A couple of weeks ago I first discovered Qik and must say that it is one of my favorite applications for the iPhone so far. Qik is a mobile streaming video application that enables anyone to share live video from most mobile phones with your friends, family and the entire world. What does this mean? Launch the application, film whatever you just see and it will be streamed in real time to the Qik website.. The remarkable thing is that it works on Wifi, 3G and 2G. It have tried it for the last couple of weeks and would like to share my experiences and tips.

Once downloaded and installed through Cydia or Icy, simply click the Qik icon on your SpringBoard to launch the application. Then you will be prompted to open a free account (the application and subscription are completely free) through the application on the iPhone or on their website www.qik.com. Chose your personal webpage which you will use to share with your friends and family. It will look something like this: http://qik.com/iphonelu.

Then simply log into the application with your username and password and you’ll see following screen:

Now there is not much you can do wrong here. I shall give you some basic information but leave you with the pleasure to discover some functions on your own. In the bottom left-hand corner you can see the Qik logo with a small triangle pointing upwards. Just click it and the following menu will show up:

I think every point explains itself here. Just one thing I want to share with you: When you choose “Offline� at the top, your iPhone will save the video locally and only upload it to the Qik server when you next launch the application and switch to “Live�. This can be useful when you have a slow connection (2G for example) and don’t wish to stream the video live.

Now, go ahead and click on “Done� in the top right-hand corner to return to the main screen. Tap once with your finger in the middle of the screen and you’ll see following menu pop up:

Again, not much I can explain about these functions, as all is very clear. Just one sentence to the “privacy : public� function. If you don’t wish everybody to see the videos you upload, do make sure to choose this option. You can also do this later on your personal page on www.qik.com but until you switch from public to private anyone will be able to see your video, not only your friends!

Then, last but not least, since a couple of days Qik supports Facebook integration. You can now post any of your videos to Facebook. This doesn’t require you to install a Facebook app, but simply linking your Qik account to your Facebook account. future. Linking your Qik account with your Facebook account is really easy: Simply click on “Connect with Facebook� as you can see in following screenshot:

Then go to Edit Profile > Edit Networks in the menu at the top of the page and edit the privileges of the Facebook account. You will be able to do the same for your YouTube account if you have one, and whilst streaming on Qik your YouTube account will be fed in real time with the same video. 

Now go out there and start broadcasting your own live videos!