i.am.sagar

I must admin, I am very intrigued by the Qik platform and the likes. The concept seems phenominal and the idea of having it on a device that is threatening to become quite mainstream, the iPhone, seems even more interesting. I have some thoughts on making a killer application around these two. First let’s state the obvious, the iPhone has a 2 mega-pixel camera. It’s not great, but it’s not that bad either. Add to it 3G and WiFi for decent bandwidth. So far so good. 16GB, even better. Dedicated video co-processor - now we’re talking. Now, here is the meat - GPS API. If Qik can use the location based services architecture to geo-tag live streams - I think it will take things to the next level. Imagine being able to find all the Qik streams being broadcast at a location near you, or possibly of interest to you. Cool? Very! Creepy? Somewhat! What I think makes it a killer app? The ability for citizen journalists to get to situations in close proximity. I may for instance broadcase this years Halloween from the Halloween capital of the world! Location based services have not taken off yet. Why? No real practical applications and/or devices to make the experience natural to the user. Geo-Tagging is just one potential implementation, but I think live video tagging has the potential to be huge!. Let’s say I happen to live in a city where the local NBA team wins the Championship - and I want to broadcast the celebration parade. Boom, bam, boom! Nothing to it. You can even track the position of the parade. Forget MMS - this is even better. The integration with other properties like Twitter make for a killer app. Broadcast your location and video stream to your friends. Imagine the interactive experience that can emerge. I am definitely getting a 3G iPhone when one drops in July. Not sure if i’m getting the black one or the white yet, but that’s trivial. Question is - what are going to be the top 10 apps on the iPhone? Will Qik or another service be one of them? Who all are going to tap into the GPS coordinates, the accelorometer, the camera, and the high-speed data for that next generation application? And what will it do? Possibilities… endless. But I think Qik is one I am going to watch.