The Canada-based live-blogging tool CoverItLive added support for live video streaming to its application this week. Users covering live events can now add streaming video from Qik, Mogulus, and Ustream.tv to their live blogs. Bloggers can simply copy and paste the embed code from one of these services into CoverItLive. Adding video to live blogging takes it to a completely different level and will allow those who are covering these events to focus more on commentary and interacting with viewers than just reporting the events.
Conspicuously absent from the lineup of supported services are Stickam and Yahoo Live, both of which have a considerable amount of users.
Once you have added video to your live blog, users will see it at the top right of the application, but they can also pop it out and resize it. This is quite similar to how CoverItLive already handles YouTube videos, though the option to see videos in their own windows is new. One major advantage for bloggers here is that they can handle text and video all in one application.
CoverItLive provides writers with what they call a ‘Writer Console,’ which is quite different from what end-users see (see screenshot). The console is the main hub of the application and allows you to add polls, images, audio files, and now, live video. It also displays reader comments on the right side of the application.
One major advantage of CoverItLive is that it allows various writers and editors to work collaboratively, so that one person can handle the writing, another the video, and yet another blogger can focus on interacting with the audience.
Adding live video turns live blogging into a more interesting and immediate experience. Thanks to the proliferation of Qik on mobile phones, we will surely see more events being covered this way. We already liked CoverItLive a lot when we first reviewed it, though it did experience some outages when a lot of people used it during the January Macworld keynote. Since then, though, the platform has become a lot more stable.
