Oliver Thylmann’s Thoughts

Scoble posts about Kyte.tv on Techcrunch and how Kyte.tv will kill Qik and others in the live video streaming arena. I have been testing the new Kyte.tv S60 app on my Nokia N95 for some time, and it is very powerful.  I am not yet sure if I want all those features within on applications but it does lend itself to not only quickly sending a video onto kyte.tv but rather as a full channel management application, something Robert needs for his work. I am watching Kyte closely, as one of the video start-ups to watch.

Their winning items are the good channel systems with a feedback loop (they had video responses way before seesmic was here if I remember correctly) and their mobile focus, because that is where this video stuff is going. Yes, it is taking longer than anticipated, but you will mostly post video from your phone, simply because there are now already more phone cameras than digital cameras out there and there are way less video cameras than digital cameras and all mobile phone cameras are moving to be able to record video.

The only thing we need are mobile phone internet flatrates and I hope that the carriers are seeing in the iPhone that a flatrate helps. I don’t believe the increased usage comes form the iPhone only, but for a large part from not having to think about being online or not. When you have to think in terms of MB used or something, you do start to think and you use stuff less.

Anyway, I do believe Kyte.tv will rule them all and will be one of the big video players to watch in the next 10 years. They have the backing, they have the right focus, and they are developing the right tools. They are just a service that provides a service. They are not focussing on becoming a destination, because the destination is always the player, and the TV of the future is distributed and re-aggregated. There will not be one controlling system.

I finally have my photo and video site. This should have happened a long time ago and now it is finally there. With family and friends already on Flickr for Photo sharing it was the perfect space for me to allow Video Sharing too and this is now a reality for pro users. There is a 90 second and 150 MB length limit for videos but the implementation itself is stunningly beautiful. Pro Accounts do not have an upload (in total) or bandwidth limit though. Kick ass! Read a launch report on Techcrunch.

Sadly the atom interface that allows me to post photos from my mobile phone, does not seem to be there yet for videos, but it will surely be coming.

Update: You seem to be able to upload via m.flickr.com

The invitation to the Nokia Idea Generation Workshop came in some time ago and I have now full confirmation as well as a list of other attendees for the event. The general idea is to generate ideas for future mobile products with a timeframe of several years out. With the development of a new phone taking something like 3 years, it has to be a few years out of course.

Up till now I am wonderfully cared for and all things are settled for a wonderful two days with some really great people. Sadly I will not be able to blog about the contents but can blog about everything around and who is there. That list alone will tell you that it will be ahrd for the event not to turn out great.

Mika Röykkee is one of their Nokia senior usability people coming from the S60 team and moving to the next generation products. Udo Szabo is senior product manager on the Ovi team. Urpo (Upi) Nokkonen is hardware designer and I seem to have to thank him for the N95 :). Joeske Schellen is designer at Nokia focussing on wearable electronics. Damian Dinning seems to be the oversight man in concepting and planning and is largely focussing on the imaging part of it all. Sami Oinonen is in the innovation acceleration team and is responsible for co-creation activities so I seem to have to thank him for the event (and probably charlie for the invitation ;)). Laura Richards is one of their category and consumer understanding people (buy does Nokia have cool department names ;)) and Jarkko Kaislasaari is a product manager that worked on the N95. Of course we can’t leave out marketing, so Eri Kuwabara is there too. But actually we all do not need to be there because Timo Veikkola is there, and he is Senior Future Specialist, systematically analyzing the world to spot trends … Our facilitator is Scott Hirsch who seems to have worked on some interesting things.

All in all, this alone gives a great Nokia base to the meeting that will make sure that we have some very productive two days.

But who got invited? Interesting list to say the least. Dave Green is out gaming guy who also runs Snackspot, what a cool blog. Christopher Macintosh Morrison is one of the marketing people, having sold the first digital only marketing agency in London to WPP and now has a new one among others doing marketing for mobile social networks. And Mac, once you get the fire eagle beta login I’d love an invite Vilhelm Sjostrom was Strategic Director at Agency FWD in Helsinki and has turned pro Photographer. Matt Brown is interaction designer at last.fm, which means lots to learn on that front. Thayer Driver was developer at UpMyStreet, which might lead to interesting discussions to what we are doing, and is focussed on social media, gaming and web 2.0. Dietmar Müllser is part of the ISO digital photography committee, tests cameras and knows digital. Jim Griffin is the guy holding the talks about the future of music and entertainment delivery it seems. Sascha Pohflepp studying design interactions and is part of the people behind We Make Money Not Art. Rafe Blandford runs All About Symbian. Matt Hunter is Partner at IDEO and I found a fun video about where digital cameras are going. He is also a drummer, like I am, and not playing, because of a sun, like I am Sami Köykkä is a digital services consultant, speaker and author from what I could find, and Moritz Waldemeyer seems to be another interactions designer type of guy that actually seems to have an iPhone based on his blog.

I actually just posted a video on Seesmic to ask the question what you think the future phone should look like. Just to possibly get a bit of feedback.

Congrats to the team over at Kyte.tv, they are developing a really nice system. I am especially thinking about the mobile part here. The app is really nice and allows me to easily send videos and pictures from my phone. I’d really like the system to allow for posting of single videos directly to my blog, because that is really what I want, but at the moment you just have a channel which is a bit of a pain. I don’t want a channel. But I do expect them doing a lot with the $15 million, especially on the mobile front. At least I hope that they do not spend it all on support people. Ever notice that whenever you post something a nice girl (most of the time) comes into your chat saying what a cool video it is? Interestingly enough these girls (if they are girls) know very well how the entire Kyte.tv system works. Interesting strategy to stress the interaction part. Here is one quote from my last video: “but i think the main feature of kye is the interactivity”. Now is that is not scripted

One competition they just got though is from Qik, see my Profile here. Robert Scoble recently blogged about them and is posting videos like crazy. When you do a live feed on your Kyte.tv Nokia app you just send pictures, on Qik you send a video, live, from your mobile phone. Kick ass! The vision of everybody being press gets further and further! I am lovin’ it.

Need to play a bit more with both system and looking forward to Kyte.tv doing full streaming and allowing me to automatically post to my blog, if Seesmic does not get their first