Qik in public beta: it could be more useful than you realize

I’m not sure that most folks will want to use a video streaming & recording service like Qik, but it’s worth a mention that the beta is now public if you want to sign up. Even better is that the software has expanded to a few Windows Mobile devices; up to now Qik was synonymous with bunches of E- and N-series Nokia handsets. You’ll want an unlimited data plan if you’re going to stream or record video on the Qik servers though. I wouldn’t even think of using it without an unlimited plan.

As far as Windows Mobile goes, Qik is supported on the Motorola Q9c / Q9h and Samsung’s SGH-i600 and BlackJack II. You might get it working with other handsets, but these are officially supported. Going back to my original point of folks thinking they might not need a service like this: consider thinking outside the box. Last year, I used a camera-phone to help pick a pair of glasses and I can see similar uses for live video streaming. I could have shown my fiancee the entire wall of frames, for example. In turn, she’s shopping for a wedding dress right now and her mom can’t attend all of the appointments. How cool would it be for her to share a private video stream of various dresses to see the look and fit? These are just off the top of my head: have you had any recent situations where a live video stream would have come in handy?