On FaceTime

A lot of people are talking about FaceTime, Apple’s new iPhone 4 to iPhone 4 video chat.

I’ve had three calls now and all were very successful. The video and audio quality is amazing.

The wifi range on the iPhone 4 is incredible, allowing me to cross the street, when my Airport Extreme N (100baseT) was in the back of the house (upper floor).

So it’s very cool, but where is Apple going with this? John Gruber thinks it is Apple’s end-run around the carriers, eventually allowing calls without minutes. That might be true, but I bet they’ll find a way to just charge for data instead.

What I do foresee, and this is not an Apple-specific vision, is FaceTime exploding once we’re all on LTE networks.

Imagine CNN’s iReport. You’ll have a “number” to call and your video will start streaming to CNN. A director (or a bullpen of them) will have three 30″ screens, each with hundreds of iReport FaceTime streams. Each stream will show for 5 seconds and move on to the next one.

A director can touch (or click) a stream and have it go live on iReport.

A world full of videographers. Something happening right now at the capital? Bamn, it’s on TV or the web. No need to record and then upload, that is so 2009. Just stream it.

We’ll see a resurgence of live web-cams, but this time it’ll be people flav-a-flaving their FaceTime devices by hanging them around their necks and walking around.

There will be SpyTime devices, that put little cameras in your hat.

Is this good or bad for us? Time, or rather FaceTime, will surely tell.