Today we’re announcing the brand new embeddable Livestream Combo Widget for all Livestream Channels & Producers. This easy to use 3-in-1 widget includes the lightweight 16:9 Livestream Player, Livestream Chat widget, and Video Library. We’ve designed the Combo Widget to allow users to instantly add live video, an on-demand section, and real-time chat to any website in a single embed.
Embedding the Livestream Combo Widget is easy; simply visit any channel’s share page by going livestream.com/channelname/share or clicking any of the share buttons on the channel page or player. Click the “Combo Widget” Tab and select any one of the four preset layouts. Once you’ve chosen a layout, select a size or enter your own. The widget’s preset layouts work better depending on the size you’ve entered, so don’t be afraid to experiment. You can preview your combo widget at anytime by clicking the “View Live Preview” button. Once you’re all set, copy the single iframe embed code at the bottom and paste it in the HTML editor of your website.
The Livestream Combo Widget has the power to turn any website into a multimedia powerhouse with simplicity, style, and speed. See for yourself!
Livestream Premium Channel Owners now have access to the brand new Email to Watch feature. This allows Premium Channels to require all connected viewers to enter their email address after a specified amount of time in order to continue watching. The email requirement is streamlined for the viewer and is an easy one-step process. Want to embed the player on your own website? The Email to Watch feature applies to both the Livestream Channel Page & Embedded Player automatically.
The Email to Watch feature is particularly useful for Premium Producers who would like to broadcast a live event and then reach out to their viewers after the event has come to a close. To activate this feature, you must first own an active Livestream Premium Plan. Visit your Account Center and click the “Configure” button next to your Premium Channel. Scroll to the “Privacy and Audience Control” section. Configuration options can be found below:
* By default, this feature is disabled; To enable the Email to Watch feature, click the “Require Viewer Email” button.
* You can download the list of email addresses entered in CSV format at anytime by clicking the green “Download CSV” button. If you wish to clear this list, click “Clear List” beside it.
* The email requirement prompt will display immediately after the viewer has loaded the player. To delay this prompt, enter the number of minutes you would like to delay in the “Delay (minutes)” field.
We hope you enjoy.
Over the past few days, we have been working feverishly on releasing a brand new Livestream.com Homepage, a new Channel Guide, and all new Player Graphics such as the ticker and lower third graphic. Outlined below, these new features & additions are only a few of the exciting changes we have planned.
New Livestream Homepage
* New Channel Grid
We’ve replaced the old Channel Grid with the lightweight 16:9 Livestream Player which allows us to showcase great widescreen content as well as decrease the time it takes for your browser to load the page. Here you can view some of the most popular LIVE channels on Livestream.
* New Header Bar
The new Header Bar was first introduced on all Livestream Channel pages and includes the ability to browse our most popular channels by category or searching without having to navigate to a channel guide page. Click the “Channels” button to drop down a list of popular channels by category. Enter a channel name you’d like to watch in the search field, or click the “My Account” button to visit your Account Center. The red “Broadcast Now” button will launch Webcaster, our lightweight streaming web-app. This header is now live across our website (Homepage, Channel Guide, About Us, Found out More, etc) with the exception of the Account Center.
* New Channel Navigation
We’ve added our most popular channel categories right on the homepage for easy navigation. Want to see more categories? Click the “More” button to activate a drop down menu with our entire category list. The new navigation bar can be found on the homepage and all guide pages.
New Channel Guide
* New Look & Features
To bring you even more great live content, the new Channel Grid will be included in all major category pages. Popular categories such as News, Entertainment, Music, Sports & Games now have their own featured highlights section as well. You may also filter through the “Most Popular” channels or those channels that are Live with the “Live Now” filter. Just like before, you can further filter these channels by language. Want to see more channels for that category? Click the “More Channels” button to load the next 15 featured highlights or channels.
New Player Graphics
* New Look
As part of our continuing commitment to all Livestream Producers, the highly requested update to player graphics has arrived. All Livestream Channels that have graphics enabled will see this change automatically. These updated graphics include a new ticker, a new lower third graphic, new fullscreen graphics, and corner bug. The colors of the lower third graphic and fullscreen graphics can be changed as well. Want to enable or manage these graphics on your Livestream Player & Channel Page? Visit your Livestream Studio.
We hope you enjoy these new features and stay tuned to our blog for weekly Product Updates.
Featured Highlights
We now showcase featured Livestream content from your favorite celebrities, musicians, concerts, events and more right on the Livestream Homepage! Clicking a Featured Highlight will take you to the Channel’s On-Demand clip page where you can watch the highlight or other recent videos from that producer.
Some Featured Highlights include APLive interviews, live performances from artists like The Temper Trap & the John Butler Trio, and live events such as the SpaceX Falcon 9 Launch and the Oscar De La Renta Resort 2011 Runway Show.
Want more? Soon you’ll be able to watch additional Featured Highlights from categories such as News, Entertainment, Music, Games and more. Stay tuned to our blog for weekly Product Updates.
We’ve been busy… busy adding new features to the Livestream Website & Service on a weekly basis. So busy in fact, that we haven’t been updating the Community on what we’re working on as much as we’d like. From this week forward, we plan on posting Product Updates to inform you of what’s new, what’s different, and what you can expect to see in the future.
Following our exclusive coverage of Facebook’s F8 Conference in San Francisco, we updated our Homepage and Channel Pages with several Facebook Social Plugins that easily allow you to share Livestream content through your Facebook Account and see which videos your Facebook friends are sharing.
“Like” button on Livestream Channel Pages
The “Like” button enables you to make connections to a channel page and share that content with your friends on Facebook in one simple click. If you’re already logged into Facebook, click the “Like” button to share it on your Wall. If you haven’t logged into Facebook yet, clicking the “Like” button will open a window where you may login via your Facebook Account.
“On Livestream” Widget
The “On Livestream” Widget can be found on all Livestream Channel Pages. This widget highlights six of the latest “likes” that your Facebook Friends have shared on Livestream.com. We believe it’s a great way to stay up to date with what your friends have been watching across the network.
Click a link to visit the channel your friend has shared.
“Recommended” Widget
The “Recommended” Widget can be located on all Livestream Channel Pages as well as the Livestream Homepage. This useful widget showcases the most popular Channels or Videos on Livestream that have been shared through Facebook by both friends and other users.
Livestream Premium Channel Owners can disable these features within the Livestream Account Center’s Configuration page if desired.
We hope you enjoy these new social plugin features. Stay tuned to our blog for information about upcoming features, events, and more.
Today we released a new embeddable widget for channel owners. The Video Library Widget allows users to browse through the clips in a channel’s library. It can be configured to display a particular folder in the library or show the latest clips automatically, and you can embed it anywhere.
You’ll find the widget on every channel page, and you can grab it from the share page or by clicking the ‘Grab Widget’ link in the widget itself (click here for an example).
To learn more about the advanced embedding options look in our User Guide.
We hope you enjoy using the widget to promote your channel.
Here at Livestream, we’re dedicated to providing the premiere streaming platform online, and that means incorporating as much innovation in our player and features as possible. We read every email we receive and pay close attention to requests made in our forums.
That being said, we’d like you to know about a few of our newest features. Some of these can be found on the chrome at the bottom of all Livestream players:
Sharing on Buzz
Social sharing is key to many of our Producers and we’ve now added the option to share their content over Google Buzz directly from any embedded player (as well as Twitter and Facebook of course). Each social network can be disabled individually by Premium Channel Producers.
Unified Share Counter
We’ve merged all our social share counters into a single counter for simplicity. We compile our data from Facebook and bit.ly, and will be adding additional APIs in the future to give you the best gauge of a channel’s popularity in the online social space.
New Styling and Animated Counter
We’ve changed the styling of the buttons on the chrome of the player and added a new animated counter to show viewers arriving at your channel.
Video Library Button
We’ve added a link to take viewers directly to your on-demand video library at livestream.com.
Channel Page Ticker
Each channel page now has a scrolling ticker along the top, which is updated daily to reflect our featured events and broadcasts. This will make it simple for users watching any Livestream channel page to stay up to date on our biggest events, breaking news, and other exclusive broadcasts. We’ve also added a “Next Channel” button to allow viewers to easily channel surf Livestream.
We hope you find these new features helpful and fun. Thanks for using Livestream!
We are extremely excited to announce a site wide upgrade of all Livestream Channel pages. The upgrade includes…
Design Your New Channel Page
- Design Your Page with Fully Customizable Backgrounds and Foregrounds
- New, Configurable Chat Widget: Combines Livestream Chat with Facebook and Twitter
- New Video Library Page: HTML Page now allows your videos to appear in Search Engines
- Direct Links to any Stream, Clip or Library Folder
- New One Click Share Options and Devoted Share page
- Automatic Email Event Reminders
Example of custom designed Livestream channel pages:
Brandi Carlile Concert - Stonyfield Farms - Victorias Secret Pink Carpet - Up In The Air Premiere
Livestream is offering a full year of premium service to the channel with the best design! Submit your channel to contest@livestream.com to be considered for the Best Channel Design.
You Can Also Customize Your New Player
- Lighter Weight and Much Faster
- More Attractive
- Embeddable and Fully Customizable: Color, Size, Text and more
- Directly Integrated Livestream, Facebook and Twitter Sharing Options
- Embeddable in the Facebook Stream
- 100% Configurable for Premium Users
Example Player Embed Page
Example Player Embedded in a Facebook Stream
Customize Your Page Today
Just login and go to My Account > Configure Channel. You’ll see the New Feature Alerts. To learn more about the new channel page design visit the user guide.
For those of you intrepid early adopters who participated in the Beta, we thank you for your feedback and hope that most of your issues have been addressed in this first phase. We look forward to more feedback in the future.
Thanks,
— The Livestream Team
Our recent iPhone Service, which allows anyone to make their Livestream webcast available on the iPhone, got a lot of attention from industry as well as mainstream media!
Here’s a selection of the coverage:
- NY Times: Stream Live Video to the iPhone With Livestream’s Procaster
- PC World: Livestream’s New Service Streams Live Video to the IPhone
- Mashable: , “Livestream Brings Live Video to Mobile Safari”
- Giga OM: How to Watch NewTeeVee Live From Your iPhone
- Mac World: Livestream’s new service streams live video to the iPhone
- Venture Beat: Stream live video to the iPhone with Livestream’s Procaster
- BNet: Livestream Procaster: Stream live video to iPhones everywhere
Livestream Producers – Get started now.
Livestream Launches Free iPhone Service
Delivers ‘One Click’ Live Streaming to the iPhone
No need for iPhone users to download any application
NEW YORK (Nov. 12, 2009)— Livestream, the leading live Internet video platform, today announced the immediate availability of its free service for streaming live to the iPhone and iPod Touch.
Using Livestream Procaster, users can stream live from their webcam, video camera or even broadcast their PC or Mac desktop. Livestream producers can start streaming live to the addressable iPhone and iPod Touch audience over 3G or Wi-Fi connections, with less than five minutes of setup.
Livestream is the first to offer a turn-key streaming service that uses the new H.264 HTTP live streaming functionality included in the native QuickTime player that Apple has pre-installed on the iPhone. This means that Livestream producers do not need to obtain iPhone App Store approval to launch their own iPhone live streaming channel, nor do their viewers need to install any application. Streams are viewed using the iPhone’s Safari browser.
Livestream has also provided a simple Representational State Transfer (REST) API for developers to integrate live streaming into their own iPhone websites or their own iPhone applications. Livestream Procaster includes a free streaming encoder, which means that no third party application or license needs to be purchased in order to stream live to the iPhone using Livestream.
“A key breakthrough is that the service doesn’t require any proprietary player or application to be installed on the iPhone. Producers are free to integrate the iPhone live stream with their own website, iPhone portal or iPhone application using the API provided” explained Livestream CEO and co-founder Max Haot.
Streaming live to the iPhone requires less than five minutes to install. Producers simply download and install Livestream Procaster for the PC or Mac from www.livestream.com/procaster, connect their video camera or webcam, select iPhone 3G Quality, and press Go Live. User can view the live streams on their iPhone or iPod Touch by pointing their Safari browser to the channel they want to view at iphone.livestream.com.
Livestream will first use this new feature at NewTeeVee Live, the conference for online video influencers being held on Nov. 13 in San Francisco. Viewers can watch it live at iphone.livestream.com.
