Sharing video with the family back home just got easier

New LiveLens application allows one-click live video sharing from mobile phone to Facebook.

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
LiveLens 370 (photo credit: Courtesy)
LiveLens 370
(photo credit: Courtesy)
For those immigrants to Israel with family overseas who still remember the days of aerograms and pumping asimonim (phone tokens) into a payphone - every advance in communications since the 1990’s has been its own revelation. But even more recent immigrants can appreciate the ongoing keeping-in-touch revolution. Forget about sending prints via air mail, who even remembers sending pictures via email? Who recalls the days when to update family and friends you’d send out a mass email, and not just a Tweet or Facebook post? When was the last time you sent a paper card for a birthday?
And it just keeps getting better. Because what Skype did for our living rooms and Instagram did for our digital pictures, a new application from Israeli start-up LiveLens is now doing for live video from our mobile phones straight to your Facebook, allowing all your dearest to see your video anytime!!
We can all agree that video tells our stories better. That’s why we’ve always got our cameras ready to capture the kids singing, grandma’s birthday celebration, or the rainbow that just now came out over Jerusalem. But what percentage of these precious videos ever get seen and what percentage just stay in our phones, taking up memory until we either offload or delete them?
The reason for this is simple. Until now, sharing video was a complex process. Not as complex as sending a VHS home videotape via snail mail, perhaps, but relatively complex. However you look at it, uploading a video to YouTube or Facebook and sharing is certainly not a one-click, impulse-driven experience.
And that’s exactly what LiveLens is: one click for a live shared video via Facebook. Full stop.
Here’s how it works. Install LiveLens from Google Play or Apple App-Store for free, open the app, connect with Facebook, and start shooting video. Your video is streamed to Facebook as a video post according to your Facebook sharing settings. Grandma or Aunt Ethel can watch it live or watch it the next time they log in.
Of course, like any social media tool, you can Like or comment on your or other people’s videos right from the LiveLens interface, or from Facebook. And, if your Facebook friends install LiveLens, they get real-time notification of your videos, and can tune in live, or watch friends and theirs video from the gallery. You can also make private groups to allow your video’s to only certain people from Facebook.
The key benefit of LiveLens is the app’s immediacy, simplicity, together with the comfort of all ready known tight control and privacy of Facebook sharing. There are other video-sharing apps out there, but they’re all also for public-domain videos. And as much as the entire world might enjoy your child’s piano recital, you probably don’t want to share it with everyone.
So, for new and old immigrants – your family just got one step closer.  But prepare yourselves. Because once they tune in to LiveLens, play a more active and immediate role in your lives, and see how great things really are in Israel – they may be on the next plane over sooner than you expected.
Enjoy LiveLens, www.livelens.com - both for Android and iOS.