Whilst Mr C drools over the iPhone, I have been quite happily making use of my Google phone. The G1 was the first phone to run Google's Android operating system, and every day I keep finding new and exciting things that it can do.

Just recently, we discovered the app from the live streaming site Qik, and we had to give it a try. It was free, easy to install, and we immediately signed up for an account so we could get sharing. The idea is that you can hit a button and be streaming live to the internet straight away, in any situation. It's quite scary how easy it is, but also pretty awesome. However, we spent some time today figuring out how it works for the future. Below are the replays that become available once the live stream has finished.

Firstly, we had to test it out in the office, and that meant Mr C bugging me whilst I was trying to write a blog post.

We decided that being stuck in the office wasn't exciting enough, we can already stream perfectly well from there, so unusually for us, we headed out into the sunshine. Well, in the car, anyway.

Venturing out of the car, we found some trees and scrubland to demonstrate what a beautiful summer's day it was. Outside the audio leaves a little to be desired, but the picture quality is amazing.

The sun was a bit hot, so we went into the forest where it would have been a little bit scary and Blair Witch if it wasn't for the children playing and screaming in the background.

In which Mr C decides that we are in a life streaming battle with Alex. Good luck with that.

This time, we thought it would be fun to push live commenting to the limit and re-enact the TV show Treasure Hunt. The problem is, the audio sucks. Mr C may or may not have had his hand over the microphone during the first bit, so you suddenly hear me say 'helicopter' and take off running. There's also a crazy bit at the end, which we can't explain. We're still learning and this software can be a little ropey.

And with this final one, we are back in the car, and you will hear Mr C say that twice. For some reason, the full video loops, so you get the same thing over again, just like Groundhog Day. It really is early days for this application.

I know the above isn't necessarily interesting, but this is just a precursor to what could be in the future. Do you recall when we had the Sidepodscience Meetup and we live streamed a conversation from the park? To do that, we took a large collection of hardware and the result were no-where near this good. The microphone onboard the G1 isn't great, but visuals are excellent.

If we were at a race, we could capture moments on camera and stream them to the folks at home. Something we have attempted in the past, with little success.

There is potential here, and whilst it's early days for both the technology and our abilities, we're quite happy we can now take on Alex and his live updates. Remember back in 2007, when we started using an unknown service called Twitter? Today felt a little like that. We don't know what use it might be, but if nothing else, it’s a lot of fun.

Near the end of last year we mentioned that we were busy learning the finer details about WordPress installations. We were doing this mostly so that we could build the theme Christine could only find in her head, but also because we wanted to extend the platform a bit further.

Today, we can announce the first of those extensions, the F1 Minute Player.

Sharing

You may remember a while back that we made F1 Minute available to any website wishing to use it.

Embedding "bytesize Formula 1 news", involved copying and pasting a small block of code, which wasn't particularly onerous, but now we've made it even more straightforward.

If you have WordPress installed it's just a case of copying some files, before dragging the player into position on your page.

Plugging In

More information can be found in the the plugin directory, including detailed installation instructions, various configuration options and a couple of screenshots. There's also further information on the F1 Minute site too.

If you have a web site that's running a recent version of WordPress, and your Theme is relatively modern (e.g. it supports widgets), then you have all you need to get started. Feel free to give it a try and let us know what you think.

Feedback

This initial release is just the first step, a stable platform to build upon. We're already running the widget on the sidebar of this site and there's much more to come in the future.

As always, your thoughts / ideas / comments / criticisms are most welcome.

Adobe Systems Incorporated today announced that they've updated their Flash Player to handle H.264 video, as well as HE-AAC audio.

This is big news for us, as we currently have to release Sidepodcast TV in two formats (H.264 for the iPod and Flash for the web), whereas in the future we'll be able to upload a single file that should work everywhere. Not only will this save us bags of time, it'll save on hosting costs too. Our audio shows will also benefit, as we currently release enhanced episodes for the iPod but they don't work so well in a browser.

Despite the geeky acronyms, the update allows for better quality video with smaller files sizes and greater support for industry standard formats, so users will gain from this release too. The update is free to download. So what are you waiting for?

We have a test page available if you'd like to see how Sidepodcast TV will look using the new software and more information about the announcement is available from Adobe.