

TapIn.tv (YC S12) Brings Instantaneous Live Video Streaming To The iPhone - psc
http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/08/yc-backed-tapin-tv-launches-to-bring-instantaneous-live-video-streaming-to-the-iphone/

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sethbannon
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.

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ddt
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.

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saulrh
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.

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

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

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blake8086
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.

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

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pka
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 :)

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

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Xcelerate
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.

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

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dwynings
Pretty funny to see a video from a Color employee:
[http://www.tapin.tv/#video/132bdb3fbadc4fa0ae89a640ece9e918/...](http://www.tapin.tv/#video/132bdb3fbadc4fa0ae89a640ece9e918/1344465928)

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

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

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

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mbs348
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.

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irollboozers
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...

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jenntoda
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!

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

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cjrp
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/>

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sunsu
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.

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psc
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.

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

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ddt
Thanks!

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

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jcfrei
"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)

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

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ddt
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.

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killyourheros
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.

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apawloski
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.

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tylermenezes
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.

