Live streaming video of OKC roads
If you haven’t already, check out NewsOK.com/live. It’s a pretty cool tech mashup.
Live video, live chat, live blog updates, two live Twitter feeds, live Flickr photo feed, updated traffic reports for OKC and Tulsa…
 David Jones |
 Tim Money |
Isn’t this what the Internet is supposed to provide? Instant information. On demand. Live.
So here’s what we’re doing:
David Jones and Tim Money are driving a silver Jeep Cherokee around the streets and interstates of Oklahoma City.
Honk if you see them.
We are using a Sony Vaio, a mini laptop.
 
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We’d like to experiment with a netbook, which are pretty cheap these days. This Vaio is running Windows XP, and we’re making it work. We’ve plugged a wireless card into the Vaio for mobile Internet access.
We have a Sony HVR camera (similar to this one) placed on the dashboard, using a Firewire connection to the netbook. We are using Adobe Flash for the actual encode before it goes to Mogulus, which is then embedded onto the template of newsok.com/live.
Very simple. But it’s working very well.
Yesterday morning, I met with Jones about this idea. We decided to go for it and see what level of quality we got. We’ve used the wireless cards in Norman during our live Campus Corner Pre Game Shows. The quality hasn’t been this good. But, we’re not using any audio on purpose to save bandwidth. We suspect this may be helping. Also, we are not running into thousands of people using their cell phones like at the game day situations.
So the live video has been successful. We had a steady audience of about 300 people on Monday watching the afternoon drive. Today’s crowd was been lighter as expected. Fewer people are actually in the office.
Then we embedded a smaller Mogulus player on the NewsOK home page. We’re around 500 viewers, lurkers, voyeurs this afternoon.
Jones is using his iPhone to Twitter updates of their location. We created the #OKice tag and are pulling that onto the page. Jones is also using bit.ly to shorten his geo location from his Tweets.
But it’s not just the video. It’s the whole mash up of technology. Right next to the video feed is an embedded live chat. We use CoverItLive. It’s free (there is a new premium version) and works well. We used it on game days, primaries, election nights and for the Thunder basketball games.
I kidded Mike Koehler about being our virtual Magic 8 Ball. He has been monitoring the chat room, feeding stories and information from the NIC and moderating the online discussion. But he’s also been asked for advice, which shows the power of the mash up to generate conversation. I asked him what I should consider for dinner.
If you scroll down, you’ll see the traffic map of OKC and Tulsa and more Twitter feeds. We also pulled in a Flickr feed for user submitted photos.
Yesterday this page was visited more than 5,000 times. We are promoting our live coverage page from the top of the home page of NewsOK.com.
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Comments
[...] David Morris talks about the project in his blog. Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)Maximizing Video CoverageDambusters raid 65th anniversary: video coverageGreat video about the unsettling reality of international news coverage [...]
[...] lets just say Monday was a long day. I spent the morning at the Oklahoma State Capitol for Gov. Brad Henry’s State of the State Address. The media was packed like sardines into the glassed-in press booth. NewsOK took a live stream of the event using the same technology used to stream live video of traffic conditions during the recent ice/snow storm in … [...]
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[...] I could write a long time about NewsOK.com’s coverage of the ice storm (which is finally melting away as we speak). But plenty as been written already by Poynter Online, by the Newspaper Association of America and by our own David Morris. [...]