The Guardian is reporting that “…millions of Arabs across the Middle East and north Africa are watching vivid and often shocking coverage of the Israeli military onslaught on Hamas in the Gaza Strip on Arabic satellite TV channels, with al-Jazeera again leading the field.”

The Guardian article goes on to say that “Al-Jazeera has also just become available to computer users live over broadband on the Livestation Network in every country except the US, where it is blocked.”

This is not quite true. Al Jazeera English is available world-wide, although the agreement for streaming Al Jazeera Arabic on Livestation, drawn up by Al Jazeera’s distribution team in Doha, requires that we geoblock it from being seen in the USA.

We have certainly seen a massive increase in traffic to the Livestation streams of both the Al-Jaeera English and al Jaeera Arabic channels. There has also been non-stop chat in the chat room linked to the stream as up to 50 people at a time have been discussing the developing situation.

The live, instant chat in the Al Jazeera English chat room has thrown up some fascinating discussions with people posting from all over the world. Anyone can join the chat and discuss the live events as you watch them unfold.

Al Jazeera would do well to have a news producer sitting in on the chat and stimulating the debate.

Live, instant newsgathering on the desktop - it has to be the future.

Last week I had my first inter-active-view and it was mind opening.

I sat down in the Bakery (see note below), the Livestation development office in London, in front of a steaming cup of tea and Jemima Kiss, the Guardian media/tech correspondent turned blogger and Uber Twitter-er to talk about iPhones, live TV online, Tv2.0 and quite a few other interesting things.

The most exciting thing was that this chat was being broadcast live on Livestation to anyone who cared to tune in. Unlike traditional TV channels, this channel was available anywhere in the word to anyone with a broadband connection and a free Livestation account.

When we set out almost 2 years ago working on the Livestation idea, it did not occur to us that the main dimension on which we could have innovated the most was on the interactive services around live broadcast.

Sitting in front of Jemima chatting about the future of TV while viewers from around the world were asking interesting and provocative questions and voting on contextual polls, gave the interview a completely new dimension. It didn’t feel at all like it was just the two of us talking. It really felt like having an open conversation with a lot of other people. And the most amazing thing was that it felt like they were all there with us, in the same room.

We could chat, respond and interact with them as if they were there. And this thanks to two simple tools we developed in the past few weeks: live chat and live
panel. Live chat is a channel-based chat room environment which allows viewers to join an interactive discussion around a live channel. This is available on all channels but it really comes to live when used in the context of live interviews/debates.

Al Jazeera has been experimenting with this tool in the last weeks during the high profile Riz Khan Show (generally on at 8.30pm Monday to Thursday) where Riz interviews high profile guests and a producer from the show joins the Livestation live chat room to allow viewers to have their questions passed on air.

Live Panel is a simple service that leverages our real-time 2-way messaging system to deliver multiple choice questions to anybody tuned onto a specific channel and reports the combined results of the poll in graphical format to all participants within seconds.

I heard these tools were working very well but didn’t really experience them first hand until last week.

Being on air live where the audience becomes an active part of the broadcast is absolutely amazing.

We had viewers from all parts of the world (the broadcast was at 5pm GMT to allow people from most time zones to join in) engaging and asking some excellent and provocative questions with a pace that was comparable only to “first person” situations where the audience is there asking questions and having an opportunity to add more details or refute answers given by the guests.

This is why I like to think this was not an interview but my first ever inter-active-view, an interactive interview where the viewers are there with you.

This brings me to the following idea: television means litterarly “viewing from far away” – tele is “far away” in Greek and vision is “to see” in latin. In the early days of television, its role was indeed that: show you what was going on in other parts of the world without having to travel there. Later on, TV executives worked out that they could use this newly created medium to distribute pre-recorded content but in the beginning, television was predominantly live.

So, what does it really mean to put TV online? Is it simply about giving access to traditional TV on IP connected devices? Surely that’s useful but it’s hard to classify that as TV2.0 as that’s more like giving extended access to TV1.0 on different devices.

What I think TV2.0 should be about is turning tele-vision into tele-presence. This is the really exciting novelty and opportunity brought about by the net. It’s not simply watching TV on your computer or your iPhone – that’s cool but not Tv2.0 in my view – but it is interacting with the broadcast, changing the way to develops live, on air; it’s having an impact on news and events without having to be there. It’s being able to influence how an interview with the former Prime Minister of Iraq develops on the Riz Khan show in Mumbai or Doha without having to be there in person.

I can ask uncomfortable questions, I can express my opinion using live polls or I can post a link to a recent article on a famous paper showing that the current guest being interviewed said exactly the opposite of what he is saying now just a few days ago in another interview.

The interview with Jemima is available here.

Welcome to the dawn of TV2.0. Be there now.

==========

The Bakery derives its name from the original name of the P2P research work carried out by Ant Rowstron and Miguel Castro at Microsoft Cambridge Research Labs which was called Pastry.

Skinkers acquired the IP from Microsoft and as the engineering team started working on Pastry we felt that The Bakery was the most appropriate name for it. The original work from Ant and Miguel is here.

Livestation has offered everyone a sneak peak, although streaming of live TV on the iPhone and iPod Touch via the Livestation player will not be publicly available until Apple give us the go-ahead.

Our team in the Bakery (the place where all Livestation’s fantastic engineers churn out exciting developments like this), has been working on it for some time.

It’s crisp, clear, reliable and extremely impressive and it is what news junkies like me have been waiting for.

I was in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina doing some media training when I received a tweet announcing that a neat video had been shot demonstrating the new development.

Two clicks later and I was watching Livestation’s CEO, Matteo Berlucchi, demonstrating the live streaming over the iPhone.

All you will need is an iPhone or iTouch. Keep checking the Livestation site to get an early heads up about when it will be available.

At times up to 50 people have been involved in live, instant chat in the Livestation chat room for the Indian 24×7 TV news channel, CNN IBN, during the coverage of the attacks in Mumbai.

Comments from the CNN IBN viewers in the chat room were fed through to the channel’s journalists:

Rab an Indian living in New Jersey, USA: “This shows that we need to stop the crap in Iraq, and focus on the real stuff in Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

MJC, Atlanta, USA: India & Pakistan both have nuclear weapons. I’m just concerned that actions like this might cause someone to decide to make the ultimate choice. I hope they’re not going to respond like the U.S. did after 9/11. Haven’t we had enough unilateral action in the World?

Jan Lorenz, Quezon City, the Philippines: what kind of demand these terroist ask for? That’s what is surprising about this news. their demand is still unclear. they may not have any demand at all, and just went there to spread terror.

Jarod, Hainan Province, China: I hope to get more information about the terrorist group from CNN IBN, thank you.

Jan Lorenz, Quezon City, Philippines: It’s really surprising how as little as 25 terrorists are able to create this chaos. I salute the indian police and military force for swiftly attending to the situation. may God bless them.

Abhay Patil LA, USA.: I am an Indian from South Mumbai, living in Los Angles. I grew up in all these areas constantly under terror. My family is safe, I have been able to get in touch with them. However I havent been able to get in touch with all my friends around the area. So I hope all of them are doing fine, since cell phone lines are not going through, I have emailed them. I turned to CNN IBN because it is a reputed news resource and a reliable network for information on the crisis.

Pinkrose, Maldives : India is one of our closest friends and a neighbour. People at Maldives are very concerned about this issue and are watching this live coverage closely. Thanks to Livestation and CNN IBN.

Abhay Patil, LA, USA: “I hope this huge incident is not pushed under the carpet under the pretext of ‘Spirit of Mumbai’ as the previous terror incidents have and this time atleast the authorities take definitive action. There is no reason to cheer – "How Mumbai is getting used to these incidents”. We need to work along with Pakistan to remove terrorism which is affecting both countries, rather than just pointing fingers at each other. It is a problem which is affecting south east asia on a huge extent regularly and each time on a much bigger scale"

Aare, Riga, Latvia: As I understand India does not have intelligence organization dealing with terrorism, hopefully the will from now. Commandos did not have night vision equipment, hopefully they will.

Clearly, there is a need for channels such as CNN IBN, not only to stream live, but to also engage with the audience in a way that gets instant comments from around the world.

CNN IBN is now streaming live coverage of the Mumbai bombings, shootings and on-going siege on Livestation.

As a temporary, official partner channel, CNN IBN will be available on Livestation until the current situation is resolved.

Livestation is grateful to CNN IBN’s fast response to this and applauds the channels desire to work with Livestation to try to reach the widest audience possible.

Many of Livestation’s other official partner channels are also covering the story. All have live chat rooms attached to the Livestation player. You can join the discussion and post your reactions to the developing story.

Get your Livestation 2.3 while it’s hot off the printing press… (1)

Release Notes
New features and bug fixes are as below.

• Added chat notification icon on overlay.

• Added Video and Audio device preferences.
• Disabled screensaver with Livestation running in fullscreen mode.
• Improvements to Chat, including option to ignore users.
• Improvements to What’s Hot.
• Improved support for mms streams.
• Channel screen grabs used as logos for the user channels.
• Option to remove partner channels.
• Channel name displayed when highlighting a channel logo on the carousel.
• Implemented Live panel.
• Fixed stacking of alerts.

Favourite new features?

Easy, the option to remove partner channels (I don’t speak German or Italian), the Live panel, and the channel screen grabs.

How do we do the screen grabs?

(Warning: some light tech follows. You have been warned.)

Channel screen grabs are worth talking about a bit more. They don’t just magically appear. They are a nice consequence of writing our own player. Behind the scenes, and just so YOU can have an image instead of another dull icon… we built the “Live Spider”.

We take a GUI-less version of our client, some control code (in C and Qt), a sprinkling of Web Services (all in Ruby, naturally), and mix all together. The spiders get stream profile information for us, and upload key frames from the live stream to use in the website.

This is how you get the channel grabs. We’ll make use of the stream profile info in a later website build. It’ll be good to search for all the high bandwidth streams you’ve added, and the live spider means we can build this feature. It also means we can start pruning off streams that aren’t working any more. Lastly, because we built the spider with the same code as the player, if it plays in the spider, it should play in the player. So we get a full regression test against all streams with every run. Neat eh?

Jari

(1) not that Gutenberg would recognize much of his original inventions in this electronic world!

At one point there must have been 100 people in the Livestation global chat room attached to the live stream of the Al Jazeera English 12-hour election special; numbers boosted every time the channel gave a live on-air promotion.

They were engaged in instant, live chat, with their comments being picked up in the studio and fed through to the live TV output at Al Jazeera studios in Washington and Doha.

The vast majority seemed to be from America. Viewers who’d chosen, for whatever reason, to watch the drama unfold via their desktop in the Livestation player. So there was no lack of opinions when the room was discussing US domestic issues.

However it was an eye-opener when the discussion touched on foreign policy. Whenever a country was mentioned, and without fail during the ten hours I was monitoring the debate, someone from the country mentioned popped up and pitched in.

I took a straw poll (a difficult and non-scientific experiment to undertake in a crowded chat room) by asking people where they were located.

Morocco, Indonesia, China, Singapore, Kenya, Russia, Eire, UK, Germany, Australia, the UK, Norway … the list went on and on. Live, instant, chat on a global scale, impacting live TV output.

Al Jazeera English is leading the way using this free tool, hopefully, Livestation’s partner broadcasters will follow their lead. What seems clear from last night’s experience is that the Al Jazeera English audience that goes online in order to watch live TV now has an expectation.

And it’s important that expectation is met by the broadcasters. I am certain it will be with Al Jazeera; Riz Khan uses it for his show every Monday to Thursday at 20:30 GMT; but the other broadcasters should take note. They may be missing a trick.

What a great idea suggested by journalism lecturer Brett Atwood. In his latest blog, aimed at his students, he advises them to download Livestation so that they can examine the different perspectives on news offered by the various news channels on the player.

Brett picked out our official partner channels, Al Jazeera English, Russia Today and BBC World News and a viewer-added channel, Press TV from Iran. He wrote:

“Some of these stations are sponsored by their respective governments and others are private enterprises. Some of these stations present stories that arguably reinforce their respective government "official policies,” while others offer strong reporting that very much falls within the “Murrow paradigm” of traditional journalism. Can you tell the difference? I would like you to “channel surf” through some of these news stations and then write your observations in your blog."

Yet another use for Livestation; a training tool to help students understand the different takes on news and widen their understanding of how and why news is produced.

It’ll be even easier to compare and contrast the different news perspectives when we release the multi-screen view in the near future. An enhancement that I expect will appeal to all journalists.

In another case, a student studying journalism used Livestation in order to gain the perspective needed to answer a question.

Livestation is inviting all followers of the US election to join a global, live, interactive TV-over-broadband party as America votes for its next president.

Whether you are in Boston, Berlin, Bahrain, Beijing or Brisbane, you can gather with your friends – wherever they are – (and with total strangers) to watch the live TV output and chat about the outcome in real-time.

And, because some of Livestation’s partner broadcasters will have producers in the chat room, your comments might just make it on air. So you could have an impact on what gets discussed on the live TV output. And unlike other chat, the discussion is in the same player that’s streaming the live TV output, not locked away in a web page or floating disconnected from the action.

Whether you are in the comfort of your own home, in the office, in an hotel or sitting with your laptop on your knee – wherever you are, Livestation enables anyone with a broadband connection to follow the action, live, on their desktop, from anywhere in the world, and engage in instant chat about the outcome with other viewers.

And what’s more, it’s totally free, although you have to bring your own snacks and drinks.

Most of Livestation’s partner channels are hosting 12-hour TV specials offering a wide choice of perspectives, analysis and studio discussions as events unfold.

Al Jazeera English will be assessing the mood of a global audience as the drama of election night unfolds, by stimulating a worldwide chat in the Livestation player alongside the live TV output. Producers from the channel will be in the Livestation chat room gathering online reactions and feeding them directly back to the studio to be read out on air.

BBC World News has David Dimbleby, one of the BBC’s most experienced presenters, hosting an election special along with Matt Frei, anchor of BBC World News America. They’ll be joined in the studio by veteran newsman Ted Koppel offering global analysis.

euronews will be assessing the impact of the election from a European perspective and analysing how the outcome may influence future relations between Europe and America. The euronews coverage will be streamed in seven languages on Livestation.

France 24 has set up studios at the foot of the Trocadéro, where the largest American election evening outside the United States is being organised by Republicans & Democrats Abroad.

C-SPAN coverage starts with an in-depth look at how the 2008 elections will impact the next Congress. The channel will be taking feeds from both campaign HQs, interspersed with behind-the-scenes coverage, a studio discussion and viewer telephone calls.

ITN will be covering all the breaking news as the nation decides plus reaction from the US and the UK with reporters in Washington, at the American Embassy in London and inside a top showbiz party at Planet Hollywood.

Bloomberg will be looking at the likely financial implications of the result, while Deutsche Welle will be examining the outcome from a German perspective and Russia Today will be analysing the result from the Russian point of view.

All channels have active chat rooms attached to the live streaming, so please invite your friends (wherever they are in the world) and have an election chat party courtesy of Livestation.

To take part you need to have your Livestation player open, tune to your preferred channel, click on the chat tab and enter the discussion.

This evening, Al Jazeera’s senior Washington correspondent, Rob Reynolds, and his producer, spent almost an hour in the Livestation chat room with Al Jazeera viewers discussing the US election.

I have put together some edited highlights of the chat. For those who enjoy live chat while watching Live TV, you can join Riz Khan every Monday to Thursday evenings at 20:30 GMT for half an hour of discussion.

Rob Reynolds will be doing another chat after the election but, for now, here are some of the highlights from tonight’s chat.

Entering room Al Jazeera (English).

Al Jazeera mod: Hello, we’ll be looking at all aspects of the campaign, starting off with a general overview of the last few weeks. Also looking at issues of race and class, and a look ahead to what happens with a new administration and anything else you want to ask about on the election. OK, let me start by introducing you all to Al Jazeera’s senior Washington correspondent, Rob Reynolds.
Rob Reynolds: Hello, welcome to all of you. It’s a real pleasure to participate in this live chat.
Mandelbrot: Pleasure to see a worthwhile journalist chatting.
Al Jazeera mod: Let’s start by asking a quick question – Rob how do you think the past few weeks have been on the campaign trail?
Rob Reynolds: The past few weeks have been full of surprises. It seems now that Obama has solidified a pretty substantial lead. But it didn’t have to turn out that way. I think the McCain campaign has made a series of serious miscalculations.
Al Jazeera mod: in what sense?
Rob Reynolds: They started with the choice of Sarah Palin, which initially seemed to be a brilliant stroke but then, as she gave interviews and revealed a tenuous grasp of policy issues, people began to have doubts about her. Then McCains performance during the financial crisis, which struck a lot of voters as erratic and finally, McCain veered from one message or ‘narrative’ to another without consistency whereas Obama stayed on course.
Viewer: what’s that one message he veered from?
Rob Reynolds: First he was the Experienced Hand— the one who would keep the country safe as compared with the untested Obama.
Viewer: yes, and then?
Rob Reynolds: Choosing Palin undercut that, so the campaign switched to emphasis on the Maverick aspect and tried to dramatise that with the decision to jump into the financial bailout negotiations, but that backfired when Republicans nixed the bailout creating further chaos.
Viewer: Do you think that the next president will have the biggest job to do compared to any other president since all that is happening with the economy, then Iraq, Afghanistan etc…?
Rob Reynolds: Well, if you are talking about more than 200 years of American history there have been many crisis moments— the Civil War, the Depression, the Second World War etc. But there’s no question that the next president is facing multiple challenges and he will not have a lot of time to get down to dealing with them. It’s important that whoever he is he moves fast as soon as he gets into office on Jan. 20th.
Gary from Taiwan: There will be no honeymoon period for the new president because the overall economy and the political problems have been stalled long enough.
Rob Reynolds: Not at all. Gary. He will have to put his stamp on the economic crisis immediately and I think he may - whoever he is - take a page from the past, for example emulating FDR who said, famously, ‘we have nothing to fear but fear itself’ and try to regain some confidence. But I think the economy will be first, followed by moves on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I wouldn’t be surprised when the next president announces he will close Guantanamo within a very short time of taking office.
David: Rob, who do you think is best placed to improve the perception of America from non-Americans around the world?
Rob Reynolds: Clearly, Obama with his multiethnic background would, I think, boost the US image abroad, David. I think there have been polls in Europe that indicate if Obama were running there he’d win by a landslide. In the Middle East however his popularity may be less, because while he would make changes in the situation with regard to Iraq, he has indicated already he will continue very strong traditional American support for Israel. That may not make people in Arab lands very happy.
Gary from Taiwan: I’m from Taiwan. And as far as I know, a lot of people here are in favour of Obama.
mjismail, Birmingham: how much do you think the media has influenced this years election?
Rob Reynolds: I think there has been more media attention to this election than any other and one of the ways that has developed is online. The Obama campaign in particular has been very adept at using the Net to circumvent the mainstream US Media
Helmut, Austria: Obama and could do a few positive things regarding the Palestinians?
Rob Reynolds: Helmut, certainly with a new set of leaders at the top of both countries, whoever they may be, there are possibilities for changing the stalemate we see today in the region.
Sanjay: Obama, has run a very principled campaign. Where as McCain has thrown a lot of dirt around (Socialist, terrorist etc.) do you think this is a tactic or strategy and does it suggest anything about how they will run the country?
Rob Reynolds: Sanjay, I think you ask a good question. The McCain campaign has used a lot of techniques that have been very successful in the past, for example, President Bush and his political advisor Karl Rove used ‘wedge issues’ productively against their opponent. By wedge issues I mean cultural things like abortion rights, gay marriage, gun control legislation, and the more nebulous concept of ‘elitism’ or ‘otherness’ that was used successfully against John Kerry in 2004. This time that strategy/tactic (whatever you call it) hasn’t worked, and I think that’s a result of American voters getting tired of bickering and mudslinging and wanting their leaders to get serious.
Al Jazeera mod: how do you think this election has compared to previous campaigns?
Rob Reynolds: obviously, you have the factor of the first African-American running, but beyond that you have the unprecedented amounts of money spent, the intense interest from around the world (as evidenced by some of your questions), and the sense that the outcome will be really important in terms of how our country and the world move in the next several years. Also, it’s interesting that for the first time since 1952, neither an incumbent president or vice president is running - just a historical titbit there.
Al Jazeera mod: has the campaigning been as bitter before?
Rob Reynolds: in past years campaigns have gotten pretty nasty. I mean, if you look at the broad scope of US history, yeah, there’s been a lot of dirt flung around. I think the difference now is that the dirt shows up on YouTube 30 seconds after it was thrown.
Santa: thank the gods for YouTube, and freedom to post up the truth.
mjismail, Birmingham: how important is Barack Obama being an African American? Does it really affect the way people will vote in the 21st century?
Rob Reynolds: Mjsmail, the answer is yes. Lots of people are not inclined to vote for a black person for president. It would be foolish to pretend otherwise. On the other hand, there are millions— not only African Americans— who believe that a vote for Obama will, in a sense, help to redress an historical wrong. But in fact I think the majority of voters are really making a judgement about who would do a better job with the economy.
Helmut, Austria: is the vote rigging issue still an issue?
Santa: Would you not agree, it matters little who wins next Tuesday, USA is debt ridden, and finished , , Philip, London, UK
Rob Reynolds: that issue— the economy— dwarfs everything else right now.
Gary from Taiwan: From your observation and perspective, has McCain’s running mate been a plus or a minus for the election so far? She attracts a lot of media attention but also some controversy.
Rob Reynolds: Helmut, there have been issues with vote-suppression - not so much ‘rigging’ in terms of fake votes, but more in terms of court-challenges to voter lists and rumours spread about, for example, if you have an outstanding traffic ticket you can’t go vote
Rob Reynolds: Let me address Santa/Phillip: I think the word ‘finished’ is much too strong…
Santa: (if I may add, 10.5 trillion, sounds pretty finished to me)
Rob Reynolds: this country still has the world’s most powerful economy, most powerful military, and has, still, a leadership role in multinational organizations such as NATO, the UN, etc. So while the nature of American power will change, the implication that the country is all washed up is premature.
Rob Reynolds: Initially, Palin seemed a plus. People liked her, she energised the Republican ‘base’, but, as she began giving interviews, it became clear there were gaps in her experience and her views disturbed many people who might otherwise vote for McCain— for example..
Santa: ‘gaps’ …like the grand canyon size ?
Rob Reynolds: well, lets just say there were some GAPS, but I will say I don’t think McCain would have revved up his base without her.
Gary from Taiwan: At least she lit up people’s enthusiasm for the election even more, I think.
Kaleab, Ottawa: Bill Clinton famously said, “there is nothing wrong with America, that can’t be fixed by what is right with America”. My sentiments are that the weight of America’s growing problems since the Clinton administration has grown too vast – what does the future hold for America?
Rob Reynolds: well Kaleab let me dust off my crystal ball. Actually I don’t do prophecy very well. But it’s going to be a difficult time for America and for a lot of other countries. We have the financial crisis, we are going into economic hard times, and the international situation remains unsettled, so I think the next president will have a lot of very big challenges. Can he overcome them? I don’t know.
mjismail, Birmingham: There’s all this talk about ‘change’ – but do you think things will really change?
Rob Reynolds: Mjismail. I think there will be a change from the style and policies of the Bush admin. That’s inevitable no matter who wins.
mjismail, Birmingham: but will there be ‘big’ changes?
Rob Reynolds: will the fundamentals of human life change? No. But if Obama becomes president there will be a very interesting dynamic particularly with regard to race in America that will be very interesting to watch. I think potentially there could be BIG policy changes. Universal health care, for example. It seems as if we have reached a point at which the country has decided they want that change.
Santa: A socialist USA ? …spreading the wealth.
Dan: who wouldn’t want universal health care? I just can’t fathom it
Rob Reynolds: no, the capitalist system isn’t going to change, I don’t think, but there will certainly be tighter regulation and oversight, and it will be less cool to be an investment banker on Wall Street… at least for a while. On health care… we have a strange system here whereby most people get health care from their employers, so lots of people think that if there is a universal system comparable to the UK’s system, for instance, taxpayers will have too large a burden. That’s why a lot of people don’t like the idea— they think it will cost them too much.
David: Rob, if Obama wins, do you think he will be at risk of physical attack from those who feel he threatens their way of life?
Rob Reynolds: David, certainly that is a danger— for any president, anytime. In US history, four president have been assassinated. But from what I have seen of Sen. Obama’s security detail, its very tight, and it seems like the authorities have been zealous in picking up people who have talked about it in a threatening way. So we all hope nothing dreadful will happen.
Al Jazeera mod: Do you think US voters think about how the world sees the US when they vote?
Rob Reynolds: Some of them certainly do. I was in California recently talking to elderly voters and several of them mentioned they felt bad that people abroad have such negative feelings toward the US and they don’t understand why, fully. They are sort of hurt by it; they say that the US has done a lot of good around the world, why do people dislike us? So I think yes, many voters do have that in mind, though it’s probably not issue #1 for that many of them
Al Jazeera mod: Do you think the world will react very differently depending on who’s elected?
Rob Reynolds: I think the world inevitably will be somewhat relieved no matter who takes office in January— just because President Bush is so deeply unpopular. I don’t sense that many non-Americans have much of a ‘feeling’ about Sen. McCain, but I think whoever becomes President will make gestures and overtures to world public opinion to show that the cowboys have gone back home to the ranch.
Helmut, Austria: McCain seemed to be ok a few years back ..
Rob Reynolds: He has moved rightward to accommodate the more conservative elements of his party. That’s what you have to do in politics.
David: Rob, I get the sense from talking to friends in the UK that people are surprised that the Republicans couldn’t come up with a stronger candidate.
mjismail, Birmingham: how much influence has the lobbyists had in this years election? (lobby groups such as AIPEC etc…)
Rob Reynolds: Given that President Bush essentially blighted the Republican ‘brand’ i think a lot of Republicans wanted to stay out of the race this time, but you did have Giuliani and Romney in the early stages of the campaign for the GOP nomination, they were formidable figures in the party.
Kaleab, Ottawa: I’ve often heard Barack Obama referred to as a modern day JFK, do you think that Obama will bring about, an almost cultural revolution in America?
Rob Reynolds: Seriously, I don’t think Obama is about revolution. I think he is about basic competence. Returning the functions of government to a more basic level of working so that for example American cities don’t get washed away in storms, or that speculators don’t run totally wild. He doesn’t strike me as a revolutionary, although his very ‘presence’ may be revolutionary
r.belgium: will be there any differences in foreign policy if obama becomes president?
Rob Reynolds: yes. If he becomes President I think you will see a more consultative foreign policy and less inclination to use military force, although none of us know what sorts of international crises the next president will face.
Rob Reynolds: I hate to end on a ‘downer’ note… but I have to go do a live shot, so I have to say goodbye and thanks to all of you— I really enjoyed it.
Dan: Thanks Rob
mjismail, Birmingham: thanks
Helmut, Austria: bye, rob
David: thanks Rob
John: Thanks Rob
Al Jazeera mod: Thanks to everyone who took part and some great questions!
r.belgium): thanks rob
mjismail, Birmingham: will there be anymore live chats before the election? Or even after the election perhaps a weekly/monthly chat about general issues/specific issues on the agenda
Al Jazeera mod: Hi Mjismail, most definitely, we’ve greatly enjoyed this and everyone’s feedback was great. We’re hoping to do a post election chat with Rob as well so stay tuned for that, we’ll keep you informed, thanks everyone.
mjismail, Birmingham: thanks again
Santa: I should think this chat room is always active, so catch you next Tuesday, it’ll be a fun night
mjismail, Birmingham: Having watched AJE since its first day of broadcasting, I have been impressed with the sheer quality of reports and balanced journalism that it presents. Keep up the excellent standard of journalism that the world needs to see.

Remember, you can chat with your friends while you watch any of the live channels on Livestation. However, Al Jazeera producers will be in the chat room for special programmes. The producers of the Riz Khan show are in the chat room every Monday to Thursday evening at 20:30 GMT if you want to try to get your comments read out on air by Riz.

Nice to see someone blogging about Livestation being a normal part of their everyday life.

The Google Alerts I get for Livestation are usually about the technical aspects, or the addition of new channels, which is great, but this morning a link dropped into my in tray from someone just blogging about having a free day and Livestation being part of that.

“So instead of studying, I did other things to make me feel like I’ve been productive. I cleaned the kitchen, washed my dishes, cleaned my make up brushes (lol) and found new channels on Livestation :o excited”

Great to see how Livestation is becoming as normal a part of life as doing the kitchen chores and having a day slobbing out.

There’s been a lot of change in Livestation over the last few months. I’d like to explain where that came from, and a little of what you can expect in the future.

In the beginning

Many months ago now, at the Livestation engineering den (the Bakery),
we looked at whether Livestation was something we used on a daily basis. The answer was clear, not enough of us were using it. If we weren’t using it, then why should anyone else?

Insight

About the same time I remembered this great blog, Creating Passionate Users and in particular this great post. We needed more of the woman’s reaction, not the man’s.

Since that time our new goal been to create an application that we use on a daily basis. It sounds so simple but it really is easy to get carried away with building technology and forgetting that solutions don’t mean anything if people are not using them.

Ringing the changes

Many of the changes in recents months have been created and added because of this new philosophy: User added streams, channel alerts and What’s Hot are just some of these new features. User added streams was a total paradigm shift for the whole product and without “What’s Hot” we would never have discovered the great films on Thriller TV USA or been able to use the Amazon River Fishes as our screensaver.

Loads more to come.

So, based on this new philosophy, what are plans for the future? I’ll do a proper “roadmap” post soon, but for now, highlights for me are:

- the Live Spider – we’re checking the User added channels to make sure they work, and avoid dead channels. The screen grabs are pretty good to see what the content is on the channel, old school, singing, rockets! (Good for usability, but still not that cool).

- Multi-screen – :) Watch 2,3,4 channels at the same time. The player already does this if you know the right tricks… but it’s not ready for release yet. (Ok, this is cooler)

Multiscreen in development:

Last, but not least

- Mobile Livestation… We’re quite close to getting Livestation on a certain highly popular, aesthetically pleasing, normally black, not made by Microsoft or Google handset… (now this is totally f£$king cool: ).

Jari

Is this a first?

A comment, made in the Livestation chat room attached to the Al Jazeera English live coverage of the second Obama/McCain debate, which was being streamed on Livestation, was played out live on TV as the discussion continued. An example of instant, live, interactive TV on a global scale.

As the debate and subsequent discussion continued, between 30 and 50 viewers were watching and commenting in real time, offering their take on what was being said and adding differing regional and cultural perspectives, thereby broadening the debate beyond the usual confines of such events.

The Al Jazeera English head of new media, Russell Merryman, was in the chat room feeding selected commends directly to the producers of the live TV output.

At 0301 GMT the studio used two viewer comments, one from the Your Views section of the Al Jazeera English website, and another from one of viewers in the live chat on Livestation.

Note: The caption on the screen-grab above says ‘Email’. This is was a simple error, due to the comments being fed through by email and the speed of the operation. Next time it will read ‘Live Chat’.

Livestation viewers were able to see the impact of that discussion on the live TV output, as it happened and in the same player.

That affect, of seeing a comment being used on live TV from an integrated live chat room, caused such excitement that the quality of the chat discussion immediately increased.

It was live, buzzing and a great example of engaging a global audience in new and exciting ways.

What’s more, the viewers saw that they could be seen, heard and responded to, not in the form of a solo text or email from one person, isolated and viewing alone being read out by a presenter, but as someone who was part of a new, Al Jazeera English online news community, who had gathered to watch and chat together.

It was a case of the old ‘broadcast at’ model meeting the ‘engage with’ and taking it to a new ‘global audience participation’ model.

Instant, live, interactivity empowering the online community to have a direct, live, instant impact on TV programme output?

Has this happened before?

Sitting in an internet chat room at 2am is a new experience for me. Despite having been working in the online news business for more than ten years, I have never sat up during the twilight hours chatting with total strangers. However, that all changed last week when I took part in (possibly) the first ever instant, live, interactive chat experience coupled with live TV.

Livestation teamed up with our partner channel, Al Jazeera English, to use our channel-related chat room to link up with the one-off vice-presidential debate between Palin and Biden. Dozens joined us to offer live reaction to the debate and the subsequent studio discussion, and a senior Al Jazeera journalist, Russell Merryman, was in the chat room, too, feeding comments back to the team in the Al Jazeera studio on Washington, where the post-debate discussion was being held.

A chum of mine, Jeremy Wagstaff, blogged about the experience as it happened:

“This makes all sorts of sense, and I commend Livestation for doing this kind of thing. The IRC format is a bit old school; it would be nice to see something beyond the noisy chat format. Or, even better, being able to drag our other communities into the window to watch together. But that’s down the road. This is a good way to share information—live and visual—and I think this is an exciting way forward.”

So, instant, live chat came of age for me in the early hours of October 3 (UK time), so much so that I’ll be there again at 1am Wednesday morning October 8, when the second presidential debate between Obama and McCain takes place.

I am also looking forward to seeing more URLs posted in the chat room to verify or challenge whatever the presidential candidates say. That was (possibly) another first the last time round.

Last Friday Livestation hosted our first instant interactive live chat session with some of the programme producers at Al Jazeera and our viewers during the first Presidential Debate.

While participating in the chat, something new and unexpected happened. I had a glimpse of a sort of collective “live” Wikipedia phenomenon: people in the chat room where not just expressing themselves but they were also policing what Obama and McCain were saying. Live.

As soon as one of them said something that contrasted with some claim made in the press, someone in the audience, as I would expect to be the case “ala wikipedia”, recalled the relevant piece on a newspaper and within 10 seconds the link to the article appeared in the chat.

The case in point was Obama attacking McCain on Iran and saying that the US should sit down with Iranian officials to discuss the situation without precondition. McCain argued that this was wrong; “…and therefore saying, they’ve probably been doing the right thing, because you will sit down across the table from them and that will legitimize their illegal behavior.”.

Obama then pointed out that McCain’s own advisor – Kissinger – said exactly the same thing: “Senator McCain mentioned Henry Kissinger, who’s one of his advisers, who, along with five recent secretaries of state, just said that we should meet with Iran — guess what — without precondition. This is one of your own advisers”.

And here’s the Livestation moment: one of the guys in the chatroom immediately posts the link to the article on ABC News about Kissinger saying just that (article is here).

What’s special about this? It verified the flow of information live. It cleared a doubt I had at that point: who’s misleading? Who’s right?

Knowing straightaway was very useful for me in particular during a debate designed specifically to help electors make up their mind on what to do with their vote.

I mention Wikipedia as it is serves the same “look-up” purpose but in an on-demand/time-shifted way. You hear something, you think “let me check it out on Wikipedia”. What I saw yesterday was a glimpse of the live version of this behaviour.

Another example of this type of Wisdom of the Crowds effect can be found in the popular TV game Who Wants to be a Millionaire when the contestant asks the audience to help with the answer (they always get it right).

If you can tap into the sum the individual knowledge and recollection capabilities of a group of users in real time you have a hugely powerful tool at your disposal: an instant verification tool for live TV.

Instant live interactive discussion with Al Jazeera’s programme producers on Livestation (9pm NY, 2am London).

Imagine being able to watch a live TV event while chatting about it in real time with the programme producers and other viewers. And imagine having some of your comments fed directly to the studio presenter and, possibly, influencing the direction of the discussion surrounding the live event.

Live TV often invites viewers to text in their comments via sms and email, and these are sometimes read out during the programme. Interactive TV offers red button functionality to encourage viewer feedback. And CNN will be running a live online forum discussion, with staffers taking part, during the Obama McCain presidential debate.

But mixing real time chat, between programme producers and viewers, as a live event is broadcast seems a move in the right direction, particularly when packaged in the player delivering the live TV stream.

So I will be watching Livestation’s streaming of Al Jazeera’s coverage of the presidential candidate’s debate tonight/tomorrow morning, with interest. I’ll be in the chat room just below the Livestation player along with a few of my Livestation colleagues, an Al Jazeera programme producer and loads of people I have never met before. Al Jazeera has a discussion-based programme built around the live debate with reaction from around the globe.

Any Livestation viewer can now be part of that global reaction.

If you don’t have the player, get it here.

I was reading an interesting post on paidcontent about Blinkx dropping their desktop app following the footsteps of Joost and iPlayer.

The overall conclusion is that having a downloadable app is more of a hurdle than a benefit.

I have spent the last 10 years working on desktop apps and I am now convinced that the “downloadable app argument” is a fallacy as the problem is simply framed in the wrong way.

The issues is not whether a downloadable app is an obstacle for users or not; the right way to frame the problem is around consumer value. The question should be: “Is it clear to consumers that by downloading this desktop application they will gain sufficient value to justify the leap of faith required to download it?”

There are several hugely successful services based on downloadable apps and they never had the problem of having to ask themselves if it was worth creating a web version of their service.

Desktop applications have the ability to offer unique features/service impossible to offer via a browser. The point is that if you are trying to offer to people a service that could be offered in a browser, why should they download the app? They will never see the value or the reason for doing so.

You could accuse Livestation of being victim of the same fallacy but in reality there a number of reasons why we believe we are not falling victims of this problem.

Livestation is built on a sophisticated P2P technology which has a special characteristic: it allows us to extend the availability of the service to a large number of viewers. Without it, the service would fall on its face at every large event (when people really want live streaming) and as it becomes more popular (as it is doing right now). P2P requires a download.

But I am sure some of you maybe thinking that our viewers don’t know and don’t worry about what’s under the bonnet, so we have packed the player with features that deliver clear and tangible value that would be very hard, if not impossible, to deliver via a browser.

The simple idea of aggregating your favourite streams from all over the Internet in one convenient player where you can flick between them with a click; alerts being pushed to your screen even when you are not watching for breaking news, or increased activity on a channel or when other viewers add new channels (all in the next release), live chat and the simple but hugely valuable, ability to run the player on top of all the other windows in the corner of your screen while you update your facebook pages or write an email to your mum.

The mistake made by many companies is to think that a technological advantage, such as saving bandwidth when downloading large files, is valuable enough for users to decide to install a plug-in or a file.

Here’s some examples to support my idea:

Skype: several hundreds of millions of downloads. Anyone every worried about having a web based version of Skype? Not that I know of.

IM: almost a billion messenger clients installed on pretty much every computer in the world… and all downloaded from the web.

Move Networks: more than 60 million plugins downloaded as they significantly improve the user experience when trying to watch something (in the browser) but nonetheless requiring a download.

(Scanning my system tray…)

BBC News Alerts: an app developed by my previous company Skinkers that sends you breaking news to the desktop and has a news ticker you can dock at the top/bottom of your screen to stay on top of the news. Huge number of downloads – can’t disclose the number because of client confidentiality ;-)

Off to pack even more useful features in the next release of Livestation.

The streaming of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) live from CERN on Livestation proved once more and overwhelmingly, if indeed it needed proving, the growing demand for live coverage of news events over broadband.

We pitched in to help the team at CERN in Switzerland meet that demand, as reported by David earlier, and as soon as they added a link to Livestation to the main streaming page on their site, our downloads started clocking at the amazing rate of 2/second.

At 8.30 GMT, we registered a 300% increase in requests/traffic on our system due to viewers following the “switch on” event on some of our partner channels (BBC World News, Euronews, etc). As we went live with the LHC stream a couple of hours later, traffic surged by 600% above our base level (watching during non-peak events).

Apart from being very impressed with our team ability to get the channel live in less than 2 hours, I am pretty impressed by how people are turning to the Internet more and more for their live TV needs.

It seems to me that there may be a natural tendency in people, verging on being almost a natural assumption, that live TV should be availalbe – somewhere – online.

I like the fact that we are making it easier for viewers to find what they are looking for in one place. I hope they like it too.

It took just two hours from the moment we saw the CERN servers struggling to cope with the demand for live coverage of the Large Hadron Collider experiment to it being streamed on Livestation.

We were prompted, in part, by a blog on the The Inquisitr earlier in the day which had suggested viewers could watch events unfold on Livestation.

Clearly, a player like Livestation is ideal for special news events like this, especially when we can tie it to news alerts to all our viewers, so we all kicked into gear and got cracking, phoned CERN and offered to help them out.

The technical team at CERN have put a button on their live webcast page offering Livestation as an option. Now we can all sit back and watch the build up to the big bang on Livestation, at least until 18:00 CEST when the feed is switched off.

We are told the live streaming will be back next month in time for the big bang.

David

A Livestation alert in my email inbox confirmed what we always knew, that offering live streaming of news channels with different perspectives is compelling viewing.

“Wow, an incredible difference it is to watch news from outside the bubble,” writes Steve in his post The US., Outside-In on the blog Noise is Information.

Clearly, from what the Livestation viewer writes, being able to see an alternative point of view from Russia Today and Al Jazeera has offered him a totally different take on domestic and world events.

Commenting on a Russia Today piece which focused on the protests outside the Republican Convention, he writes, “Russian television views American protests the way American television views Chinese protests… in the Russian portrayal, the protesters are "voters” who have legitimate grievances, and the police are heavy-handed and violent in their repression… If you’ve seen any mention of the protests on American TV, it’s been focused almost exclusively on a few smashed windows, and is heavily biased toward the police perspective," he writes.

The Livestation viewer then flicked from Russia Today to Al Jazeera where he viewed a report from an Al Jazeera correspondent who “actually goes to Hanoi” to visit the site where John McCain’s plane was shot down and finds “the old man who, as a 17-year-old, pulled McCain from the lake into which he had parachuted.”According to the writer, the Al Jazeera correspondent then spoke to the head of the prison where McCain was held and another perspective on the story emerges.

For me, as a news guy, this is the fun bit of the project, particularly as we have a stack of channels lined up to stretch that perspective fix to totally new levels. And on the functionality front, in a few weeks there’ll be the multi-screen layer release offering Livestation viewers an ability to compare and contrast those perspectives at the same time.