Kyte Tv / Kyte Mobile

Been meaning to try out Kyte for a few weeks and finally got round to it. I thought it might be similar to ComVu's pocketcaster which is a mobile client allowing live video streaming to a webpage/channel/widget etc..without the hassle of uploading.

Kyte describes itself as : "Easily create your own interactive TV channel featuring pictures, videos, music, polls, livechat and much more with kyte.tv."

It seems almost like a "MyTube" crossed with a real-time-chat room with other interactive elements thrown in. After setting up an account you can download the mobile client (screenshots below).











You create your own channel and then can broadcast shows by streaming pictures, audio or video to the channel (from the web interface or from you mobile if your handset supports the mobile client.)

Uploading your show from mobile is also supported via email, although broadcasting direct from the handset seems to be less hassle.

You can watch your own or other people's shows (on their channel) from your mobile (Featured / Most watched / Just produced) as the pics below show or on the web.

You can also see how many others are watching your show. Other features include tagging of shows, saving favourite and allowing other friends to broadcast shows on your channel (with pre-checking options by the channel owner).

The integrated real time chat element I found ** very ** interesting as you can set it up for some auto-moderation (profanity) and it allows you to discuss the show you've produced in real-time chat room style with your "watchers".

From the pic below (I've blurred out watcher "Meechy's" face) you can see I was having a chat with two watchers (Meechy and Anon) having posted one of my avatar pictures to my channel as a "show".

What's impressive from a mobile perspective is that Audio snippets and Video messages (left by Meechy who was on a PC with a webcam) are also downloaded into the Kyte mobile client - a very nice touch! (note that it all happens in-line, ie. I can hear the message or view the video clip within the kyte mobile client - it doesn't start RealPlayer for example on the N95 making a very streamlined multimedia chat experience).

It seems that most of the features can be used directly from the mobile client although customising the look and feel and access control have to be done through the website.

It almost seems obligatory at the moment for any web startup to have a facebook widget and Kyte is no different, but you can also embed your channel into your MySpace, Wordpress or Blogger blogs as a widget too ...