The folks over at Qik were kind enough to outfit me with a Nokia N95, so I could test out their service. I’ve been quasi-resistant to lifecasting of any kind, for a few reasons:

1. My days are typically very boring.
2. I feel bad shoving a camera into people’s faces and streaming them.
3. You wouldn’t like me anymore if you knew just how frequently I speak to my cats.

Jason and Scoble seem to find no end to the things they want to share with the Qik (and by proxy, Twitter communities), but I find myself hesitant to turn on the camera. After some brainstorming, here are some applications that I could see Qik being useful for:

1. Clothes shopping — If I’m out shopping, and I can’t decide which shirt or shoes to pick, why not let the live audience help? I mean, they’re the ones that have to look at the outfit on camera later anyway, right?
2. Company on public transportation — As if there aren’t enough crazies on SF Muni, let’s add one more (me) talking AT my phone (instead of on it) during my commute.
3. Instant support group — If one of my girlfriends is having man trouble, it would be nice to have another hundred or so people to back me up at any given moment to say “Dump the loser!”

I’m only half kidding on some of those. What value do you guys get out of lifecasting? Why is it so popular? Maybe because it’s like reality TV, but without all the convinient editing? I’ve tried a few other services, and none of them have been compelling enough for me to continue to use them. The mobility factor with Qik is a definite plus, so maybe that will help.

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Most of you guessed that one of my new projects was over at Revision3 as the new co-host of Tekzilla with Patrick Norton. And yes, you are correct! In fact, I was over there yesterday shooting for Friday’s episode. As I’ve said before, I love working with everyone over there, and I think it’s going to be a blast.

However, there’s still another project that I can’t say anything about just yet! A girl’s gotta have her secrets, right?

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A few weeks ago I received an email from the girlfriend of a member of the band, The Carps. In the letter, she told me that they had written a song called “Veronica Belmont,” and that it was based on Internet culture and feeling like you know the people you meet online. She linked me to their MySpace page, and there it was! It’s a fun song, and some of the lyrics definitely made me chuckle:

Dark light as we expire,
But go ahead, just dance, dance, dance

He pwned in that disco,
When they played chocolate rain, rain, rain.

Apparently the band is really starting to blow up, because I’ve been getting emails every day from people telling me they’ve heard it on XM, indie stations, and even on RCRD LBL (where you can download the track for free!). It’s awesome (and humbling) that they thought of me, so I wanted to say a big THANK YOU to those guys. I hope they tour in SF sometime!

Waves and Shambles, the EP with the single on it is coming out this Tuesday, the 8th! I can’t wait to pick it up. But of course, all bets are off if they steal my Google juice. (I kid, I kid!)

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Hard to believe the time has already come, but soon enough I’ll be moving on from Mahalo to embark on some exciting new projects! Mahalo Daily has been a really amazing experience (and not just because I get to do things like fly a plane), and I’ll still be producing episodes for the next couple of weeks as host, and then eventually reporting as correspondent.

It’s impressive how far the show has come since we started; at first I was a little apprehensive about the idea of doing episodes 5 days a week while building it from the ground up (as I imagine anyone would be). But with time we’ve assembled a really great, motivated team that makes the whole thing look effortless. Of course, there’s no shortage of solid talent at Mahalo, and they’ll be working with more people in the future too.

As for the new projects, well, you’ll find out soon enough! Needless to say, I’m very excited about what’s just around the bend.

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