Lifecasting Justin.tv Style (Justin Kan & iJusine)

By George Wilkinson

Where iJustine and Fans Make an Interesting Combination of Interaction and Synergy

I was in the midst of writing about new technologies emerging for distribution and transmitting high quality video over wireless broadband systems, but I was diverted by a desire to investigate equipment used for the low-tech solutions of YouTube quality distribution video over the Internet. That led me to Justin Kan (http://www.justin.tv/Justin), who mounted a camera and microphone to a hat he wore to stream video and audio in wireless mode to the Internet anywhere he went. That is where I discovered a new form of an online social community called “lifecasting.”

Justin Kan is the founder of Justinl.tv, a San Francisco Internet startup that provides a way for a video blog to stream live video/audio over the Internet in a social context where viewers with a web browser can select any of the members on his site and view their live streams. Streaming video from a camera of yourself in your room is not new. You may recall the JenniCam many years ago where you could see video of her in her home streamed over the Internet or the MIT student taking his video camera mobile and viewing the Internet with an optical eyepiece over his head to view the computer, a computer and a keyboard integrated into his clothes. Put those two together and you got Justin.tv, 24/7 lifecasting gone mobile.

I wanted to determine the equipment they were using to do this when I was surprised to find someone featured on Justin.tv that I had previously corresponded with a few months earlier, Justine Ezarik, on a totally different subject. At that time I had no idea she was lifecasting (http://www.justin.tv/iJustine). She has several more links on her site page representing her extensive online presence where she makes a jesting claim, “I am the Internet.” She must be trying to muscle out Al Gore or something.

It was at Macworld conference where Justine made some interviews with exhibitors on the show floor at the same time Justin was roaming about the show with his hat-equipped web cam and broadcasting live audio/video wireless to his Internet site, which could be viewed by anyone in real-time. The two met and she soon became one of the site’s first new lifecaster on Justin.tv and today remains the most popular one according to the site statistics.

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