Cover It Live!

A new 'live' blogging tool has hit the internet superhighway and taken off like a cyclone. It allows you to not only blog about an ongoing event like an election, but also allows you to use multimedia features to peg your blogging to. These multimedia tools include audio, video and images, but also incorporates interactive tools such as easily set up polls and reader comments which can be moderated. The most beautiful of this is that it allows multi-post blogging capability. To know more, visit the website here.

We introduced it at the office for blow-by-blow blogging needs and the reporters are adapting quite well to it. One of the good things about new media technology is that the younger set find it easier to pick up while the older generation are a bit sceptical. With Coveritlive, I think the makers of the software have made it quite simple to use and pick-up rate is less than 20 minutes for newcomers to understand. Why this is so is easily understood.

Remember the days when ICQ was introduced? Well, this interface is similar to messaging service except than in messaging service, you talk to one another. Later when ICQ introduced conferencing, you could 'chat' with several people at one time. Look at Coveritlive as the ICQ (or any IM). Instead of allowing conversations between people who are 'talking' to each other, it also allows 'eavesdropping' by readers. And the beautiful part of it is that these readers are allowed to comment on what the administrators are chatting about and join in this community.

At the heart of Coveritlive is the code snippet which allows the 'chat' template to be easily posted on websites. Like YouTube, you just cut and embed on any site you want and you have an entirely 'live' coverage of any event - whether you call it blog or chat is up to you.

This is exceptionally good when doing Live Blogging (or online reporting) of events such as sports, races and elections for instance. The only bug I see is perhaps the instantaneous posting of each message/blogpost is dependent on line. Otherwise, you could do a lot with Coveritlive - including embedding pictures, and other multimedia stuff.