Just one month after AT&T joined the Juice Wireless roster, the social networking provider is adding Alltel Wireless to its list of carriers now offering JuiceCaster 6.0, which includes the ability to update video blogs directly from mobile phones. This is the sixth revamping of the service, on the market since last year, as it has evolved to meet the needs of an increasingly social and visual consumer base.

JuiceCaster was formed with the idea of social broadcasting as a feature of networking in mind. The core applications have always been around sending pictures and videos from phones to other online social networks and Web sites. This latest iteration also includes the creation of groups for one-touch, instant video sharing to mobile phones, email and online social networks, bookmarking integration with services such as Digg and De.li.cious, the ability to watch and interact with user-generated videos direct on the mobile handset, as well as the ability for non-members to access JuiceCaster member’s status updates.

The ability to update video blogs from the mobile phone is especially exciting to avid social networkers looking to take their real-time capabilities to the next level. Version 6.0 allows users to post mobile videos as blog entries on blogging sites including Blogger and Typepad. Amir Hosseinpour, the vice president of product management at Juice Wireless, said the application, found in Alltel’s Access catalogue, can be installed on the mobile handset and lets the consumer treat the handset itself as a viewfinder. After a video is captured, the user can add text or pictures or simply upload it directly to their blog.

“In JuiceCaster 6.0 on [Alltel’s] BREW, if someone leaves a comment on your blog and the phone is in the idle screen, not running the application or just sitting on the coffee table, the phone vibrates,” Hosseinpour said. “When you flip the phone open, you can view the comment and reply to it inside the application itself.”

Even more so than instant-gratification video, version 6.0 of JuiceCaster is about two-way communication, Hosseinpour said. Getting these comments, responding and interacting in real time through text, video and pictures is what Juice Wireless’s growing consumer base is demanding. The increasing popularity of these types of services has come as more and more handsets are better equipped to support video and deal with the bandwidth intensive applications.

“The second [trend] is greater availability of mobile broadband, so the phones can now actually upload these files at a far more reasonable speed,” Hosseinpour said. “Obviously the fastest thing to upload is text, followed by an image, then a video. Given the speed increases and the bandwidth increases in these phones and across the carriers, video becomes a much more feasible user experience. Whereas a couple of years ago, it wasn’t the case.”

The next iteration of the JuiceCaster technology is likely to include integration directly into the handset itself, according to Hosseinpour. The market is still in its early stages, but the feature roadmap for JuiceWireless includes hardware integration with both the camera and the contact list on the phone for instant presence information. The goal will be for each experience to take fewer clicks as the consumers go from viewing to blogging.

“The most optimal user experience is when it takes less clicks to actually get to an application and get to the point where you are uploading the content,” Hosseinpour said. “Whereas on the desktop if you want to create a blog entry, you sit in front of your Web cam or keyboard, you pretty much know that with mobile, you can capture something as soon as it’s happening. By the time you’ve pulled your phone out and started the phone and the application, it is easy to make it happen in a couple of clicks. There is nothing easier than clicking the camera button, a dedicated button the phone, to record a video and then, in one click, publish it. One-click publishing integration with the camera hardware on the phone is very much something we are working on.”

Alltel, which has partnered with Juice since November 2007, is offering the service for $1.99 for a one-day pass or on a subscription model for $3.99 per month or $9.99 for a 90-day unlimited use pass. The JuiceCaster technology, quickly gaining in popularity amongst a host of other social networking options, is currently offered on about 30 different handset models and is also a staple on Leap Wireless, US Cellular and T-Mobile, its biggest US deal, until last week’s addition of AT&T.