You’ve heard of UStream? Well Google is looking to add similar functionality to their popular video site. Today and tomorrow YouTube will be testing a live streaming platform with four content partners: Howcast, Next New Networks, Rocketboom and Young Hollywood. The platform seemlessly integrates live streaming into a YouTube channel page. All they require of selected broadcasters is a webcam or external USB/FireWire camera. Easy peesy, right? A “Live Comments” module sits to the right of the live video stream; this gives viewers and broadcasters the ability to communicate with one another. Remember this is only a two-day trial only for the specified content partners; Google promises to “evaluate rolling out the platform more broadly to our partners worldwide” at an undisclosed date. So don’t think you can broadcast live your own keyboard cat doing his thing for the world to see…yet. Click the links provided above (or scrub through the interactive embedded YouTube TV-mabob) to catch live content before time runs out.
Coca-Cola has unveiled its latest creation with the “Coca-Cola Freestyle” soda fountain. What’s so special about this soda dispenser is that it can provide over 100 different types of soda flavors in one machine (compared to today’s cap of around 6-8 flavor valves). The machine has a user-friendly touch screen interface. A customer simply selects a “parent brand” like Coke, Diet Coke, Coke Zero, Sprite, Diet Sprite, Fanta, or Powerade and chooses a specific flavor within the brand. For example, one can select Sprite and choose to drink peach-flavored Sprite. That’s right–this machine dispenses many unknown or rare flavors of your favorite soda drinks. There’s “strawberry, grape or peach Sprite (which is very tasty), seven kinds of Fanta, seven kinds of Powerade, six flavors of Vault energy drink, and just as many flavors of Dasani water, or its carbonated counterpart Dasani Sensations.” So how does it hold so many different kinds of drinks, you ask? Read on.
Shelley Kench, a Coca-Cola rep: “In traditional machines, the syrups have to be mixed with CO2 and water in a larger scale. The ingredients that are in the cartridges are no longer what we call ’syrups.’ Now the ingredients are based on individual recipe for each drink based on that user’s selection.” Coca-Cola is using its own proprietary technology called “Pure Pour.” SDDN: “[They] Coca-Cola developed the machine by using small, highly-concentrated containers of ingredients. Those ingredients are then mixed with water and sweetener to create each individual drink.”
The Coca-Cola Freestyle is currently in a testing stage. A fully operational unit can be used at a Jack-In-the-Box in Vista, San Diego. Oscar Hurtado, store district manager: “It’s much easier to maintain, and it’s a time saver and it saves storage. It would take about 14 of the old fountain machines to do what one new unit can do.” For now, the machine will be limited to restaurants and other eateries in Southern California. Coca-Cola aims for a nationwide release in 2010. Check out the videos above for (1) a quick preview of the device and (2) a bunch of kids stumbling upon it in a restaurant; and see below for a gallery of product images.
