Monday, 30 April 2007

This Just-In

Check out Justin-TV. It's a project where this dude, Justin, wears a video camera on his hat and the feed is transmitted on the website - live. 24/7. And yes, before you ask, including when he goes to the bathroom or goes on a hot date. I chanced upon this site through Paul Graham's page, where the launch of this venture was announced.

From the interviews on the site, I gathered that Justin and a few others have formed a startup to make video streaming and live telecasting on the web faster and easier. Justin-TV, therefore, is a walking-talking proof of concept. Funnily enough, the brief interviews of the founders are streamed from YouTube! D-uh! But the streaming quality on the Justin-cam ain't that bad - even on my 128 kbps line - given that it is live.


The site has the usual blog and comments from users/viewers - the whole shebang. Do you remember the movie 'The Truman Show'? Jim Carrey plays an insurance salesman who realizes that his entire life is a reality-TV show. Justin-TV of course has no such premise - the man wears a video-cam on his hat all the time, and is aware of it. So it's sort of like the reality shows on TV - there seems to be an element of 'staging' in what one sees. In fact, viewers can make requests on what they'd like to see, and Justin would consider and occasionally oblige.

Broadcasting video content on the web is something that is taking off only now, and a lot of startups (and established companies for that matter) are doing a bunch of research and development around this. I thought this is a cool way for these guys to -

a) achieve publicity and market reach for themselves and their startup by pandering to the now-established craving for reality shows in the American TV programming space, as well as,

b) to actually prove their offering by living it 24/7. Proof of the pudding and all that.

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