The Guardian is reporting that “…millions of Arabs across the Middle East and north Africa are watching vivid and often shocking coverage of the Israeli military onslaught on Hamas in the Gaza Strip on Arabic satellite TV channels, with al-Jazeera again leading the field.”

The Guardian article goes on to say that “Al-Jazeera has also just become available to computer users live over broadband on the Livestation Network in every country except the US, where it is blocked.”

This is not quite true. Al Jazeera English is available world-wide, although the agreement for streaming Al Jazeera Arabic on Livestation, drawn up by Al Jazeera’s distribution team in Doha, requires that we geoblock it from being seen in the USA.

We have certainly seen a massive increase in traffic to the Livestation streams of both the Al-Jaeera English and al Jaeera Arabic channels. There has also been non-stop chat in the chat room linked to the stream as up to 50 people at a time have been discussing the developing situation.

The live, instant chat in the Al Jazeera English chat room has thrown up some fascinating discussions with people posting from all over the world. Anyone can join the chat and discuss the live events as you watch them unfold.

Al Jazeera would do well to have a news producer sitting in on the chat and stimulating the debate.

Live, instant newsgathering on the desktop - it has to be the future.

Journalists wanting to monitor and cover the three remaining live Iranian presidential debates can now do so from their desktop and watch a global audience chat about what is being said in real time.

You can capture quotes from the candidates, comments from the audience and take screen grabs of the action and of any live, real-time audience polls.

Earlier this week, the latest live Iranian presidential debate broadcast by Press TV from Tehran was streamed live on Livestation.

Hundreds watched the debate live from all corners of the world and chatted in real time with Press TV producers in Tehran exchanging views and expressing their preferences via the live polls Press TV pushed to their desktop.

This enabled Press TV to guage the mood of those watching the debate and to assess how each candidate had performed.

It gave a fascinating insight, not only into the thinking of those standing for the role of president of Iran, but of the global audience.

It might be useful for your news teams covering that area to monitor the next debates from your desktops or laptops. All you need to do is download the Livesation player, which is totally free and safe, install it on your computer and tune in.

You can minimise the screen and keep it running in the corner of your screen as you write your report. You can even take screen grabs to illustrate your report. If you want to use any of the chatroom comments, you can right click in the chat room pane, ‘select all’ and then edit it for your report. If the producers use the Livestation’s Live Panel and you can take a grab of that, too.

All these newsgathering and newsproduction tools are absolutely free. All you need is a fast broadband connection.

If you want to try it out, here is the remaining schedule:

6 June: Ahmadinejad-Karoubi
7 June: Karoubi-Mousavi
8 June: Ahmadinejad-Rezai

You don’t have to mention that you watched it on Livestation, but a mention and link would be nice.