Posted on Sunday, April 27, 2008
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Battery Life Makes Lifecasting Short Lived -- Could Fuel Cells Made from Wood Alcohol Help?

Pioneering videobloggers Robert Scoble, Jeff Jarvis, Steve Garfield and Pop17's Sarah Meyers are using a Nokia mobile device to stream live video to the Web. Most upload to a Web sharing platform such as QIK and Flixwagon.

Some journalists are using the phones for news gathering.

Camera phones are great, but live video streaming only goes about 30 minutes on one battery, Sarah Meyers told me in this interview.

She says that the limitation of battery life is the biggest issue facing her as a lifecaster.

Sarah also does a post-produced show using an HD DV camera. She recently hooked up with Rockeboom for production and syndication help. Here's a segment she did about Beet.TV!

Fuel Cells On the Horizon for Mobile Devices

I came across this video, above, reported by CNET's Michael Kanellos about advances with methanol fuel cells, which use wood alcohol. He reports that these cells could power cell phones and cameras in a year or so. The image above this back of a prototype Samsung Black Jack with fuel cell attached. Maybe some day one of these cells will keep Sarah going and going and going......

-- Andy Plesser