On Sunday myself and the family were down in Brighton at Stanmer Park to celebrate the baptism of our friends' baby. It was a day that confirmed the real progress that the Internet is making on our lives.

It was a lovely - and hot - summer's afternoon. But this was no ordinary day; my personal attention was split between the day's celebrations, the European Grand Prix, and, of course, England versus Germany in South Africa! And I was not alone.

After the service at the church earlier in the day, we all congregated at Stanmer Park for a relaxed afternoon among friends, enjoying a leisurely lunch. For once, the technology really delivered and I was able to dip in and out of the grand prix using my HTC Desire Android smartphone, watching a live video stream over mobile broadband from [URL="http://www.tvcatchup.com/"]TVCatchup[/URL]. A quarter of an hour or so after the race finished, the players in Bloemfontein started their match. At this point I wasn't expecting much as the TVCatchup service has experienced unreliability when it has been heavily loaded, but not that afternoon - the picture, although not prefect, was perfectly watchable on my phone - and quite a few other phones around the Stanmer Park house and gardens!

In one of the drawing rooms there was a big plasma screen on the wall where other guests were nervously watching the match. I started to notice that the picture was not quite as clean and crisp as you'd expect. It dawned on me that this was an internet feed too - and I was proved right.

As the Internet continues to evolve and improve, video streaming like this will become commonplace and the norm. When you compare requirements of still photography, storing big files virtually on the Net and making them universally accessible, this can only be a great thing for us photographers.