This friday I used Ustream for the first time (to stream a thunderstorm). I knew about the website and registered a while ago, but never used it myself.

Everyone can start broadcasting any time any place. The websites uses Flash for streaming and uploading your webcam video. No plug-ins or settings, no hassle.

Using my laptop, UMTS and webcam. I could potentially stream any event from any place. With Ustream you can also record your stream and save it.

This is a great tool for news. You could visit a small press conference and stream it live, you could stream any festival without extra costs.
When a news happens in a city you can ask people with visual contact to stream from their homes what they see and embed it within your news articles. Or what about sports events? A marathon in a city can be streamed by ten different cameras from windows in the city. It is like you’re in the control room.

The power of Usteam (and Flash) is that it makes streaming really easy and available to everyone. No special servers, compression tools or special upload connections. This is what YouTube did to video and is often highly underestimated.

This Monday I heard a radio presenter saying at a presentation that podcasting is great, but that it is still listening to a recording. So is YouTube, it is a great archive. We like to watch or listen to things when it suits us, but for some things we will always be wanting to be the first to hear or see it. Live events are always better than a recording, we want immediacy in media experience.

Now wait until decent streaming services are available to the mobile phone.