Perhaps I’m a bit late getting to this, but Ive just signed for up (what looks like) an amazing service called Qik. Cheers to Mr Scoble for bringing it to my attention!

The concept seems to be – if you have a nokia phone (with video capture capabilities), you sign up, download the software, then stream your video to the web. Get in early and you may even end up with as catchy a url as me – http://qik.com/mou. 😉

I had a quick test last night, filming myself while a friend of mine check out the website. At one point the delay was as short as 3 seconds, but at one point it seemed more like 10. Still, not a bad turnaround from phone->internet->website. There were a couple of video freezes, where he had to refresh to get the video playing again, but its debatable whether that was down to Qik, or his 10 year old laptop! Either way, if it was them they have an excuse – they’re still in Alpha, so you have to expect a few teething problems

The only problem with the whole “streaming” thing is the obvious need for an unlimited data plan. At the moment I only get 2mb a free a month, and the cost gets a bit scandalous after that. Thankfully, my Nokia N95 has WI-FI built in, so the usage Ive got out of Qik (ie, at home) has been free – so far!

I’m still trying to decide how I can use this, but I see a lot of potential. The first thing that spring to mind is the Glastonbury festival over the summer (assuming I get tickets) – depending on whether I can access the back-stage wireless network (the fact there are so many people backstage, I think, makes the fact it’ll be secured a lot less likely), the potential is there to stream some live video back. I’ll look into this closer to the time.

So yeah, if you have a video-capable Nokia phone, check it out. Its free and its pretty fun. I may throw some Guitar Hero vids up over the weekend, once I’ve nailed that damn Slayer song on hard…