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So I mentioned last week that we love our members and in case you forgot I’ll say it again: We love our members! This week’s member of the week is:

Squeaks

She is a 26 year old living in the UK, has just graduated college and is a DJ among other things! Great to have you Squeaks and congratulations on not only graduating college, but making Next2Friends Member of the Week!

The Next2Friends Video of the Week was created by Genius. Aside from his cute little dog and gorgeous bird check out the quality of picture he got using Next2Friends Live. Pretty amazing:

And last but not least is the Next2Friends Picture of the Week. This was submitted to our Next2Friends Glastonbury Festival profile. We’ll be at Glastonbury bringing you all the excitement of the worlds largest greenfield festival for 4 solid days!

Next2Friends - It’s NOW!

I decided to test Flixwagon’s assertion that they bring you ‘Your Life…Live!’ I wanted to see just how ‘live’ their video broadcasting from mobile was. I was pretty shocked at just how NOT live they are. Over WiFi they were running about a 30 second delay from the genesis of an event to when it hits the web! WARNING: It takes a while to get to the actual test, it begins right before the 2 minute mark, but have a look for yourself:

A few weeks ago I did a similar test of Qik and have to say that they fared better. They ran about a 3-5 second delay over WiFi and anywhere from a 9-45 second delay over a 3.5G connection.

But none stand up to Next2Friends in their ability to deliver events to the web AS THEY HAPPEN. Have a look at Next2Friends over WiFi:

And here is Next2Friends over a 3.5G connection. Notice that the delay is almost indistinguishable between the two:

Next2Friends is the only one to deliver TRUE LIVE from mobile so far! We’re finding more and more people who seem to care. Do you?

www.Next2Friends.com - It’s NOW!

Next2Friends is all about community and we’re excited that so many people are finding Next2Friends a meaningful place to go. And, frankly, we love our members so we’ve decided to feature a member every week! This week’s featured member is:

Dan Cronin

Dan is a 22 year old from the UK. He’s been an active member of Next2Friends since December, 2007. He likes to ski and hang with friends among other things.

We’ve also decided to pick a Video and Picture of the Week. This week’s video is great, a bit painful to watch, but good nonetheless:

And the Picture of the Week:

Thanks everybody! Keep ‘em coming!

www.Next2Friends.com - It’s NOW!

Sarah? Shannon? How do I get started!?!

#1: Start a Next2Friends Profile

Go to:

Next2Friends Signup

#2: Download the Applications to Your Mobile

Go to this address and use the drop down boxes to pick your phone, then download and install the various Next2Friends applications:

Next2Friends Mobile Applications Downloads Page

#3: Broadcast!

You have several options here. The most obvious and perhaps the most fun is to stream LIVE from your mobile phone. Instructions here:

The other ways you can accomplish this are to use Next2Friends Snap-Up to instantly upload photos to your profile or create real-time opinion polls using Next2Friends Ask.

Next2Friends - It’s NOW!

The new 3G iPhone has been released and the industry is abuzz with thoughts and speculation on the particulars. “Twice as fast, half the price” is the mantra being echoed by scores of people in the press. But on further examination it looks as if “half the price” will actually cost consumers an extra $240 per 2 year contract. This still wasn’t enough to stop AT&T’s shares from slipping.

But it’s the new features of the 3G iPhone that really excite us at Next2Friends. Let’s start with the introduction of video. H.264 up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second. This means that we can finally bring Next2Friends Live to the iPhone and open up the world of live streamed video for iPhone users! Development begins the minute we get our hands on one (or maybe sooner).

The next feature of interest to us is the new 2 megapixel camera. Not much to report there but the better the camera the better the picture for things like Next2Friends Snap-Up and Ask.

And of course we can’t forget the ability to connect to a 3G network. Next2Friends Live is completely scalable (unlike our competition) meaning that our picture and audio quality will improve as the robustness of networks improve. With a 3G connection you can easily get a nice 15fps picture. Here’s a test I did:

Hey, I did it to demonstrate picture quality, not bed-making quality or clothes-folding quality! Live is live, warts and all, thats the beauty of this thing we’ve built:-)

www.Next2Friends.com - It’s NOW!