@iphreak on Twitter asked “Have you written anything in Dear Cali about how Ustream works? I wanted to set up a streaming like you did recently.”

I’ll walk you through my Ustream setup, but first let’s look at the basics. Ustream is a live streaming service. Anyone with a webcam can sign up for a free account and “broadcast” live. You might want to do this to let your family share in how big your son is getting, or you might want to produce the best show on the planet and share it with the world. The possibilities are unlimited.

Once you sign up, connect your camera. You can use a webcam, or a camcorder that connects via Firewire or USB. Not all camcorders will function as a webcam, so you might need to do some testing on yours. Next, click on the orange “Broadcast Now” button. This will open a popout window.

Choose your camera from “Video Source”, then choose your audio from “Audio Source”. Click “Start Broadcast”, and you’re now live! You can “Start Recording” if you want to save the recording on the Ustream site.

So, that’s Ustream at its basic functionality. You can use apps like CamTwist to add visual effects. For Cali Live, our weekly live streaming show, we use Vidblaster Pro, and three cameras. Vidblaster allows you to do live camera switching, lower thirds and add in video and audio. It’s Windows only for now, so we use it on Vista.

A couple tips Once you go live, make sure you have the chatroom open so you can talk with your viewers. If you know ahead of time when you’re going to be live, you can schedule shows. That way, people know ahead of time to stop by!