PocketCaster streaming mobile video looks promising

That’s me in San Francisco. I’m about to go out wedding ring shopping. This is the key task I have been assigned by my other half: Acquire the costs of a 5mm P/T LCF Size 9 and a size 7.

Working on the basis that the above gibberish is, indeed, understood by the jewelers I am off to, then I’ve to purchase both. And we’re good.

I wanted to do some live video streaming on the walk to the shops, particularly so that the other half, sat at home in England with her laptop, could experience the sights and sounds once again. I thought it’d be nice, plus, to my knowledge, she hasn’t seen this sort of thing ‘live’ yet.

Obviously in the mobile industry, you can’t move for Qiks and FlixWagons all over the place. Me? I’m the poor little boy sat in the corner. I got my QIK activation code a few weeks ago and promptly lost the code message when I flashed my Nokia E90. When I did the restore, the sodding text message containing the activation code was gone. Now I don’t know how to get another one. Arse.

Then I lost my E90. Double arse.

Then I thought I’d try FlixWagon. I can’t remember precisely what happened — oh yes — I tried to pretend my E90 was a Nokia N95. It didn’t work on the E90. Arse.

I’m now Nokia-Free thanks to me losing the E90. I do have an N73 but it’s locked to 3UK and I don’t fancy the 200 quid a meg international data rates.

So what phones do I have?

A Blackberry. Let’s just put that to one side, shall we? That ain’t going to have streaming video for a few centuries.

And I have a Samsung Blackjack II.

I wondered what providers supported Windows Mobile. QIK? No.

FlixWagon? Couldn’t tell you. I’ve signed up for their alpha — AGAIN — in an effort to try and see what devices they support and to find out if Windows Mobile / Smartphone is featured. I can’t tell you the answer at the moment as I got the ‘thanks very much, er, we’re in alpha and, you know, we’ll add you gradually’ note. Almost helpful. I couldn’t be arsed to navigate around the FlixWagon site to search for supported handsets. Put it on the front page or the sign-up page like QIK do, PLEASE.

So I hunted around. Google Search galore. I came across PocketCaster by Comvu. They’re the folk who do mobile streaming video for Reuters.

Right.

I’m home. Business critical service! No alphas! Let’s be having you, as the phrase goes.

I see that there’s Windows Smartphone support. Blackjack II is actually mentioned as a supported handset. Right on! They’ve got Symbian too. Tons of Symbian flavours.

I sign-up.

Type in your mobile, yes. Type in your email address. Yes. Go!

Nothing.

You what?

No text message arrived. That’s a bit rubbish.

Back to the sign-up form. I go to the bit that says ‘For users without SMS feature on their phone plan’.

Strange. Who DOESN’T have SMS enabled on their phone? So be it. They’re probably using some rubbish aggregator? Or worse, they’re maybe saving money and sending the ‘texts’ by email. Fair enough I’ll sign-up this way.

No. You know what, I think? I’ll sign-up via mobile. That’ll let me download the application to my phone easily, won’t it?

Er…

Comvu.com doesn’t have dynamic mobile browser service. Instead I have to wait for the site to load on my Windows Mobile and then click the ‘mobile version’ link. Strange but, you know, I persevere.

I’m thinking about being able to walk down Columbus with my Samsung videoing stuff in just a few minutes!

I sign-up by mobile. Three different times. With a username. Without a username but with a phone number. With both. Click here if you don’t have SMS. Blah blah blah. I jumped through hoop after hoop.

Nada.

So, I don’t know what the hell is up with PocketCaster. It looked good. The sign-up implementation is perhaps too confusing for someone like me. You know what, let me try this ONCE more. I’m going to use the big long form that asks for lots of information.

.. ..

OK I’ve signed up — fourth or five time now and it worked — I used the huge big form and put in an email address that would go directly to the Samsung Outlook inbox… and it worked. I am now ‘getting software’. Phew.

Ok it’s finally downloading. Exciting.

And my video is now live.

I’m going to play a little more and see how I get on.