Ever wanted to stream live video from your phone to a friend or family member somewhere? What about archive video you've shot from your phone directly to the Web? Qik lets you do both. Today, Qik officially entered public beta. As long as you have a smartphone running Windows Mobile or S60 (and a data plan!) you're ready to share whatever your little heart desires.

Qik is a very cool service. Basically, if you're a mobile video fanatic, you need to sign up. I shoot video using my cell phone all the time. Transferring it to other sites was a major pain until Qik came around. Using Qik, any video you shoot is streamed live, and also archived at the same time, so you can watch it again later. For those who need to share what they see and don't think picture messages or MMS messages are enough, this is the avenue you need to take.

Along with the public beta, Qik is offering more features. It allows users to create groups or communities to stream to; to create events and invite others to join; and to publish to Facebook, MySpace, and Orkut sharing sites. Qik also has a better-looking player that contains the ability to view the thumbnails of all the videos of the user and play directly from there, and chat from within the player that shows up as overlay on the player.

According to the Qik blog, the service supports several Windows Mobile devices and about two dozen S60 smartphones from Nokia. Qik is working to add more phones to the list of devices it supports, and currently has a private alpha available for the iPhone. (Yes, video from the iPhone!) Even if you have a phone that is not supported, you can sign up and join in the community aspect of Qik.

The beta program is free, and requires users to have a data plan with their carrier. I suggest you check it out.