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"The process of Streaming video to the Web from, say, a mobile phone is primarily the domain of services like Flixwagon, Kyte, and Qik. But the players in the space are fairly young as it is, so there\u2019s likely room for at least one more serious participant. Enter, Next2Friends Live, a service coming by way of London, England, that is having its official 1.0 launch today.\nLike its competition, as a \u201Creal-time streaming\u201D mechanism, Next2Friends Live is being promoted as a service that enables anyone to share live content with friends on the Web. But claims of technical superiority are in evidence with today\u2019s announcement. Next2Friends is pegged as having surpassed the average live-streaming service in terms of synchronous broadcasting and viewing.\n\nWhereas already-available video engines have offered users the option to deliver video with some 2-second-plus playback delays, Next2Friends presents a 0.2-second figure for itself. Its engineers have employed what is vaguely described as a proprietary transfer technology, which is purportedly the basis for streaming with near-exact reproduction of a live broadcast. Details of its internal processes are kept under wraps, of course, but the company has mentioned that users can manage streams manually or automatically to better adapt to particular network conditions by adjusting quality settings.\nAs with most other services of its type, broadcasts made through Next2Friends can be embedded on a myriad of third-party pages for the convenience of viewers, and video quality is comparably good. The service is available for mobile video phone users as well as people equipped with webcams and the like. Next2Friends lists handset compatibility with devices from Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, LG, and Sony Ericsson. On the company blog, Hans from Next2Friends explains the team\u2019s intentions to develop iPhone-friendly software as well.\nNext2Friends Live is built upon a four-prong social platform that, in addition to the video streaming service, offers members: Bluetooth-enabled social networking recommendations for chance encounters in the real-world; an advice-gathering service called \"Ask-a-Friend\"; and a video messaging system that allows users to leave the visual equivalent of a voicemail for contacts for playback on both desktop computer and mobile phones."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2008/06/18/next2friends-official-launch/>