TapIn.tv (YC S12) Brings Instantaneous Live Video Streaming To The iPhone | Hacker News Reader

TapIn.tv (YC S12) Brings Instantaneous Live Video Streaming To The iPhone

techcrunch.com

79 pointspsc37 comments

I'm really looking forward seeing how this app is used to live broadcast interactions with police. Confiscating a phone and deleting it's contents will no longer be such a hot option.

And, anything streamed can't be confiscated. You aren't obligated to show a police officer anything not physically on your phone if they're arresting you.

They might have to do some work to become resistant to takedowns, but that's a very long-term deal. Just getting the content off the phone is good for the short term.

Absolutely. I should've made it more clear, but I'm working on the project.

Heh, not your fault, I got that part. Should have looked at the username more closely before responding. :P

This seems like it has the potential to replace a great deal of what "news" does for us now. We can literally see what is happening, when it is happening, with no editing.

Building on fire? 10 phones point at it. Major disaster? 10 more phones. Amusing thing, anywhere? 10 phones, and it's archived for anyone to watch later.

You've hit the nail on the head. We're looking to make that sort of video as streamlined as possible.

I did exactly the same thing in 2008 for the Google Android Challenge. After starting the app, you would see two big buttons - browse and stream - and clicking on stream would automatically start, well, recording and streaming video. Only after you were done you were required to enter a description and optionally a category (concert, hot event, journalism, sightseeing, etc) of the video you just shot.

Everything would be geotagged and browsable by category, description and radius. Say you wanted to check out the clubs in a 1km radius - just filter by that criteria and see where the hot party is. There is some protest going on right now and you want to see what is happening? Check it out in real time. You are late for a concert and don't wanna miss out? Just watch one of the 50 streams being recorded live. Want to see how war really looks like? You can.

There was a gmaps overlay and some other features I don't remember anymore.

Anyways, I didn't get sponsored (the best 100 or so apps got $25k), and with 10 other competing live streaming services I kinda scrapped the project. Fun to see how history repeats itself, although I thought this was already a solved problem. Maybe I should have pressed on back then :)

Interesting. Would you be willing to have a short chat? I am working on something similar. Email in my profile.

There's kind of this race to be the first popular streaming video service.

I've been working on something myself this past summer for Android. The difficulty is that you have to create something that can stream video at a high quality despite a poor connection. People will tolerate compression artifacts in a live stream, but on replay the video should be full quality. I think I've come up to a solution for this, but I've had to dig through a bunch of compression research papers.

Of course, if my little hobby ever takes off at some point I don't know what I'll do -- without a good way to monetize quickly, there's no way I can afford the bandwidth of streaming video.

I am curious : would you mind sharing the research papers that you found to be useful ?

I'm working on something similar and we are looking for an Android dev to lead the Android implementation. Would you be interested in having a brief phone call? My contact info is in my profile.

Pretty funny to see a video from a Color employee: http://www.tapin.tv/#video/132bdb3fbadc4fa0ae89a640ece9e918/...

http://bambuser.com/ was doing effectively the same thing during the Egyptian protests.

Bambuser has done some great things. I think there's still a lot of room for improvement in the live video sharing space.

Did YC know that Justin.tv already has a live broadcasting app? Doesn't YC have a policy against funding competing startups?

The Geo and citizen journalism angle I think makes these guys really unique. Also, its just really really fast and easy to start streaming. When it is that easy, you start living streaming everything.

That's what I like, even they originally pitched as a way to stream for conferences (including a very weirdly streamed TEDx conference), what they've built is the best streaming tool out there for one to many.

David, Tyler, Paul, and Vu have built something awesome that allows anyone to create. I already know people who can't stop using it. I just wonder what happens once it explodes...

The geographic aspect of Tapin is one of the things that I like the most. It makes finding video relevant to me so much easier, and it's something I really haven't seen in other sharing contexts. I'm pretty excited for Tapin.tv

Here's a link to the YC FAQ where they talk about competition: http://ycombinator.com/faq.html. That said, I don't think we're a competitor to Justin.tv's live streaming app. We're angling toward fastest video possible, rather than live video that gets recorded.

From the FAQ:

Will you fund multiple startups working on the same idea?

Yes.

Yep. I'd argue it's not the same idea, but with such a volume of portfolio companies, some will look similar.

Wait, you got live stream video with SOUND without needing a $41M price tag?

And we get to see everyone testing out Tapin.tv live lolz...

Looks like fun, would love to see more tagging and sorting of what's available to watch - I'll look forward to more features to come! Great job guys!

Thanks! We figured sound would be something people would want along with their video so we included it.

I've got it in my own Android project for $0. The problem is the bandwidth if I ever want to scale it up...

I remember using Qik[1] on my Nokia N97 a few years ago and thinking the idea was awesome. Without wifi or bundled data packages it was kind of expensive, obviously not an issue anymore.

http://qik.com/

If I could just live stream without saving it at the end I might use this, but I can't stand it if it automatically saves. Same issue I had with Qik.

We're doing a huge feature build out right now, and there will definitely be an option to delete your video as soon as you're done streaming.

Excellent work. Live video streaming has wide applications, glad to see you made it so easy to share spontaneous moments.

Thanks!

I really like the focus on geography as a way of organizing content.

"With today’s generation of on-demand mobile video apps, users also have the option of adding filters, title cards, and other crap before posting video." (Ryan Lawler, Author)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is very similar to what color.com ended up doing, right?

A few differences. We have sound, unlimited video length and have a much heavier focus on content creation. The current app is entirely for content creation while the web end is consumption.

How do these YC/Techcrunch post gain such massive amounts of votes in the first 20min? With no comments? Already 14 at the 13 minute mark.

Take a look at the TLD and you'll find your answer. Whether it's positive or negative, I don't know -- but here it's their ball and thus their ballgame.

One of the first thing pg tells everyone in YC is that YC founders aren't treated any differently by the Hacker News software and moderators.

A lot of the upvotes come from the fact that people share TechCrunch stories with everyone they know. There seems to be a big feedback loop effect with TechCrunch.

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