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Darren Waters

Zoooming to Japan

  • Darren Waters
  • 10 Mar 08, 13:25 GMT

Last year I met , the young developer behind web 2.0 start-up, , a photo-sharing site.

He had moved to San Francisco at 17 to get closer to the heart of the web community and built Zooomr as a way of sharing photos with friends and family.

He has worked to build a community around Zooomr and has introduced many features that big budget rival , owned by Yahoo, does not have, such as Twitter integration and localisation into more than 10 different languages.

But one of the criticisms of Zooomr was that it lacked the server ooomph of rival Flickr, and was often slow to use.

Kris got in touch with me this week to say he's made the move to Japan, where Zooomr is now based.

He's got new servers up and running and a new version of Zooomr released.

He said: "Japan has always been a centre for hardware technology, so it's rich in high-speed internet/connectivity and mobile devices as well.

"And although Japan may be a boon for hardware companies and solutions, it hasn't had much direction when it comes to software or community so, I've ventured across the pond to set up shop here.

"In short, I believe the next future of the web is going to happen in Japan. The biggest thing holding back places like Silicon Valley is the hardware and infrastructure, along with all of the big guys (Google, Yahoo etc) having already sucked up core talent."

I've been using the new version of Zooomr, albeit briefly, and it certainly feels more responsive than previous iterations. So if you're looking for a new photo-sharing site to join, then I'm sure Kris would welcome your participation.

Rory Cellan-Jones

Live from your mobile

  • Rory Cellan-Jones
  • 10 Mar 08, 10:14 GMT

What would happen if everyone, anywhere, could have their own live television station from a mobile phone? So I could broadcast something as banal as my walk with the dog, or citizens could go live in conflict zones?

Well that is already possible – and in fact it’s happening. A number of services including and , are competing to make "live" the next big thing in web video, and YouTube is poised to introduce its own live service.

The chief executive of Flixwagon popped into the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½'s Television Centre a few days ago on a brief visit to London from his company's base in Israel. I took Eran Hess up to our live News 24 studio to record the interview you can see above - it seemed an appropriate place to talk about software that puts live television in anyone's hands.

I had already been using Flixwagon for a few days and found it fascinating but slightly scary. You download the software to your phone, install it and off you go. Once you start broadcasting your output - or "flix" - can be seen within seconds on the Flixwagon site, and then reviewed later. You can choose whether you want your broadcasts to be public or private - and remember that because you are live, anything could happen in front of your phone, and be seen unedited by anyone. The difficult thing to work out is - what is the point? Yes, you can see my live dog-walk - but do you really want to?

"So, who really wants to go live?" I asked Mr Hess. "People do," he insisted. And he wasn't worried that the impending arrival of the company which made online video a hit in the first place would sweep Flixwagon away. "YouTube going live is an opportunity – not a threat. The whole idea of live is getting validation.â€

I was less clear about how Flixwagon and similar sites would make money from live video, but Mr Hess seems to be banking on acting as a bridge between professional broadcasters and citizen journalists. So he has done a deal with MTV which has seen the station give phones with Flixwagon to what it calls "street journalists" to cover the primaries in the United States. Their clips are shown live on the web - whether it's an Obama victory speech or vox pops with New York voters - and some make it onto MTV itself.

Eran Hess also revealed that he had just done a deal with an Israeli news channel which will supply phones with Flixwagon to citizens in the towns of Sderot and Ashkelon where rockets fired from Gaza have been landing. It will be interesting to see whether Arab stations respond by putting the same tool in the hands of Palestinians in Gaza.

So a phone and a piece of software - and a 3g network - are you all need now to start putting your message across to a live audience. It promises to give new vigour to the whole idea of citizen journalism, and poses a challenge to existing broadcasters. Because of course these citizen journalists are not bound by any code of taste, decency, truth or impartiality, which could give their broadcasts a dangerous, edgy quality which might appeal more to viewers than the professional version of television news.

Welcome to a future where everything may be televised - live. I'm not entirely sure I like the idea.

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