Have you ever found yourself looking at something and thinking, hey, this is neat, I wish I could show it to so-and-so right now? With an iPhone, you can always take a picture or video and e-mail it to the person, but that is delayed gratification. What would be really neat is to let someone else see something live, at the same time that you are seeing it. The smart folks at Pointy Heads LLC (cute name) have come up with an iPhone app called Knocking Live that lets you stream live video from one iPhone to another iPhone so that someone else can see what you are seeing, while you are seeing it.
The app received a lot of publicity when it was released on December 1st because of the way that it showed up on the App Store. You see, the Pointy Heads guys aren't the first to come up with a way to stream live video from an iPhone. A company called Qik showed a demo of an app that would allow you to stream live video from your iPhone to a website so that lots of people could watch the live stream at the same time. I posted a video of a demo of the Qik app earlier this past July. Unfortunately, Apple did not approve the original Qik app, presumably because the hack that Qik was using to stream video was not supported by Apple. Thus, the Qik folks instead released a pared down app that allows you to upload video to the Qik website that folks can view later but which omits live streaming of video. (Qik is available on other mobile phones, and some of them such as the Nokia S60 do support live video streaming.)
With that background, it is no surprise that when the Pointy Head guys submitted their app to Apple, it was also initially rejected. But the developers were persistent, and they wrote an e-mail to Steve Jobs himself, urging him to approve the app. As Ars Technica reports, the e-mail apparently worked. The developers got a call from Apple saying that someone "directly from the top" had approved the app. Read the full story over on Ars Technica to get all of the details on how this app got approved. It's a good read.
I've been trying out the app for the last two days, and my opinion is that it is VERY COOL, but unfortunately is at the moment VERY BUGGY. Let's start with the good news. The app is free, at least for now. The developers say that it is free for the first 50,000 users, and then it will cost $2.99, which is a very reasonable price for what this app does. The app is also easy to use. Just download it, create an account, and get a buddy with an iPhone to also create an account. (The developer is working on similar apps for the Blackberry and Android so that, in the future, you can even stream video to someone who isn't even using an iPhone. ) Either you or your buddy can send each other a friend or family invitation using a process that is similar to creating a friend on Facebook: a request comes in, and you can either accept it or reject it. I've blurred out the name below, but this gives you an idea of what it looks like:
Once you have a "friend" or "family" member you can start sending them video just by tapping their name in the app and then tapping the button that says "Share Video with" and then the person's name. Once you are connected, that person will see a live video stream (no audio) of whatever you are seeing on your iPhone.
On the receiving end, the app also works very well. Using push notification, you will see a message pop up on your iPhone saying that [name] wants to share video with you and you will hear a sound on your iPhone that sounds like someone knocking on a door. You don't even have to be running the Knocking Live app to get the notice. Just tap OK and the app will launch and, in a few seconds, you will start to see the video.
The app works best if you are both using Wi-Fi, but I've also tested it over 3G and that works too, although the video is more jerky. As noted above, the app only sends the video, not the audio, but that is not a problem because you can call someone on your iPhone at the same time that you are using Knocking Video. Just use your iPhone to call someone else's iPhone, then start the Knocking Video app, then start sending video to that person's iPhone. You will both hear each other over the phone, and one of you will get to see the video from the other person. It is sort of like a one-way video chat, except that the camera on your iPhone is facing away from you so the person sees what you are seeing and not your face (unless you turn your iPhone towards your face, of course). Additionally, the developer says that audio will be added in a future version (although I would still probably prefer using the phone so that you can get two-way audio while you stream video one way). The developer also notes in the app description on the App Store that simultaneous video streaming and telephone calls only works "on some connections." It worked fine for me.
Last night, for example, I called my brother who lives in San Francisco on his iPhone. I was able to stream him live video from my house in New Orleans and show him my Christmas tree, and then later he was able to stream me live video from his house on the West Coast and show me his kitchen, all while we were talking on the iPhone:
For an even better demonstration of how this all works, the developer has posted this short promotional video to YouTube:
...and this 7 minute hands on demonstration to YouTube:
So that is the good news. The bad news? Oh man is it buggy. Sometimes when I attempt to start the app, the app tries to launch for 30 seconds but then never does. Other times, I get the app to launch and start sharing video, but after anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds, the app crashes and the video stops streaming. I was never able to get the app working for more than about two minutes straight before it would crash. The crashes were so frequent that at times I wondered how the app was even approved to be on the App Store ... but then I remembered, oh yeah, the approval came "from the top."
According to the developer, the server that supports this app is being overloaded right now, and that is the reason for the crashes. I imagine that lots of people are reading the Ars Technica story and trying out this app since it is free. The developer says that its technical team is currently working around the clock to fix this, so hopefully this will improve very soon.
Because it currently crashes so much, you cannot currently rely on this app for anything that is mission critical. And while the app includes some other features that I haven't tried yet (such as a Facebook integration), you definitely get the feeling while using the app that this is just a first release that is still lacking lots of features. As noted above, audio is coming to a future version, and the ability to record is also a planned future feature. Nevertheless, as the stability improves and features increase over time, this app will become very useful. I can imagine many situations in which I would want to use this app, such as if I am at the park watching my kids do something cute and I want my wife at home to see it while it is happening. As a proof of concept and a preview of what is coming to the iPhone in the future, this app is really neat.
Click here to get Knocking Live (free for first 50,000, then will cost $2.99): 
