Liveblogging Tool: COVERITLIVE
CoverItLive is a new, hosted service for blogging events in real-time, or “liveblogging.” It is a useful tool for people covering major industry events, speeches, sports, and whatever else. This tool can be most famous for being used with Macworld (Tuesday, January 15th) and CES. Perhaps one of these days, here at TTB we will be able to give you live coverage using this ultimate liveblogging tool.
The tool is a simple concept. One way I have heard is to use Twitter and embed the widget into the blog. Setting up a CoveritLive account however, is fast and free, and once you have done so you can either jump straight into liveblogging or schedule upcoming events.
Liveblog content is all hosted on CoverItLive, and you put it on your blog by pasting in a small snippet of HTML code. Features you get as publisher, in addition to really easy-to-use IM-like text entry window, include the capability to take comments from readers and post the ones you like in your stream; live polls; and the option to post either pre-canned or new pictures and videos. CoverItLive also provides publishers with statistics on their live viewership, which is very useful.
I like this tool a lot and would come in great handy in the future. For publishers that want to host all content on their own servers, there may be a downloadable version of the software in the future.
I expect several outlets will be liveblogging the MacWorld Steve Jobs keynote on Tuesday with it. One site I know that definitely uses the tool is the GeekBriefTV site.
