Koozoo: Shared Live Video Of Public Places On Your Device Made Easy

A new iPhone app wants to make it easy to see live video of public spaces at any time.

The idea of Koozoo is simple: sometimes people just want to know something simple that they can easily find out if they could get a live view of a public space. For example, a live video could easily show if it’s foggy at the beach, or how crowded a particular store is at that moment.

Koozoo lets users stream those live videos to other users easily. To stream video Koozoo recommends users download the app to an old smartphone and point it facing out an office or home window. Then other users can easily view the video from their own smartphones for free. Users can also view the video from their computers or tablets through the Koozoo website.

Koozoo is currently in closed beta in San Francisco, where users can sign up to stream their videos. Users with “interesting views” of life on San Francisco will get the chance to use the service before others. Koozoo will publicly launch in early 2013 when users in other cities will get the chance to stream video from their windows.

To help make Koozoo a reality the company recently raised $2.5 million in seed funding to get the service up and running.

From the video it seems that in order to view the video streams in Koozoo users have to provide their own video stream. That ensures that users who want to view the live streams also participate in the community by providing their own. Not every stream will contain useful information for everyone, but it’s a great way for users to see areas of cities they may not have visited before.

Eventually Koozoo may make it possible for anyone to take virtual tours of foreign cities from the comfort of their own home.

Assuming, of course, that it catches on.