John Ham, the cofounder and CEO of live video streaming site Ustream, stopped by this afternoon to show me their newest stuff – a yet-to-be-released application that lets users watch live streams from the service on their iPhone. I took a brief video of the product and embedded it below, along with the more official video from Ustream.

The application will let users watch any Ustream channel, live, directly from their iPhone. And not only that, users will also see and be able to participate in the live chat around the video as well.

The timing on the application is near perfect with the Obama inauguration coming up on January 20. If you have the application installed you’ll be able to watch it live from anywhere, even if you aren’t in front of your TV or computer.

The world is changing before our eyes.

If you’d like to try out the application before it officially launches, we have a handful of invitations to give away. Just follow the directions below.

Instructions for preview:

1) Plug the iPhone into your computer
2) Wait for the iPhone info to appear in iTunes
3) click on the words “Serial Number” to cause it to change to “Identifier”
4) double-click the identifier number (the long string of characters) and then press cmd-C (Mac) or ctrl-C (Windows) to copy it
5) email that identifier to iphone@ustream.tv so we can build a custom version for that phone using the iPhone SDK

How is your school leveraging cell phone technology for student learning?In the schools my children attend, mobile phones are not welcome. The regional district school board is jamming the genie back into the lamp, even though the use of handheld technology is ubiquitous in the real world. Rather than restrict the use of this technology, educators (and their students) would be better served, if they were actually to be encouraged to use this technology in their classrooms.

How teachers are working around overprotective content filters to use Web 2.0 tools in the classroom.