Treo Used by Fox to Show N.Y. Plane Crash Video

Thanks to this article by Ryan at PalmInfoCenter I found this story at Reuters: "Fox uses Treo to break N.Y. plane crash news"

When a single-engine plane crashed into an Upper East Side apartment building on Wednesday, Fox News Channel delivered early live video to its viewers from the crash site using a hand-held mobile phone souped up with streaming video.

Scott Wilder, a cameraman for the network, had been about 20 blocks away on another assignment when the crash occurred. Wilder ran uptown and reported live from the scene using a hand-held Palm Treo smartphone that uses the existing mobile network to transmit video to the Fox News control room. From there, Fox News sent it out live on TV to supplement other video being shot by local traffic helicopters.

Wilder's work represents one of the first instances of a network using video captured via mobile phone camera live on the air. Fox News has experimented with the practice several times in recent weeks with CometVision, software designed by Ohio-based Comet Video Technologies.

The rest of the article is well worth a read. It explains how FOX used the Treo live video feed, some background on the service Wilder used to capture and send the video, and states that even though the quality wasn't spectacular, the fact that they had live on-the-scene video when no one else did really made a difference in the way they were able to inform their audience and provide references for phone interviews that would not have existed otherwise.