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After 8 months of hard work since the last release, I am glad to announce the launch of Livestation version 3.0, the latest desktop software for watching live news channels on your computer.

The latest release, available to download free of charge here, includes new functionality which we haven’t seen anywhere else.

Tweet what you are watching
You can now use Livestation as a native Twitter client so you can follow your friends and post your tweets directly under the video window without having to switch applications. But more interestingly, you can screen grab what you are watching with a handy button and have the screenshot posted with your Twitter update in one easy click. This is an example: http://twitpic.com/prled

Multiview
As the player is to all extents a multi-protocol and cross-platform video player, they thought it would be quite cool to be able to watch more than one channel at once. So, with Livestation 3.0 you can now do that by simply clicking on the + icon available next to each channel. It’s quite simple and here’s a screen shot http://twitpic.com/qf5bg/full

Pro
The Livestation team have also created a pro version of the player which viewers can purchase for a one off price of £14.99. Livestation Pro 3.0 has no ads, unlimited Multiview and more importantly all the partner channels are delivered via a dedicated, high performance data network for maximum reliability and for a better viewing experience. Here’s a more in depth description: http://www.livestation.com/pro

Premium Channels
The new player also supports premium channels which viewers can purchase on a subscription basis. Premium channels are delivered in 3 different qualities for maximum flexibility: low or ‘internet cafe’ mode, medium for every day watching and high for standard definition and plasma viewing (adaptive bitrates coming very soon too). Al Jazeera English was the first channel to go premium on our platform with more high profile international channels to follow soon.

As always, you can find out more about Livestation at www.livestation.com or get in touch with me directly.

Livestation have released an app on the App Store a few days ago in partnership with Five and UEFA to allow purchasers to watch the Europa League matches shown live on Five in the UK on their iPhone/iPod touch devices.

The app retails for a one-off fee of £3.99 and it will give access to all the games up to the final on the 12 May 2010. Additionally, highlights from all the games are also made available on the app a few hours after the end of the games.

If you have iTunes installed and live in the UK, click here http://tinyurl.com/lx233z

Internet users worldwide are being offered exclusive free access to Wednesday’s live Presidential debate between incumbent Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his challenger in the forthcoming election, the last Prime Minister of Iran, Mir-Hossein Mousavi.

The live broadcast, which takes place at 19:00 GMT on Wednesday 3 June, is being broadcast on Press TV and streamed live on Livestation, the destination for live TV online.

Viewers can either watch the event on the Livestation website (http://www.livestation.com/channels/52), or, for higher quality viewing, watch it on the Livestation player which is available for free download from livestation.com. When using the player, viewers can also chat in real time as the debate continues, as well as have one click access to a wide range of global news channels.
The live Presidential debate marks the addition of Press TV to the line up of international news channels on Livestation. It will offer a different perspective on an important international news event.

In the coming days, Press TV will screen four documentaries directed by prominent Iranian directors (Majid Majidi, Javad Shamaqdari, Behrouz Afkhami, Mohammad-Ali Farsi) on each of the four presidential candidates as the country prepares for the 12 June election.

Welcoming Press TV to the Livestation line up, CEO Matteo Berlucchi, said the addition of the channel comes at an important time in Iranian history.

“Livestation is all about providing people with the widest choice of news and views, and Press TV is an excellent addition to our current line up because of the different perspective it offers to a global audience.”

For Setareh Ghane, Director of International Relations at Press TV, using a new platform to stream live to a wider global broadband audience is an important step for the new channel on the verge of its second anniversary.
“As a well-known alternative news source, Press TV is pleased to announce it will further its goals of promoting the unbiased dissemination of information through partnership with Livestation. We invite viewers an opportunity to gain an authentic experience of Iranian politics with interactive applications provided by Livestation.”

Livestation, the destination for live TV broadcasting over broadband, has widened its choice of Arabic channels with the addition of Dubai-based Al Arabiya.

The 24-hour news channel, which offers a mix of breaking news, current, documentaries and sports updates has joined Livestation’s existing line-up of Arabic news channels which already included services offered by Al Jazeera, BBC, France 24, Russia Today (Rusya Al Yaum) and Euronews.

According to Matteo Berlucchi, the CEO of Livestation, the addition of Al Arabiya as an official Livestation partner channel is part of an ongoing strategy to widen the choice of perspectives offered on the player. He said he was delighted to have reached agreement with the channel.

“The addition of Al Arabiya to Livestation will ensure that Livestation continues to offer the widest breadth of perspectives and choice for the Arab speaking TV-over-broadband audience,” he commented.

And Berlucchi says Livestation’s strategy of offering the widest variety of viewing destinations resonates with the rapidly-growing Livestation audience.

“We have found, when we analyse the viewing patterns on the Livestation player, that the broadband audience is both loyal and fickle. They are loyal to their favoured news provider, returning to the channel several times a day and, on average, spending half an hour with their preferred news offering each visit. However, when a big story breaks, they tend to exercise the choice Livestation offers by clicking through to adjacent channels on the player”.

“Viewers are also using the live, real-time chat associated with each channel as they channel hop and channel chat at the same time. It is a new and exciting phenomenon and the detailed user statistics are helping us map viewer behaviour in ways that have previously not been available to broadcasters. Al Arabiya, as do all our partner channels, will now benefit from this audience information enabling them to target and develop their service in response to actual viewer behaviour patterns,” he said.

Boingboing report that Steve Wozniak liked the sight of a Dell Mini 9 running Apple OS X. Matthew P wrote:

Got to briefly meet Steve Wozniak as he was doing some press for Dancing with the Stars. I showed him my Dell Mini 9 with OS X Leopard installed on it (and an Apple sticker sloppily applied over the Dell logo.

He said, “Oh my god, that is so COOL!”

And: “Is that really the color you wanted?”

Then he graciously signed it. I then ran away and giggled for about 45 minutes.

Steeve Wozniak no longer “work” for Apple (even do se still remains an employee (and receives a paycheck)) but is regarded as one of the most influent contributor the the Apple platform beside Steve Jobs. In 1970, Wozniak had become friends with Steve Jobs, when Jobs had a summer job at the same business where Wozniak was working on a mainframe computer.

On April 1, 1976, Jobs and Wozniak formed Apple Computer. In 1980, Apple went public and made Jobs and Wozniak multimillionaires. However, Jobs refused to allow some members of Apple to receive stock options, so Wozniak decided to share some of his options with the rest of the team by either giving it away for free or at a heavily discounted price. This was dubbed “The Woz Plan”.

I wonder what Steve Jobs think of OS X on a Dell mini. Somehow I doubt he would say the same thing!

This Dell Mini 9 will probably be worth a fortune on eBay… but just don’t say that OS X is installed on the thing or eBay will pull it

If you would like your own Steve Wozniak Cool DellMini 9 OS X netbook then head to mydellmini.com where you will find the how-to and DellEFI to do the magic.

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• Steve Wozniak, Apple Co-Founder, Competitor on Dancing with the Stars! WHAT!?!? (dvorak.org)

If you have been looking for live news coverage on the iPhone then the wait is almost over. Livestation have decommissioned the current version of their iPhone beta application. The reason is that they have a new version which will come out early this week with a number of very important improvements.

They are now very close to being able to release to the Apple App store (if accepted). They had to switch the servers to the new code base and will require a couple of days of testing to enable them to release the new version to the beta testers.

Livestation, the destination for live broadcasting over broadband, has built a broadcaster’s tool kit to enable its partner broadcasters to interact with a live TV audience in real time.

The tool kit is currently being tested by partner channel Al Jazeera English and used on the Riz Khan show

The Livestation tool kit includes:

Live Chat moderation tools

This enables broadcasters to moderate the live chat taking place around their live programmes being streamed on Livestation.

Programme producers have always been able to enter the Livestation chat room attached to their live streaming in order to stimulate debate and invite viewer contributions. This has been used regularly by the Riz Khan production team to draw questions, add perspective and engage the audience in the live debate.

Now those programme producers are able to warn or silence offenders in order to maintain standards of taste and decency and limit the likelihood of offence and flooding (repeat posting).

Live Panel

The tools include the ability to send out instant polls and encourage viewers to vote on the key question being addressed by a programme.

Producers set the question and multi-choice answers and set a time limited. Once the Live Panel is sent a pop up appears on each viewers screen and they are able to vote. When the poll closes a new graphic pops up with the result. Real-time, instant, interactive feedback from a global broadband audience.

Programme Alerts

The third tool in the broadcasters’ pack is the ability to send out alerts when a show is coming up which involves viewer participation. This enables broadcasters to invite people to join the chat, participate in the live show and take part in any polls.

A new initiative has been launched by Livestation, the destination for live TV online designed to help large-scale charity appeals to broadcast their calls for donations to a global audience during times of crisis and emergency. The channel will feature a line up of the current crisis appeals and will be available free of charge to all major charity organisations when required. The aim is to increase the visibility of charity appeals as much as possible through the use of Livestation’s broadcast technology over broadband.

The first appeal being screened is by the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) for aid for those who have been injured and lost their homes in Gaza.

According to the DEC, thousands are now struggling to survive with limited food, fresh drinking water and medicines.

The call for help, which is now running a the new Live Appeals channel on Livestation, is asking for donations of £25 for warm blankets or £50 for a food parcel, which DEC says will last a family for a month.

You can find more about the Gaza appeal by visiting the DEC site and you can watch the Live Appeal channel now, on Livestation, by going to our new appeals channel.

Charities are invited to approach Livestation to use this facility, which will be offered free-of-charge as part of Livestation’s contribution to the cause being promoted.

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• BBC and the Gaza appeal (bbc.co.uk)

As reported by Matteo Berlucchi, Livestation has been forced to do an heart breaking decision. The recent war in Gaza has increased Livestation usage so much that it became essential that Livestation reduce the quality of it’s video to limit bandwidth consumption/cost.

The service was originally advertised as peer-2-peer but in actuallity the service is provided solely from corporate internet video access. The peer-2-peer functionality is not yet present in the client software.

Given that Joost moved away from it’s peer-2-peer solution it is hard to beleive that Livestation will get there successfully any time soon. It is much easier to provide the video streams from a controlled access and ensure acceptable user experience. With peer-2-peer it is much more difficult to offer realtime video streaming in a consistant manner due to the uncontroled nature of each participants internet connection.

Hopefully Livestation will get enough funding from advertisement to remain viable in the long run. It would be sad to see such a great service close due to it’s own success and lack of viable business model.

You will find below a copy of the original post:

Dear Livestation viewers,

in the past 2 weeks we have experienced an enormous growth in traffic because of the dramatic situation in Gaza. With a lot of people turning to the internet to find more information about the war, our traffic has consequently grown a lot and very quickly.

As the service is free and we still don’t make much money with advertising (we are 4 months old and if you like to advertise or sponsor a channel please do get in touch team@livestation.com) we had to slightly reduce the streaming quality. The change is visible but the watching and listening experience should be pretty much the same as it was before.

We apologise for this unplanned quality reduction but our aim is to make sure the highest possible number of people can access our partner channels from anywhere and at anytime.

Please do send us your feedback, tell your friends and keep watching.