Looxcie: a wearable camcorder that streams via bluetooth to your phone

Looxcie is a great device that lets you film exactly what you see. I’ve been testing one out for the last several weeks and have enjoyed learning about it and thinking about its potential uses in the enterprise.

It has a lightweight, over the ear form factor that frees your hands and eyes up while capturing video and audio. Looxcie (pronounced Look-See) is fun to use and when combined with its very low cost and well engineered capabilities will likely see widespread use in the consumer world. Its potential to seriously support enterprise missions means the enterprise CTO world should also take note. This post highlight some of the enterprise dimensions of this device.

A bit on Looxcie’s capabilities:

The Looxcie device is meant to be worn. When it is on you can record all you see. You can instantly email clips to anyone or instantly post them to video sharing sites (including Facebook, YouTube or Twitter). And this is all done in an effortless way. Looxcie is on continuously. It can be used as a stand along device, or paired with a Bluetooth phone. When paired, the phone can be used as the viewfinder. The phone can also store clips sent by Bluetooth. And, in a new capability announced at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show, the phone can also enable live streaming of the Looxcie device feed via the Internet.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yt2y1bkKpeM

Now think for a few minutes about the enterprise missions that can be served by this capability. Here are a few that come to mind:

Emergency responders can capture more of a situation as it unfolds, getting more details and more operational views recorded for both real time analysis at other locations (back at the firehouse or police HQ, for example) or for debrief and lessons learned after the event.
Law enforcement professionals can always have live information on emerging situations captured and remotely monitored. Cameras on police cars are becoming the norm. This is just the next evolution.
Building security professionals and receptionists can use these low cost devices as a way to enhance security and awareness of activity.
Employees of professions that must work in high crime areas may use these as a deterrent to criminal activity.
Many military use-cases in peace, crisis and conflict come to mind.

I imagine you can think of many more enterprise use cases. So, the point is, this small, affordable video livecasting capability is coming, and enterprise IT professionals should be thinking about the infrastructure required to support. When used in an enterprise context, the video from these devices will likely need to be secured and routed in ways that bring it rapidly to enterprise command centers for example, so there are security and storage impacts. If large numbers are using these in the workforce then enterprises may want to invest in capabilities to automatically review the feeds to look for certain actions in the video. And for this and many many other reasons we should all be thinking about our communications infrastructure and its readiness for a future of massive live streaming video.

If you want to check out the device before your enterprise has them you can buy one now at Amazon: Looxcie LX1 Wearable Bluetooth Camcorder, iPhone and Android Compatible