“Live” television builds in a seven-second delay to give censors the chance to bleep the seven dirty words you can’t say on TV. Sometimes, “real-time” Web applications feel a little like that, except that the dirty words get through. Which is to say that the “L” in Live Web might as well stand for “latency.”
When I wrote about Cooliris a couple of weeks ago, the team grumbled about the speed of their awesome social photo-sharing app, LiveShare, and I really didn’t get it. The app performs as well as or better than every other real-time social app. I guess, though, if you’re an bright engineer and you know what’s possible with the skills of your team and the platform and infrastructure they’ve painstakingly built, a couple factional seconds seems like a lifetime.
On Wednesday night, I got a peek at what is possible, too. The next version of LiveShare is amazingly fast. No, check that. It’s true real time. In a demo done over Skype, a photo taken using the LiveShare app on an iPhone appeared on an iPad almost simultaneous with the click of the camera. No question, these guys put the “live” in LiveShare.
Co-founder and CTO Austin Shoemaker put it in engineer-speak: “Social velocity is maximized with this experience.”
The Cooliris exec team is quietly showing the app to its board, advisors, and friends of the company. You can see it here: http://youtu.be/ARhOO1lRUJ0?hd=1
