Stringwire

Phil Groman

Experience the world in real-time. Shoot, request and direct live video from multiple angles.

stringwire.com



Stringwire is a framework for requesting and broadcasting live video through mobile devices -- both as a service for news organizations to cover breaking stories, and as an application that opens up the globe in real-time.

Background
CNN iReport, Guardian Witness, Twitter, Task Rabbit, Mechanical Turk,

Audience
News organisations and the general public who want to document something in real time.

User Scenario
A news event breaks on Twitter. People start tweeting about it. An editor notices the breaking story and creates a channel to curate live video from eye witnesses. Requests are pushed through Twitter to contributors. Once they accept requests they enter as a feed into the admins private control room, which allows for direction and live switching.

Implementation
I have built a system that allows an admin to create a channel to cover a live event using multiple distributed contributors. Contributors could be friends, or they could be total strangers that have been identified through Twitter as being close to something interesting. For online news organisations, a breaking story on Twitter could turn into a polished video feed from multiple angles almost immediately.

Conclusion
I have spent a long time learning how the news media operates. How citizen journalism is viewed in the news ecosystem. The power live video for news. WebRTC, allowing real-time connections and access to hardware from inside a phone's browser.