That segment of the populace will doubtless be delighted to know that starting this weekend, PGA tour events will be streamed live online, courtesy CBSSports.com and the network’s iPhone, Android and iPad apps. And for those on less-privileged platforms like Windows Phone and BlackBerry who are really hard up for golf, a mobile-adapted web player will also be available at m.dbssports.com.

This weekend’s Farmers Insurance Open is the first-ever PGA tour event for which the full network broadcast will be live-streamed online, but it won’t be the last. In fact, 18 more tour events, all part of the FedExCup series, will be streamed by CBS, and all Golf Channel and NBC telecasts will also be be streamed. NBC’s streaming start begins with the wonderfully named Waste Management Phoenix Open.

I really, really hope the PGA got extra cash for that one.

A thought occurs. On the rare occasions when I actually have watched more than 20 seconds of golf while on my way to the nearest ice hockey game, I find it almost impossible to see the ball in flight on my 42-inch high-def TV screen.

Good luck seeing that ball on your 3.5-inch iPhone or 7-inch Nexus screens.

photo credit: Stuck in Customs via photopin cc

Apple’s finally going to start streaming its events live again — starting with today’s Apple event, where we expect the iPad Mini to debut, on the Apple TV. Update: Apple just announced that it will stream the event online as well, but only for Mac and iOS users.

Apple TV owners will be able to watch the event via a special “Apple Events” app, MacRumors reports. The event is scheduled to begin today at 10 a.m. Pacific.

Apple hasn’t offered a livestream of an event since October 2010 (that was also only viewable on iOS devices). It’s unclear why Apple has gone so long without streaming its events, as I can’t imagine the cost is much of an issue. Perhaps the company finds it useful to let the media do most of its publicity work when it comes to events.

The Apple Events app also lets you view several older events — clearly catering to the Apple faithful.

VentureBeat will be on the ground at today’s event, so check back for updates and our live blog! We’re also hearing that Apple may debut a 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro and some refreshed computers.

How do you stand out in the increasingly crowded live video-streaming market? In the case of Livestream, it’s by killing the ads.

Today the company announced that it’s offering free live video broadcasting access via Livestream.com and a new iPhone app, Livestream for Producers, without any ads cluttering the experience. That means no banner ads, no preroll ads, and no mid-roll ads (which always feel particularly egregious in live broadcasts).

“We’ve been in the business with ad-supported free streaming, but early last year we realized the user experience [with ads] was starting to get really disruptive,” Livestream cofounder and CEO Max Haot told VentureBeat in an interview yesterday.

At that point, he was unsure of just how productive ads were for a free streaming service, and he also noticed that competitors began using mid-roll ads. All of that led the company to consider an entirely new way of monetizing, similar to how Twitter avoided just plugging ads into your stream of tweets.

“We just believe that the winning platform … is one without ads,” Haot said.

Here’s how the new ad-free Livestream service works: Anyone can start broadcasting video via the company’s website, or the new iPhone app. You’ll no longer be able to embed free video streams, but you can easily share your link to the stream on Livestream.com. And once you have a stream saved, you’ll have access to it for 30 days. To watch your free stream, viewers will have to log in to Livestream, either with an account from the site or through Facebook.

If you need to archive videos longer than a month, or want to unlock the log in restriction for viewing your streams, you can upgrade to a producer account for $45 a month. It may seem like Livestream is trying to coax free users into the premium plan, but Haot tells me the company will welcome the influx of new free users as well.

“Ultimately, we really want to build the biggest live event community on Livestream.com,” he said. The company expects around 90 percent of users to stick with the free plan, while the rest will opt for the Producer Account or the original $269 a month Livestream premium account.

The new Livestream for Producers iPhone app marks the first time the company has offered live broadcasting on a mobile device, something that competitor Ustream has offered for some time. Livestream has mostly been focused on event broadcasting up until now, Haot tells me. The company spent a lot of time making sure the new iPhone app works particularly well on 3G networks, which often have limited badwidth available for video streaming.

Livestream still hasn’t revealed how it will unlock embedding videos under its new platform, but Haot says the company will announce more details in the next few weeks.

Livestream is based in New York City and has raised around $13 million in funding so far.

Apple has confirmed that it will offer a live stream of concerts from its iTunes Festival 2012.

The iTunes Festival is an annual music event that Apple holds over 30 days. This year’s event features musical performances by the likes of Usher, Deadmau5, Jack White, Muse, Alicia Keys, and more. Usually, the company raffles off tickets to each night of the shows, but this year it’s doing considerably more.

Apple is launching an iTunes Festival app for Apple TV, iOS, and of course the web, as you can see from the screenshot above. The company is even plugging the use of watching the event on your television via the combination of iOS app and the Airplay feature, which requires an Apple TV.

The move is similar to what Google has done in the past, by making popular concerts like Bonnaroo, Vivid Live, and Coachella live streaming through YouTube. However, this is a bit different in Apple’s case. Since Apple isn’t known for its live streaming of media, part of me wonders if this move is part of a larger picture.

Via MacRumors

Ustream has promoted co-founder and president Brad Hunstable to CEO of the popular live-streaming video service, the company announced Wednesday morning.

Hunstable has been serving as interim CEO since November 2011, when former CEO John Ham stepped down to return to “his entrepreneurial roots.” Since that time, Ustream’s board has been on the lookout for a new CEO. In a not-so-surprising move, it decided that Hunstable would be the right person for the job.

To illustrate why Hunstable got the promotion, check out these numbers. In the first half of 2012 vs. the first half of 2011, Ustream has seen a 170 percent bump in subscribers to its Pro Broadcasting service, 290 percent in subscriber revenue growth, and 300 percent growth in Pay-Per-View revenue.

It also doesn’t hurt that Ustream has a partnership in place with NASA, which has led to hugely popular live streams of the Mars rover landing and the SpaceX Dragon capsule capture by the International Space Station.

“We’ve had incredible growth in the first half of this year,” Hunstable told VentureBeat. “Not only did we bring in new high-level talent, but we also launched new products.”

Ustream’s numbers look good for two reasons: social engagement and mobile usage. On the social front, Ustream embraced Facebook’s Timeline and “open graph” to attract many new users. Additionally, the company has seen mobile usage from iPhone, Android, and other apps sharply increase.

“Open graph has driven more viewers to us while mobile has been driving more broadcasters,” Hunstable said. “One out of eight streams are broadcasting from mobile and one out of five viewers are watching from mobile.”

Before co-founding Ustream with Ham, Hunstable served in the United States Army as an Operations Officer and a development manager for Hillwood Development.

Brad Hunstable photo: About.com/BradHunstable

Google’s Hangouts group video-chat on Google+ continues to be the social network’s most compelling feature. Today, Google is opening up the Hangouts On Air feature to all users, allowing them to broadcast their video chat sessions for the world to see.

Google first debuted the live-streaming feature last year, but it was only available to select performers and celebrities. President Obama and the Dalai Lama both used the feature to stream live video chats, which proved that Google+ Hangouts feature was robust enough to take on live-streaming mainstays like Ustream and Livestream.

You can make any Google+ Hangout live by clicking the “Enable Hangouts On Air” button, and it will then be accessible from your Google+ stream, your YouTube page, or your website (if you’ve embedded the stream). You’ll be able to see how many people are tuning into your live broadcast, and Google will also place a copy of your live Hangout session in your YouTube account for posterity.

Google says the feature will be rolled out over the next few weeks (I currently don’t see it in my Hangouts options). The company recently introduced a slew of new Hangouts apps and games, including Google Effects, which lets you add wacky accessories to your video like fake glasses and facial hair.

Sports are best when watched live, so it’s fortunate that NBC’s coverage at the London 2012 Olympics will include live streaming video of all 32 sports online.

The broadcaster, which launched its official Olympics website today, will offer access to the sports in real-time — before the time-delayed coverage that airs on the traditional TV stations in America. The site will also provide users with lots of archived content, stats, and other supplementary material. (Dedicated fans of the Olympics may also want to check out the Olympic Athletes Hub.)

And for those of you who’d prefer to sleep, NBC said the big events will be archived online relatively quickly. The only exception would be for coverage of events that NBC wants to prominently feature on TV first.

One thing that NBC isn’t worried about is having the live stream coverage hurt the traditional TV viewership.

“Anytime you have a great event that happens before it shows on the air, it increases ratings and generates buzz,” NBC Sports Digital Media VP Rick Cordella told the New York Times. Those comments mimic what Cordella said earlier this year when the company decided to offer a live stream of the Super Bowl. “Whatever is on schedule that day, if cameras are on it, we’ll stream it,” he said, which accounts for about 2,500 hours of coverage.

NBC Sports is ditching Microsoft’s Silverlight video plugin for this year’s Olympic streaming coverage. Instead, the company is teaming up with YouTube, which has been ramping up all its live streaming efforts. The video streaming themselves, however, will exclusively be available on the NBC Sports Olympic site.

Will you be checking out the late-night Olympic live streams?  Let us know in the comments.

London 2012 Olympics photo via  Steve Heap / Shutterstock.com; Via The Verge

Continuing efforts to push its new social network into the mainstream, Google will live stream this year’s Republican National Convention on Google+, the company announced in a blog post today.

Google+ will also serve as the official social platform for the convention. Google+ and YouTube users will get an exclusive backstage pass to connect with Republican leaders off the podium via Google+ Hangouts, as well as streaming key events. The 2012 RNC is schedule for late August in Tampa, Fla.

This is hardly the first time Google has offered up Google+ live streaming coverage of a political event. Back in October, the social network live streamed a Hangout between leader of Tibetan Buddhism the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. More recently, President Barack Obama participated in a Google Hangout for the social network back in January.

Adding coverage of political events/discussion to Google+ is a smart move for the company, because it may actually draw in people who normally don’t like to explore new social platforms. It’s also a good way for the company to gain a slight advantage over Facebook in the political race.

Republican mascot photo via VIPDesignUSA/Shutterstock

While it’s easier than ever to stream video from our phone these days, setting up a professional-looking video stream at an event is still overly cumbersome. The biggest problem is encoding video and getting it on the web, something that usually requires expensive encoders and direct access to a nearby computer.

Livestream aims to change all that today with its first hardware device today, the Livestream Broadcaster.

The $495 encoding box can plug into professional cameras and push high-definition video to the web via Wi-Fi, as well as 3G and 4G modems. The Broadcaster works together with the New Livestream Platform, which lets you broadcast an unlimited amount of video without ads for $45 a month. (In a wise move, the company includes three months of its streaming service when you buy a Broadcaster.)

It may seem expensive, but the company tells me that traditional live broadcasting setups could run upwards of $5,000, and they’d certainly be more than a mere $500. You also gain peace of mind by having a single device that integrates directly with Livestream’s service, instead of the hodgepodge of equipment you’d have to coordinate otherwise. The Broadcaster can also be used as a desktop encoder when connected to a video production switcher.

“Our goal isn’t to become a hardware company, our goal is to break the barriers of entry to make sure more people can live stream on our service,” Livestream CEO Max Haot told VentureBeat in an interview yesterday. “We don’t care if we make any money on the hardware.”

Haot tells me that the Broadcaster hardware is slightly subsidized, and his dream is to eventually give the device away for free. While the device will be sold online through the Livestream store for now, Haot said the next step is to get the Broadcaster into the sprawling B&H electronics store in New York City. Eventually, he hopes to get the encoder into Best Buy stores.

Getting the Broadcaster into stores isn’t just about shipping more units, it’ll also be a compelling way to make consumers aware of Livestream’s service, aside from word of mouth and online ads.

The Livestream Broadcaster plugs into video cameras via a HDMI port, and sits atop them using the accessory screw slot. It supports 1080i and 720p high-definition video resolutions (as well as 480i), and broadcasts 720p H.264 video with AAC audio at 2.3 megabits per second. That won’t be as sharp as a Blu-ray, but for streaming video it should look plenty professional. The device can be controlled directly, via an iPhone app, or through the Livestream website.

Haot tells me the Broadcaster was an objective for the past three years, but it was tough going since the company didn’t have any hardware experience. After finding an unnamed OEM partner more familiar with hardware, the company finally began to focus on creating the device at the end of 2011. The OEM took charge of the Broadcaster’s board and manufacturing (Haot said it was made in the U.S.), while Livestream developed the design, specifications, software, and remote app.

New York City-based Livestream has raised $12.5 million in funding so far and currently boasts over 30 million monthly viewers. Haot will be demonstrating the Livestream Broadcaster at the NAB Show in Las Vegas next week.

YouTube is helping live video creators make money by charging viewers for access or placing ads within the stream, the site announced on its publishers blog today.

Essentially, this makes YouTube a pay-per-view service for the streaming video world. Satellite and cable TV subscribers already have a similar service, which allows them to view a live event — like Wrestlemania, UFC championship match-ups, boxing matches, etc. — for a one-time price that’s determined by the company putting on the event. Now, YouTube’s handful of eligible content partners can do this for their own live events.

Producers of live events that wouldn’t need the pay-per-view feature — such as Marvel’s The Avengers Red Carpet Premiere — can also monetize through advertising if they choose.

The new monetization option comes a year after YouTube launched the live video functionality for some of its content partners through YouTube Live. And until now, most of the bigger entertainment and sports companies weren’t able to get much use out of the service since there wasn’t a way to make money. Considering that other sites like Ustream.tv have been offering pay-per-view/advertising options to its producers for years, it’s a bit odd that YouTube waited so long to enable it.

In addition to the monetization options, however, YouTube is also giving its producers a few new tools. The site has added real-time analytics, a new publishing (preview) flow view, and Free Wirecast software, which allows you to produce and stream professional-looking live events directly to YouTube from your desktop.

Photo via Korosirego/Flickr

The music-streaming company has expanded its relationship with ESPN to include live streaming of ESPN Audio shows and sporting events. Slacker will kick-off its new content offering by broadcasting tonight’s BCS Championship game (college football’s biggest game) between LSU and Alabama.

Five year-old Slacker Radio, which makes web and mobile on-demand music and news streaming applications, has been overshadowed in the media by talk of Spotify’s U.S. launch and Pandora’s IPO, but it’s planning several announcements at CES to remind folks that it’s a formidable challenger with a unique offering. In September, the company announced a partnership with ESPN, and traffic to its web service appears to have grown exponentially as a result.

“Since offering customizable ESPN Audio content, the response has been overwhelmingly positive, but many listeners have requested live sports,” Jonathan Sasse, senior vice president of marketing at Slacker, said in a statement. “This new feature is yet another example of how Slacker is combining the best elements of traditional radio with our listeners’ demand for personalization of music, news, sports and more.”

But before you get too pumped up about live sports games, keep in mind that the broadcasts are limited to ESPN’s offerings and are web-only for the time being — meaning you can’t catch the BCS game via your Slacker mobile app. We’re told, though, that mobile integration is on the way and can be expected in a month or so.

For more breaking tech news, be sure to check out VentureBeat’s live coverage from CES 2012.

Football image via Shutterstock

The Super Bowl is the most-watched television program around the world each year, and commanded 111 million viewers for the last game, so it’s a huge deal to see its distribution move from analog to digital. With many users choosing to “cut the cord” and get rid of cable boxes in favor of computers, NBC and the NFL likely saw value in bringing the games online and to mobile devices to reach an even-bigger audience.

The two organizations also said they would live-stream NBC’s broadcasts of wild-card playoff games and the Pro Bowl, on top of the Super Bowl. The games will be streamed at NBCSports.com and NFL.com through the SNF Extra web app, which features “HD broadcast, DVR-style controls, additional camera angles, in-game highlights, live statistics and interactive elements.”

NBC and the NFL started live streaming select football games in 2008, but this is the first time the organizations have agreed to show playoff games online. NBC claims Sunday Night Football streams average between 200,000 and 300,000 viewers, while 21 million watch the games on TV, indicating that the TV ratings aren’t being affected significantly.

The phone presentation will be much more limited in scope than the traditional desktop streaming presentation. Only Verizon smartphones running the Verizon NFL Mobile app will be able to watch the Super Bowl and playoff games on their phones. NBC and the NFL did not specify which phones in the Verizon lineup include this application.

This year’s Super Bowl will take place in Indianapolis on Feb. 5.

For example, look no further than the hidden webcams Honest Tea pointed at bottles of tea it left out in the open in various cities, a marketing stunt disguised as test of citizens’ honesty.

Once reserved for “live from the red carpet!” entertainment events like the Oscars and sporting events like the Tour de France, suddenly live streaming is becoming popular with events not shown on television — partly because of the high cost-per-thousand (CPM) ad rates and high levels of interactivity it can command.

“Advertising is now our primary growth opportunity,” said Ustream founder and CEO John Ham. We spoke with him at the live streaming company’s hip HQ in San Francisco’s SOMA district. “Live content has always had some of the highest levels of engagement in traditional media like television. Some of the highest CPM is during the Super Bowl, American Idol and other live TV events. The reason for that level of engagement is simultaneous reach.”

Honest Tea is wrapping up a live social experiment today with unmanned pop-up tea stores in major U.S. cities. The campaign demonstrates how streaming video can play an important role in modern marketing campaigns.

Honest Tea placed bottles in prominent locations, unattended, and let passers-by purchase them on the honor system. The San Francisco location, near the historic Ferry Building, is pictured to the right. Each bottle cost one dollar, and it was up to each individual to decide if they would pay for their drinks. Honest Tea used hidden cameras and Ustream’s live interactive broadcast platform to see how honest folks were.

The campaign found Chicago was the most honest city, with 99 percent of visiters to the pop up paying for their tea. New York came in last with 86 percent paying. San Francisco was 8th with 93 percent.

Even if your city wasn’t competing, you could still be polled online. 99 percent of online users polled said they would pay for a bottle. (Sure, that’s easy to say when a cold bottle of tea isn’t staring you in the face.)

“The digital component really brought the brand to many many more consumers,” said Honest Tea VP of marketing Peter Kaye, in an interview with VentureBeat. “We want more people to ‘like’ us and follow us on Facebook. The live streaming certainly helped. We will have doubled our number of ‘likes’ to over 60,000 in one day.”

The campaign was effective, and cute, but it was the live streaming that got our attention. Perhaps many unknowing participants didn’t see the the hidden cameras, such as the the one aimed at the San Francisco pop up, pictured to the left. Signs explaining the legal rights to live broadcast and record the event were posted everywhere, but the ice-cold bottles of tea were what passers-by noticed.

Ham points out that Honest Tea’s goal was to reach a specific audience, and that audience happens to match Ustream’s: Young, tech-savvy professionals who use social media to share their favorite products with friends and family.

Friends and family were the reasons Ham and Ustream co-founder Brad Hunstable started the company. The two met at West Point and were sent to warafter 9/11. During military deployment the they found the options to communicate with their families and friends were limited.

“When all you have is five or 10 minutes to communicate, you start prioritizing,” says Ham. “You make tradeoffs between loved ones. It hit us: Why can’t we connect with more than one person in a meaningful way? We bet other people would use it. This is a one to many business model. We got out of the army, moved to Silicon Valley and started this company.”

They launched Ustream in March 2007 and today have 150 employees with offices in Los Angeles, Tokyo, and Budapest. The company has raised $87.8 million in investment capital from SoftBank Group, DCM, Western Technology Investors, Band of Angels Fund, and Infinity Venture Partners.

Ham says one of the keys to their current success is that they are integrated into Facebook, Twitter, Ning, AIM and other social networks.

“We allow the brands and the agencies to syndicate directely into their social media,” he says. “Live video and interactivity give customers a new aspect to an existing or new campaign. In the Honest Tea campaign, you get to see people walking by and the choices they are making. It adds an element of credibility and transparency for the company.”

There’s also the ability to partake in the campaign before it starts, during and after. Social media allows potential customers to have a conversation about the campaign from start to finish. There’s no down time. The live element can certainly be a risk, but Honest Tea’s VP of marketing has nothing to complain about today.

“We did this last year in eight cities,” says Kaye, who is busy churning out follow-up footage and highlights from the campaign. “From what I saw today, this was a big step forward. It is real time, and a good way to showcase what we have going on. It is very worthwhile and a very good investment.”

Will Honest Tea live stream again?

“Whether it’s Ustream or another real time video provider, I think definatly,” Kaye says.

Ustream competitors include Livestream.com, Justin.tv and Stickam.com. They are all pretty busy these days. Perhaps we are entering the golden age of live streaming.

The move towards live streaming is a big step for YouTube and will put it in competition with more established streaming services like Ustream and Justin.tv. It also gels well with the news that YouTube is planning to offer dedicated channels and original content.

YouTube Live, which is available at youtube.com/live, is the result of months of testing for Google. The company initially began testing live streaming early last September, but the result was mostly a mess with buggy streams and a limited amount of viewers. Google came back with an improved version of YouTube Live in January, at which point Revision3 climbed aboard as a content partner with the DiggNation show.

YouTube has already live streamed events like sports games and concerts, but the YouTube Live service is an effort to unify its streaming service. You’ll be able to see upcoming live events at the YouTube Live landing page as well as subscribe to streams from content partners. The company will also start rolling out its live streaming platform so that other content makers can join in on the live streaming fun.

Revision3 says it will be adding even more shows to YouTube Live over the next few days.

The advertisements pop up like most other advertisements do on videos — as a small bar at the bottom of the video. But instead of linking viewers to a different site, the advertisement features a poll or a number of questions that viewers can answer as they continue watching the video.

For example, a Greygoose Vodka ad would pop up during a scene on Mad Men that features cocktails. Viewers can answer a few quick questions and get a suggestion about which drink — which naturally features Greygoose Vodka — they should make. The advertisement also shows which of the viewer’s Facebook friends have taken the poll and what drinks the advertisement suggested to them.

140Fire can also deliver some more targeted advertising post-roll advertisements based on the polls that appear in the video. If an advertisement pops up that asks the viewer what kind of car they prefer, the post-roll will be an advertisement that features the car they selected. The idea is to deliver more targeted post-roll advertisements that — again — don’t link back to another site but still get the point across.

The company can also slap advertisements and polls onto live video streams like ESPN3, which features live sports events. 140Fire users can modify the polls and advertisements in real time as well — so they can tailor the advertisements to the specific sporting event. For example, a 140Fire user can modify a poll to ask how many free throws a player will make when they step to the line.

That seems like it’s the best application of the technology, said All Things D’s Kara Swisher, who was an adviser at the Launch Conference. She said the advertisements would also go well with other live events like American Idol — but they probably wouldn’t be welcome on sites like Hulu, where the content is static.

140Fire also features an analytics dashboard that shows what demographics accessed the advertisement and what kind of answers they chose. The respondents are broken down into age range, whether they are male or female, and a number of other specific demographics. The site doesn’t work with YouTube yet, though they are in talks with the company.

It looks like 140Fire is a graduate of Y Combinator’s winter 2010 class. It was originally called 140bets. Mark Cuban, Robert Kraft and Skip Paul have all invested in 140Fire.

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The company is in negotiations with both the National Basketball Association and National Hockey Leage to start broadcasting live pro-basketball and ice hockey games, according to a Bloomberg report.

YouTube, the de facto website for user-generated video content, has viewers spending 15 minutes on the site daily, on average. While that figure isn’t unimpressive by any means, YouTube is constantly looking for more effective ways to wrest people away from their TVs, and sports content certainly is one of its biggest draws. With the IPL event, viewers spent an average of 40 minutes watching each cricket match, said Google’s director of content partnerships Gautam Anand.

According to the report, Google is in talks with not only North American pro-sports leagues but soccer leagues in Europe. Securing the rights to broadcast major sports would surely cost Google a fair amount, but it would also bring in major ad revenue for the company. It could also be the first step towards YouTube, or other Google services, serving as a social hub for live sporting events. Whether this will happen is something that we’ll find out in the coming months as there was no substantial response to the statement from neither the NBA or NHL.

In addition to sports, Google is in the process of increasing other types of content on YouTube, including longer clips of movies and TV shows in an effort to compete with the likes of Hulu and Netflix, as well as streaming live music events. YouTube has had successful efforts with music before: one of the biggest live music streams was of a U2 concert that could be watched in 16 different countries back in October, 2009.

It’s basically a television streaming station in a backpack. LiveU uses multiple cellular networks and other wireless services to create a wireless bridge between someone recording video in the field and a broadcasting station. The video is streamed in high-definition to that broadcasting station or some other device.

The Israel-based company has raised $23 million to date. It has several large “media giants” as clients, but didn’t specify which. The company says its technology was specifically used at the World Cup in South Africa, the Grammy Awards in the US and the Beijing Olympics.

LiveU recently introduced new radio frequency technology to help buffer weak cellular and wireless signals in limited coverage areas and worldwide.

Live streaming video usage has become pretty popular, jumping 650 percent in 2010 compared to a year ago, according to data from ComScore. That’s in no small part due to major streaming sites like Justin.tv and UStream, which champion the media form’s growth. Justin.tv also recently made a significant push into mobile with its iPhone and Android apps that let users stream video directly to the website.

Existing investors Carmel Ventures and Canaan Partners also participated in the most recent round of funding. Isaac Hillel, Managing General Partner at Pitango Venture Capital, will join LiveU’s board of directors as part of the funding agreement.

DaCast

The San Francisco-based company originally set out to create a peer-to-peer for live video streaming technology, as we wrote in mid-2008. But the company pivoted to make its online broadcasting platform into a self-service business, allowing video creators to live stream anything they want.

Stephane Roulland, chief executive of DaCast, says it takes as little as 20 minutes to set up a professional-looking live video stream that anyone can view. He calls it live streaming “for the rest of us.”

“This is a real game-changer, since no one else is doing it today,” he said.

DaCast isn’t charging any upfront fees, license fees, or monthly subscriptions. You don’t have to buy expensive hardware or software to set it up. The service is aimed at independent broadcasters, schools, and other content creators or owners. The company is offering a free trial, giving users accounts with 10 gigabytes of free storage, or enough to broadcast a high-quality video stream to 60 people for 30 minutes.

DaCast has partnered with content delivery network Edgecast Networks, which has a worldwide network that enables the delivery of video to anyone on the web. In other words, DaCast’s service sits on top of Edgecast’s network. DaCast’s software makes it easy to charge fees for the delivery of the live video stream to customers.

DaCast has eight employees and was founded in January, 2008. Its rivals include Ooyala, Brightcove, Live Stream, and Ustream. $650,000 of the company’s funding to date comes from Roulland himself, who has been working on video technology at a variety of startups since 2000. Aldric Feuillebois is the company’s chief technology officer.

Roulland said it took a long time to get the technology done. The original peer-to-peer multicast technology for live streaming was extremely complex and time-consuming, he said. In addition, the price of bandwidth dropped so fast that it wasn’t really worth the effort (since the technology tended to save on bandwidth costs). Roulland said the company plans to add the peer-to-peer technology to its offering eventually. The company plans to make money via the sale of live streaming bandwidth and a commission on its payment transactions and advertising.

Aufhauser’s specialty was bringing in large-scale events and media deals to streaming sites, something he excelled at when he was vice president of business development at social networking site Bebo, said Justin.tv co-founder and CEO Michael Seibel. He was brought on board originally to help drive Justin.tv’s business-to-business offerings and event streaming.

“We wanted to recruit someone who had experience with the big media deals,” Seibel said. “That was when we hadn’t decided what direction to take and were doing both [business-to-business] and consumer-end streaming.”

But about six months ago, Justin.tv made a strong push into the mobile space with its iPhone and Android applications and decided to focus solely on marketing the service to consumers. That meant Aufhauser’s job was more or less defunct, as the primary revenue stream for Justin.tv is video advertising with its new direction.

“When we made that decision — and Dave was a part of it — so the job that Dave had envisioned was simply no longer at our company,” Seibel said. “We decided to mutually part ways after that.”

Rather than hire another business officer to replace Aufhauser, Justin.tv is going to focus on hiring additional engineers, Seibel said. The site hired eight engineers and a vice president of engineering in the past year.

This marks the second departure in as many weeks, as vice president of product development Caleb Elston left the company last week to start his own company called Yobongo. Elston is the second member of Justin.tv to leave to form a startup, Seibel said.

Live streaming has become a particularly popular form of media consumption, with live stream usage jumping 650 percent this year when compared to 2009. Justin.tv gives individuals a way to stream content live to the internet, whether it is from their webcams, mobile phones or wired in from a TV.

The San Francisco, Calif.-based company was part of the Y Combinator incubator program and has also received funding from Alsop Louie partners and Tim Draper — though the exact amount of money they have raised is unclear. Seibel said Justin.tv has no plans to raise any additional funds.

Dyyno is one of 70 companies chosen by VentureBeat to launch at the DEMO Fall 2010 event taking place this week in Silicon Valley. After our selection, the companies pay a fee to present. Our coverage of them remains objective.

Live-streaming events and sharing videos could get a whole lot easier – not to mention more profitable — with Dyyno, a company that is presenting today at DEMO.

With Dyyno, high-quality videos on par with that of Blu-Ray can be streamed for a tenth to a fiftieth of the cost of traditional methods. The service can easily accommodate an increase in viewers as your video goes viral – and the company says it can capture just about anything  you throw at it.

Through Dyyno’s website or the popular Justin.tv live-streaming service, users can easily create video – whether it’s a capture of your World of Warcraft game, a high-resolution movie, or live video of a ping-pong match or tech conference. Dynno then uses its HyReS streaming and distribution system to broadcast the video, which  can be watched from multiple platforms – desktop, smart phone – and easily shared on Facebook and other sites.

The service then analyzes viewer metrics. It’s also integrated with Google, PayPal and SpotXchange so you can easily monetize your video through ads or by offering subscriptions.

Dyyno has raised $8 million in a first round of financing, and is backed by Artiman Ventures and Startup Capital Ventures.

Dyyno uses technology licensed from Stanford University. The company was founded three years ago, and has 20 employees.

http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f8/980795693

Time spent watching live streaming services like Ustream and Justin.tv grew nearly 650 percent in 2010, with users clocking in 1.4 billion minutes of use.

Use of hosted content sites rose as well, but only modestly compared to live streaming sites. YouTube saw a 68 percent jump, while  Hulu — which hosts many popular TV shows on major networks — view time rose by around 75 percent. Videos on live streaming sites are also about 7 percent longer than sites that host videos.

comScore said live streaming sites were 72 percent more likely to hit the holy grail of advertising, males aged 18-34, when compared to other video sites like YouTube and Hulu. In July, Ustream attracted 3.2 million unique users while Justin.tv attracted 2.6 million.

Live streaming sites like Justin.tv and Ustream find a number of uses, ranging from streaming live content running on cable networks — such as a sports event — to feeds of a bunch of guys playing video games for charity. Most live streaming services like Justin.tv, a startup backed by the Y Combinator incubator, have already released apps for the Android marketplace and iPhone App Store.

[Photo: TheSeafarer]

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Forget the TV crew. Broadcast journalists may turn to their Android devices and iPhones to file reports on the spot.

Swedish mobile video startup Bambuser just signed a deal with Dutch mobile news agency ProSkope to let journalists stream live footage directly into their main control room. The deal is the latest in a string of partnerships the Swedish company has signed that are gradually outlining the future of mobile live video. Bambuser’s technology is already used by emergency responders to securely record accident and crime scenes and ask for advice from headquarters. They also signed a partnership with Finnish broadcaster YLE last year as an experiment; YLE’s journalists also used Bambuser’s technology to file news reports. (A video is embedded below.)

There are around a half-dozen companies trying to close in on the live mobile video space, including Ustream, Qik and Knocking.

Bambuser is the fun, if slightly eccentric, entrant from Sweden. The founder, Mans Adler, studied entrepreneurship with a Danish group called the Kaos Pilots, and went on to live in Silicon Valley and soak up ideas before returning to Sweden, where he created a “Big Brother”-style online show.

In the show, a group of people lived in a house and continuously recorded their lives with mobile phones for 48 hours. It became a viral phenomenon. And out of the publicity came the company, Bambuser, which is Swedish slang for a lousy sailor who can only handle the easiest tasks. Eventually, they started releasing live-streaming apps, once Apple signaled that it would finally allow them last fall.

By the time Steve Jobs started allowing the first live video apps into the store, Bambuser actually had one ready to go. One of their developers had already built it because he wanted a way for his girlfriend to remotely advise him on what to wear every morning. Their app works on multiple models of iPhones from the video-enabled 3GS to older versions because it uses a hack that takes around two dozen screenshots a second when the phone’s viewfinder is turned on. The company also offers Symbian, Windows Mobile and Android versions of the app.

The killer use cases for mobile live video have yet to be fully realized. We’ve experimented with it through Ustream with varying degrees of success. My VentureBeat colleague Anthony Ha took Ustream’s mobile video pack with him to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this year and used it to interview companies in the convention center. While we did attract several hundred viewers, sometimes there were gaps in coverage as he walked around to find interesting people to interview. We realized that to make it work, there’s a lot of preparation involved, and you need to have interviewees lined up and ready to go. It’s definitely a learning process on both sides, for publishers and for technology companies.

Also, as speed improves with faster 4G networks, we might finally start to see the real pay-off.

http://static.bambuser.com/r/player.swf?vid=459890