Before you do anything, go read the Basics of the Unix Philosophy.
HTTP Streaming is a technique to simulate streaming with the standard http infrastructure.
I've been asked to develop that capability for inclusion in Arcostream's offerings.
First: get an iPod Touch at the minimum and upgrade it to iPod software 3 or above. 2 won't work.
I'm using encoding.com to do the actual encoding.
Noticed that according to http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/technotes/tn2010/tn2224.html#VARIANTPLAYLISTS, the first entry in the variant playlist will be downloaded first. The media player will then use this as the benchmark to decide which speed to use for subsequent segments.
http://linux.goeszen.com/http-live-streaming-to-the-iphone.html
iPhone http streaming with ffmpeg and an open-source segmenter. Very interesting. Many online resources refer to this page.
HTTP Live Streaming draft proposal at the ietf.
A review of HTTP live streaming with good info and interesting comparisons with flash and RTMP (Flash eats your CPU). The presentation.
Introduction to HTTP streaming.
Best Practices for Creating and Deploying HTTP Live Streaming Media for the iPhone and iPad. (What's with the capitalization?) Very good resource however.
Of course, the $99 per year iPhone Developer Program. I haven't joined, but I may.
The Wikipedia article. Fairly light on things.
MediaInfo. Tool to get info about the media, such as bitrate, dimensions, etc.
Last updated July 5 2010.
Feedback, questions, comments: chris.mahan@gmail.com.