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The Qik home page heading says it all: “Equip your phone with free live video sharing.”  Let’s pick that phrase apart:

• Equip your phone: works with your BlackBerry (several models supported, more sure to come)
• Video sharing: lets you share videos shot with your BlackBerry
• Free: costs nothing–the app is free, the service is free
• Live: your video is not just shared on-demand, but broadcast live

If you’ve ever wanted to share a video from your BlackBerry with friends or family–quickly (without downloading from the phone, posting on the web, attaching to an email or MMS message, etc.), then Qik is just want you wanted. At the time of this writing, it’s still a fairly new development that isn’t always perfect (in my brief experience with it), but it is sure to continue getting better.

Qik Basics

The basic idea of Qik is to let you activate your BlackBerry video camera, start recording, and broadcast the picture directly to the web:

• Broadcast can be seen live (well, with some delay)
• Broadcast can be played back later on-demand (like a YouTube video)
• Broadcast can be public or private
• Broadcast can be seen on any web site (where you are permitted to paste a snippet of HTML–provided for you by Qik), most notably on your own Qik web page
• Designed to work with Twitter, Mogulus, Jusin.tv, Pownce, and more Qik partner sites
• Videos can also be downloaded in multiple formats (FLV, 3GP, MP4) for storage and playback on computers, mobile phones, media players, etc.

BlackBerry Models Supported by Qik

Currently, Qik supports certain versions of the BlackBerry Pearl, Curve, and Bold. I assume the list will grow over time. See the complete and current list of all supported phones.

Qik Product Highlights

Technologically, Qik strives for:

• High performance
• Reliability
• Simplicity
• Security

Read Qik’s detailed product highlights.

Qiks, People, and Events

The Qik phenomenon is divided into:

• Qik videos (”qiks”): all, hot, featured, tagged
• Qik people: individuals (including you), groups (you can join)
• Qik events: live, past, future (you can create your own)

My Testing of Qik

Create Qik User Account

I went to the Qik web site and created a user account (”joined” Qik). Nothing difficult…but you will want to have an icon or avatar for your account ready. For best results, it should be have square dimensions; it will be resized to 120 pixels for both width and height. If you don’t know how to crop or resize a photo or image, just use a decent digital photo that is less than 1 megabyte in size.

Download and Installation

I downloaded the Qik application over-the-air (OTA) using my phone’s browser from http://d.qik.com. It seemed to be fairly small download that didn’t take very long. It installed easily. NOTE: It’s important to allow the Qik app a number of permissions on your phone for it to work correctly. So, be sure to click the prompts that tell your BB that you allow Qik to have those permissions.

First Try–Didn’t Seem to Work

After I set up my account, installed Qik on my BlackBerry Curve 8330 (clearly said to be supported) running OS 4.5, I couldn’t get a qik (video) to show up on my Qik web page. I also tried embedding the Qik-provided HTML to a web page to see if it would show up there. No luck.

I almost decided that Qik really didn’t work yet, and I think I let many days pass. I kept thinking how cool it would be for this to work, so I went back to the Qik site and followed some links to ask for technical support. Qik uses a 3rd-party customer support site, GetSatisfaction.com. I was very impressed that I got quick feedback from a couple of Qik users, but also a quick response from an employee of Qik.

Second Try–Worked Better

I’m not sure what made it get better, but I decided to do Options > Advanced Options > Applications and delete the Qik app. I repeated the download and installation and tried again. Some success!

• Playback on-demand of a short video worked great!
• Live broadcast, tried later, did not work…
  • Brought up my Qik web page on my laptop (connected to Internet, obviously)
  • Brought up Qik on my BlackBerry
  • Started recording video (just pointing the camera around the room)
  • Refreshed my Qik web page (maybe 2-3 times) till something appeared on its embedded video player
  • Got what looked like the beginning of a broadcast, and player appeared to be running (showed a pause button), but it never seemed to get past the first frame

Third Try–Worked Great

On yet another day, I tried again without having changed anything at all. And it worked just as I had hoped…

• Used same process as on “second try” above
• Saw my live broadcast come up after a significant delay
• Did a crude measurement of the delay and it was very close to one minute
• Interestingly, while watching the live broadcast, I could actually hear my laptop’s playback of the live broadcast being picked up by my BlackBerry…but it didn’t cause the kind of feedback that often is a problem in radio talk shows…surely because the delay is too long for that

Continued Use–Still Learning

I’m still learning to use Qik both at the BlackBerry end and at the Qik web site end. Here are a few notes:

• I have a lot of false starts, possibly due to my clumsiness trying to hold the phone while I shoot video. I now realize that the video recording starts a moment after clicking Qik’s “Stream” button. At first it looks like it’s paused, but it begins recording after a brief pause.
• I’ve had videos cut short when played back on the web. Not sure why.
• Qik.com seems to work about the same for me using Internet Explorer (7.0), FireFox (3.0.4), and Safari (for Windows, 3.1.2)–after only minimal testing.
• Qik customer service (Bhaskar) is wonderful. It makes me really want to see them succeed.
• Qik is definitely for early adopters at the time of this writing. Don’t expect it to be stable yet, much less perfect.

Uses of Qik

The potential uses of Qik are limited* only by your imagination. Here are some that come to my mind (I welcome your ideas left as a comment below):

• Schedule live broadcasts of family events so that distant family or friends can go to your Qik page (or other page you’ve pasted the Qik code to) to view the video sent from your BlackBerry
• Play amateur reporter to broadcast news, on-scene as it happens
• Document a journey with video updates where followers can track you over time, or catch you “live” if they’re lucky (or if you have regularly scheduled times for their viewing)
• If the delay in live broadcast ever becomes short enough, Qik can be used much like videoteleconferencing (VTC) or video chat, at least a “poor man’s” version
• Areas where it could be applied…
  • Law enforcement: show a crime scene, even as it happens
  • Customer service: show them what’s wrong with your product
  • Sales: show a potential customer what you’re trying to sell (e.g., real estate)

* Certainly there will always be technical limitations, but we all know how quickly technology moves forward, essentially obliterating limitations along the way.

Conclusion

I find the potential in Qik to be enormous. At the very least, it’s fun. Imagine how it’s only going to get better and better. One key is to SUPPORT new technological efforts like these. I encourage you to try out Qik if you have one of the BlackBerry models currently supported. (And let’s keep pushing Qik to support more models, such as the Storm.)

Lastly, I invite you to join the newBBie.com group on Qik and share your videos there (please keep them appropriate and interesting)…

• Introduce yourself
• Show us where you live, work, go to school, or play
• Discuss or ask questions about your BlackBerry
• Leave commentary in response to other user’s videos

I’ll be putting up my own test videos, and eventually (I hope), useful and interesting videos, on newBBie’s Qik page. Below should be a sample of a Qik video:

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