Hey, here's another article. In this article, I will be talking about the live streaming website, Ustream. I will also be talking about the good and the bad about it.

So with Ustream, you can do live streaming, which means you can use a webcam and live stream something right to their website, for other people to see what your doing. Live streams do come in handy for things, like for instance, a Marathon. Ustream let's you do any kind of live streams unlike other streaming websites (which only let's you live stream games). All you need to live stream is a webcam, and a microphone. So if you go onto Ustream, and log in, you'll see this button on the top right that says "Go Live", this is where you can start live streaming. Once you get there, you got a couple of different options. You can start broadcasting, you can start record, and down below you can your microphone and webcam names, if you allowed them to access those two items. Then once you start, you can change the quality, and size. There's a couple of cool things about there "control panel"! You can make polls for your viewers to see, and they can answer them. Also with Ustream, you can chat, right next to the side of the stream (Depending on that user's settings, you may need to make an account to chat, or it can be open to the public.) You can chat with your viewers right there, without clicking off of anything. Now there's a couple of lousy things about their live streaming. The first thing, is that it buffers and lags a lot, especially when your trying to stream a game. Many people get frustrated with this and just leave, which in the end, makes an impact on your viewers, just because it takes so long and stops during time periods. This fault it has, is a pretty big one. Now the second thing that it's bad at, is if you have a downloaded program on your computer (like X-stream) it does not corporate with Ustreaming feed. It just shows a still image of whatever your doing, but has the correct audio, but it's really messed up. I tried to do a stream using another program onto Ustream, and it didn't work at all, but that just could be me doing something wrong. 

Now with Ustream, you have to make your "channel". This is were your stream and chat will be located. You can have a background picture, an offline picture that's on the video, and a profile picture. You have pretty good customization with your channel. You can change it's name, change the format of it, change the chat settings, and many other neat things. This is one of the things that Ustream excels at. You can also create an event, which you can put the name of the event, and give a detailed description about what the event is about and so on. With the events, your "Followers" and click on remind me, and it will send an Email to them saying when that event is about the start. People who click the follow button will get updated about when a live stream that person started, and they will get an Email about it. So having followers is a good thing. Another great thing, is that you can embed the live stream and the chat onto a website (which most live streaming websites have this option.) If you have record something during a live stream, there will be a "videos" tab on the chat section, which you can click on, and all the things you recorded will be there. But be warn, you can only have a certain amount of Gigabytes of storage for recorded videos. And also you can only go for 140 minutes, before it won't record anymore, which are lame things about recording. Also, if you try to go back and watch them, Ads appear on them, and even the recorded one buffer and lag, which is a really bad thing.

So overall, I think Ustream is a pretty good streaming website. I only got a few problems with it, one being the lagging and buffering, and the program not working into it. Those two things is a huge let down, so if your a gamer, I suggest you don't use Ustream, but instead use something like Twitch (Which I'll cover next week.) But if your reporting news, or just messing around, Ustream is probably the best place for you. The truly good things about it, is that you have great customization of your channel, chat, profile, pictures, etc... So those are my thoughts about Ustream, the live streaming website. Tell me your thoughts. Do you like Ustream? Do you agree with me with some of the things? Let me know down below, and next week, I'll be going over the live stream website, Twitch.