Live video streaming — from your phone!

I just saw a very cool thing: a demo of a new service called Qik which lets you stream video from your phone and “broadcast” it on the Internet. Here’s what it looked like as Lachlan Hardy chatted with us on his Nokia N95 while walking through Leichhardt.

Screen grab of Qik.com video stream in action

Qik automatically records what happens, so you can watch the replay. We could type in questions, he’d see them on-screen and reply. The lag was only a few seconds.

OK, it’s still in alpha mode, so dunno when this will be ready for real life. But it’s certainly going to be one of those things which changes everything. Again.

[Update 22 March 2014: Technologies come, and technologies go. Qik is no more. Its video messaging functions have been absorbed into Skype, and Qik will cease to exist on 30 April 2014 — although videos embedded in websites are replaced with the message “video unavailable”.]