Rafe Needleman at Webware has a post up on CoverItLive, which reminded me that I’ve been meaning to write about this live-blogging tool for awhile now (and no, I’m not going to “live-blog” this post — that would be too recursive for words). The company, which is based in Toronto, used to be called Altcaster, and president Keith McSpurren gave me a look at an early version of the beta last year. I thought an all-in-one app that offered support for video, photos and chat was a pretty good idea, but it looked more than a little rough around the edges.
Looking at the most recent version of the app, the team at what became CoverItLive has clearly been working on both the look and the functionality. As Rafe notes, the software makes it easy for someone covering a live event — such as CES or an election, for example — to host a live chat, poll the readers in almost real-time, embed video and so on. Once the event is over, the entire session is saved and can be replayed, as you can see with CrunchGear’s live-blog of Bill Gates.
If I were live-blogging something, I would certainly consider using CoverItLive. The last time I did it, for a panel during the Online News Association conference last fall, I used a BlackBerry — not something I would recommend 🙂