Qik, the live mobile video streaming service, is now supporting the BlackBerry platform (sorry iPhone folks, not quite yet). As of today, anyone with a Blackberry Curve, Pearl, Bold or Flip can start streaming video live from wherever they have an Edge or great network connection to their Qik accounts.

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Adobe today released for ">a new version of its ubiquitous Flash Player. Version 10 adds a number of new features including dynamic streaming that varies the bitrate of a video depending on network conditions. Very cool for those that want to be able to stream higher quality content to high-bandwidth users but still want to be able to deliver to those with less-than-stellar connections.

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With the economy in the tank, it's even more important to practice great customer service to keep those paying customers happy. This week, I experienced two divergent examples of customer service in action:

BAD: The credit card number I have on file with the Nashua Telegraph, my local paper, was recently changed because of potential fraud. Well, I changed most of the accounts linked to it, but forgot about the paper. Now, the newspaper has been nice enough to call me with an automated message saying my account is not up to date. But the downside: The automated message comes after dinner, which is after customer service is closed. And the automated call service doesn't give me an option to update over the phone through an automated attendant. Instead, I have to remember to call the next day while the customer service department is open. A double whammy: I haven't found a way to update my account over the Web yet. Why not make it easy for me to give you my money?

GOOD: My dentist. I've got an appointment coming up in a couple weeks that I scheduled six months ago after my last visit. In the past, the denist's office would call me a day or two in advance to remind me of an upcoming appointment. That's fine, but sometimes a day or two is too late to rearrange a calender if you've overbooked yourself and forget the long ago scheduled dentist appointment. But, today I got an e-mail reminder about the appointment with an added bonus of three confirmation options:

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Late last week and today, there's been a buzz of a helicopter nearby for long stretches a time. There's an airport near my house, but this was more hovering than passing over. Friday, I saw the helicopter making a low pass over the powerlines nearby then disappearing. Today, I figured out what they were doing:

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The big broadcast networks aren't the only ones launching new series this Fall: Today we posted our first "iPhone App of the Week", a one-minute look at cool applications for the, you guessed it, iPhone. Our first video features yours truly talking about WiFinder, a slick little wireless AP discovery tool:

While the series title might imply only one episode per week, we're really going to be delivering two most weeks (Tuesdays and Fridays) since there are so many cool applications out for the iPhone with more arriving in the iTunes App Store every day.

I can totally related to this guy:

[Via Chris Brogan]

This question has been floating around the office all week after one of our colleagues accidently dialed 9-1-1 and had the police show up. (I've done the same thing at home thinking I need to dial 9 to "get out" while making a work-related call). Why on earth do we have to dial 9 to get an outside line?

With the advent of 9-1-1, couldn't it be a different number or even the '#' or '*' key? Couldn't '7' be the get out key? My admittedly limited Google searches on the topic couldn't find the answer either. Others are wondering the same thing. Wikipedia's 911 entry even talks about the dial 9 pattern as being problematic for 9-1-1. If it's some hold-over from older phone systems, can't we do it way with it now given all of our modern technology?

Drop a comment or send me an e-mail if you know the answer.

Amazon officially put its hat into the Content Delivery Network business with its new AWS Content Delivery Service. Currently in beta with select customers, the service will offer a pay-as-you go alternative to delivering HTTP based content. Amazon claims it won't hold customers commitment or minimum contract levels. If content is downloaded, you pay for it.

With all the work that the company has done on its S3 and Amazon Web Services (AWS) business, this was a no brainer.

The service can be linked to an Amazon S3 storage account for complete "cloud-based" services. This could be a dream for small-time podcaster types that need a way to deliver their MP3s globally but aren't able to afford the likes of an Akamai or one of its competitors. And it's not just MP3s, any type of Web content - images, script files, even video - can be delivered through the service once it launches later this year. It doesn't look like they're supporing any special streaming protocols, but HTTP is perfectly serviceable for most video-on-demand applications. Amazon CTO Werner Vogels has a look at the service and how it grew from AWS here.

Amazon will be publishing its price list when the service goes public, so it will be interesting to see how much they can undercut (if at all) the competition.

Yesterday's opening session of DEMOFall 08 was full of goodies for the photographers, particularly amateurs and "prosumers" shooting lots of digital snapshots. Here are videos of there of my favorites:

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It's not good to stumble on addicting Flash games early in the morning as a an entire day of work could be blown playing. Fantastic Contraption falls into that category.

This game reminds me of a high school physics project we had to build that moved an egg a certain distance into a container without breaking it. In Fantastic Contraption, you build a device to move a wheel into the goal. Sounds easy, but the levels get harder and the time spent longer. Clear your calendar of appointments and have fun.

[Via Kottke.org]

Looks like I might own one of those iPhones with the pesky 3G reliability issues. I bought the phone two weeks ago, but had spent the majority of the time since in Maine, where AT&T's 3G coverage is limited. Yesterday, I was back in a 3G area with what looked like a full signal, but every time I tried to call my wife, the call dropped after a ring or two. Took four tries before I decided to switch off the 3G, then the call went through without a hitch.

Hopefully the 2.02 firmware update that is now out fixes this pesky issue, though Apple isn't saying yet what exactly the new update remedies. If a hardware update is required to fix the issue, that will be a major headache for all owners of a 3G iPhone.

Update 8/26/08: Installed the 2.0.2 update over the weekend and my 3G reception seems to be better, plus the drop call problem has gone away.

With a number of new CDN vendors popping up each month, it could be tough for vendors to retain customers. One idea that sprouted up during a recent roundtable discussion hosted by Mirror Image: The idea of customer rewards. "At the very least, we should be getting something like frequent streaming miles," said a tongue-in-cheek Brad Wendkos, president of TrueFire.com.

Wendkos was really discussing the cost of streaming video and how vendors need to continue to drive the price per megabyte and/or stream down for business to continue to grow for the CDN customer. But the frequent-streaming-miles comment delivered the most laughs. You can hear the entire 49-minute roundtable here (mp3 link).

While many rejoice the fact that new iPhone 3G will be cheaper out of the blocks at $199 for the 8GB device, most note that over the two years of the required contract, the phone will actually cost $240 more than its predecessor. A reasonable complaint. But be glad you don't live in Canada, where Rogers - the official Canadian carrier for iPhone - customers will pay some $2,600 over the life of the phone, most expensive in the world.

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Ran into my first Firefox 3 stumbling block other than a few non-essential add-ons not working: Akamai's EdgeControl site doesn't seem to like Firefox 3. When I go to login to the site, I get the following:

You may be using an unsupported browser.

Please note that some EdgeControl features will only work in the following browsers:

* Internet Explorer 6 or 7
* Firefox 2
* Safari 2 or 3

Come on, Akamai - the largest CDN on the planet - didn't have enough warning that the new browser was coming that they couldn't get the site tested? Fortunately, the piece I use is compatible with Firefox 3.0, but your mileage may vary.

Cable giant Comcast usually gets a bad rep for customer service (even I complained about it), but I have to say I am impressed with their latest efforts through an unlikely source: Twitter.

Last night, while watching the incredible Celtics-Lakers game, I was trying to get some videos and podcasts uploaded to our site, but my Comcast internet connection was running terribly slow. A traceroute showed that the hop after my router was taking a whopping 1374ms to respond. Not good to say the least. So, I complained about it on my Twitter feed.

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Okay, it's a bit of stretch that I have much in common with Tom Green, the actor, comedian, author and talk show host. But, in an interview with him yesterday, he described himself as a "A/V geek", which is what I am sometimes referred to in the halls at Network World (well, maybe it's A/V guy, but why split hairs.)

Listen:

Why did Network World interview Tom Green? Because he's on the the cutting edge of live streaming over the Internet with his "Tom Green's House Tonight" talk show, which is broadcast live on TomGreen.com through BitGravity. Green built a multi-camera set in the living room of his Los Angeles-area home and brings in guests (Andy Dyck, Shannon Elizabeth, to name a couple) to chat for an hour or more. He even takes guest calls over the phone and Skype, with some calling in using Skype video. All this is done with a meager crew: Usually one guy, though for the bigger productions seven or eight people can be brought in.

The entire experience with what Green calls "Web-O-Vision" is reminiscent of his days broadcasting on public access in Canada, before he was picked up by MTV. Through the Web, Green is free to experiment and be wacky, without having to report to a network executive. Plus, by doing this himself, he's got more flexibility to work on movies and other projects that suit is fancy.

For some non-obvious reason, my colleage couldn't encode MPEG-2 files to Flash 8 video using Brightcove's Publishpod application, which has a built-in Flash encoder. All he got was the audio track, no video. We both have the same laptop and OS, yet Publishpod on mine works flawlessly.

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