I arrived back home around 7 PM last night...11 hours in the car is always a fun way to spend a day. Choices for interesting radio from the Pennsylvania border all the way through Indiana are very limited...fortunately I had the Clash and others on my Iphone. It was great to be home to see the family.
One experience I would like to share is about Ustream and their Iphone application they released the night before the Inauguration. I downloaded the application late Monday night and during my wait along the parade route decided to switch to the north side of Pennsylvania Avenue as there were a couple of stores along the route including a Starbucks. I needed some warm liquids and food as I waited close to 8 hours for the parade to begin.
In order to take advantage of the Ustream app you need to be connected to the internet via a WiFi connection so I logged into AT&T's WiFi at Starbucks. As the invocation started I fired up the app and sure enough it worked remarkably well considering the crowds. I only stayed with the stream for a few minutes because it was several seconds behind the live audio that was being broadcast along the parade route. As I was watching the stream I swear I saw where 118K people were accessing the stream.
Ustream released today on their blog that 214K people had downloaded the application in less than 48 hours catapulting it to the #4 spot on Itunes Application Stores free app's. Additionally, they set records for the number of live streams they served up.
I look forward to exploring future mobile applications and developments as networks continue to get faster, handsets improve and developers continue releasing functional and interesting applications.