for further questions!). They tell me Microsoft Portrait is a point-to-point technology, and that they do not as yet support video conferencing (however, they may in the future). I was wondering if there is anything else similar to it, but "point-to-many-points(?)" technology i.e. internet audio/video broadcasting. Well, I know there are internet radio stations, and I suspect some version of internet T.V., but can one broadcast from a mobile Pocket PC yet? Also can it be two way i.e. internet conferencing?

My dream is the wireless dream, but more specifically the completion of the communications' dream, that, when truly complete, will change the world profoundly (i.e. not just make it possible to by socks on-line). We're almost there...Stay with it, work with me baby!

Anyway, please let me know if you come across anything like this.

Regards,
ben

[ihatephones]

The trickier you get, the more likely your webcast won't work or you can't afford it. You can do two way interactive webcasting, slides, chats, polls, yada yada yada, but it's expensive and not 100% reliable on the road. There are latency issues, etc. Shoot 56k-100k streams of a talking head, archive it and evolve cost effectively as your skills improve.

I haven't seen any real webcasting solutions to transmit video via a cell phone or pocketpc. The recording industry will love that phone when it comes out. One guy bound 4 sat phones together and pulls off 100k webcasts from war zones with his laptop.

If you want to webcast your conferences, your better off getting a laptop/DV/webcam and downloading the windows media encoder. If you are lucky enough to have access to an affordable or free t1 connection, you can host a number of viewers right from the encoder. For a big event or if you are stuck with isdn, you'll want to relay the video to a media server. Test your network connections to make sure they are speedy and you can get a static ip address. Hotels are now pricing bandwidth at their venues so high, that wireless connections good enough for encoding may be the only way in the future.

BTW, you can get trickier. My buddy put a pc in his trunk and connected to ricochet wireless and sent me a decent streaming video live from his car as he drove down the road. I sent a 15k stream of family guy to my thera cell phone. Buffers occasionally, but it works. I hate phones, but my verizon thera is pretty cool.