jooster, internet TV from Joost

Childrens charity Gulf of Hope in hair raising charity drive

2010-02-09T17:54:00.000+01:00

The Gulf of Hope needs to be registered as a Charity, to make sure we are all official and above-board. This costs money. So far, all our funds have gone to enrol six little girls in a proper school for 2010. For now, the coffers are empty. Our solution: Omar and I decided to do a fundraiser. For a long while, we thought about what we could do, and finally came upon the idea that we will both shave our heads. With this, we are making a bold (and bald) statement - we are serious about the Gulf of Hope. We hope that our lack of locks will start communication with new people: people who will become interested in what we do, and who might decide to contribute.

The event will take place in late March, just before we go to the States. To make it easier with contributions, I signed us up on Chipin. Chipin will collect donations for us, track them, and provide updates as we go.

As you can see, we are hoping to raise $3000. Right now, we are not sure how much it will cost to be officially registered. This does not mean that we have not done our homework: registration is difficult as we live in Abu Dhabi at the moment and to register here is impossible without local support. We cannot register as a Charity in the UK, USA or Germany as we do not live there. But we are hoping to get charitable status in El Salvador. We spoke to our lawyers and they are working on this issue. When we go to La Union in April, we should be able to sign the necessary papers ... whatever we raise will support this venture. If anything is left over, it will go into the funds.

Joost online media for the mobile generation

2010-01-28T01:23:00.002+01:00

Dont become a moron, dont let censorship enter you life..

"What's Joost? It's a way to watch videos – music, TV, movies and more – over the Internet. We could just call it a website ... with videos ... but that's not the whole story. We're giving you new ways to find what you'd like to watch. You can search in "traditional" ways – by title or category – or you can find suggestions from other people on Joost. They may be your friends, or they may just be people who have something in common with you – but either way, they can direct you to great things to watch."

Emergency Broadcast New World Order Ahead

2009-03-16T18:05:00.001+01:00

Please do everything you can to circulate this video far and wide. Post it in blogs, bulletins, forums, chain emails... Upload it to your YouTube channel... Use your imagination...

Torrent: http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4755641

Website coming soon: http://www.operationmindseed.com

What is Rhythmic Balanced Interchange ?

2008-12-13T14:35:00.000+01:00

To find out more book a trip

CEO Mike Volpi - We've Figured It Out This Time

2008-06-19T14:07:00.003+01:00

Two years ago, in the wake of Google's $1.65 billion acquisition of YouTube, Joost was suposed to solve a very 2006 dilemma: Fearful media companies wanted to distribute their video over the Internet, but didn't know how they'd do it.

But that was then. Now TV networks are happy to distribute their content, via conventional Web sites, as widely as possible. And that makes Joost, which requires an unwieldy download before users can play a single second of video, looks like a clumsy solution for a non-existent problem.

Now Joost has one shot to reinvent itself, via new service that launches within a Web browser -- just like every other Web vide service. That product is weeks away from launch, CEO Mike Volpi tells us, and this time he thinks his company has figured it out:

Silicon Alley Insider: What mistakes did Joost make the first time around and what are you doing to fix them?

Mike Volpi: We introduced what was the 2006 vision of the best product out there. The product came to market and I think we learned a lot of things from it. We're the first to say it didn't exactly hit the sweet spot. We have a great brand and great content that we still have access to today. But we had a product that wasn't quite right.

SAI: When you started out, you had by far the most content of any legal aggregator on the Web. Now content is everywhere, so where does that leave Joost?

Volpi: The world has migrated from an exclusive model of content distribution to a non-exclusive model. Our view is that content is available in a lot of places, but by packaging it and merchandizing it better, hopefully we will be a better place to come to. As people come to us, the content owners will say "I'm not going to upload this to 25 places" -- they won't be bothered -- "I'm just going to upload it two or three places." That will give us an advantage -- not because we have contractual exclusivity, but because it's a place people like to go to.

SAI: How will Joost be different from a Hulu, Veoh or AOL TV?

Volpi: We are designing a platform that is hopefully well-suited to large content owners, but also one that will serve the purposes of the midtail--the indie content, music videos, comedy channels, and so on. There are users out there that don't know what they are going to watch today, or they want to browse in a genre. We will help them find what they're looking for. We host a lot more indie content than Hulu -- and we are doing a lot more work to distribute and sell advertising on that content.

SAI: Do you need to do more content deals to be successful?

Volpi: Today we have 7,500 hours--one of the largest portfolios out there. We'd love to have more, but our success or failure will not be dictated by signing another deal.

SAI: You raised $45 million in 2006 and sources tell us you've been in talks to raise another round of financing. Is that true?

Volpi: No. We have ample cash to get the platform out, work out the kinks and accumulate users. If all goes well hopefully we won't have to raise any more money. A lot of it depends on how quickly we grow. Rapid international expansion would require more capital. The pace of rollout of territories will determine if and how much more funding we might need.

SAI: What kind of ad rates will you need to charge in order to make your service profitable?

Volpi: I am convinced with our business model that TV-level CPMs will work just fine. Online CPMs are higher now, but they will fall back to TV levels. When you operate peer-to-peer, you save on three things: bandwidth, storage, and CPU capacity. It is harder if you look at the "buy-your-own bandwidth, buy-your own-servers" model, which we're not doing. We have cost advantages, which is particularly important in a non-exclusive market. The margins are going to be thin in this industry for an aggregator like us. The first job is to get users but long-term we have to make money. Having a low-cost delivery system is the survival strategy for a content aggregator.

SAI: The last time you launched, it was a big media event. Any plans for a splashy relaunch?

Volpi: It was a different situation, because we had two founders who were so well-known. We were very fortunate that we got the enormous coverage and frankly we still have a wonderful brand because of it. But the expectations pinned on us were so high. It was a difficult situation to manage. Organizing a big party might get us a few headlines, but trust us, we've been through the PR cycle before. We want the product speak for itself and then let the users speak for us.

Thanks to Michael Learmonth for the article

Watch all 123 MacGyver episodes for FREE with Joost

2008-06-06T22:37:00.002+01:00

Remember that tv show that just totally screams 1980's called MacGyver. It's the show about the guy who can pretty much build any contraption with anything that he finds laying around.

MacGyver uses his incredible skills to get himself out of trouble and to save the damsel in distress in every single episode. The MacGyver tv show is actually pretty entertaining although it's totally ridiculous.

You have to sort of suspend your disbelief if you really want to enjoy it. There are 123 episodes of MacGyver online at the great tv website Joost.

All you have to do is download the safe tv show episode player and you're on your way in a time machine back to the eighties. Enjoy the show.

As reported by: TV on the web

Something different for New Years Eve?

2007-12-06T15:39:00.003+01:00

€500 per person - Special 5 day New Years Eve package with Morocco Carp including a Gala dinner!

A new years eve celebration in the Atlas mountains of Morocco with traditional Berber dancing, music and a banquet fit for a Moroccan King.

Click here to take a virtual tour of the Hotel

Our retro cool boutique hotel has 5 suites and fabulous views over the majestic lake of Bin el Ouidane and the high Atlas mountains.

The weather should be similar to that of a ski resort, cold clear star filled nights followed by crisp sunny blue skied days.

Some of the best carp fishing in the world is on our doorstep and we offer full equipment hire to give you a chance to hook yourself a Moroccan monster.

The lake record is a massive 69lbs but the lake average of 30lbs would please most.

If fishing's not your thing why not kick off 2008 with some off road Quad biking? we have two 150cc automatic Quad bikes for hire and miles of unexplored tracks, ruined Kasbas and stunning mountain scenery.

If peace and tranquility is more your thing why not explore the lake on one of our surf kayaks? unsinkable and safe for even the most inexperienced its a wonderful way to see and get close to the wildlife. Just dont get too close to the Carp fishermen.

A Moroccan food experience.

Your breakfast and dinner are prepared by our hotel kitchens every day and are included in the price, the selection changes daily as we use fresh in season local produce prepared in the traditional Berber style .

The Berber lounge restaurant menu operates from 12pm-5pm.

The Pioneer menu - for ordering pack lunches and drinks when your out exploring or fishing.

Moroccan food is excellent and we hope to show some of its finer points during our Moroccan Gala diner dance on the 31st. This will be an unforgettable evening to stimulate all your senses. The night will commence in our lantern lit gardens where Berber musicians thump out their haunting drum and vocal melodies, live. The rhythm is followed by the pulsating dancers who twirl and shrill in a way that has to be heard.

The smell of the honey glazed whole mutton that has been slowly spit roasted for 8 hours is intoxicating and is the centre piece of a buffet table of locally prepared dishes that will be continually replenished during the evening.

Finally a full bar service is available till the wee small hours for those that wish.

Included in the Price:

5 nights Hotel room* single person supplement applies
Breakfast and 3 course traditional dinner each day.
31st December Moroccan Gala dinner dance
Day trip to the stunning Cascades d'Ozoud.
Transport Marrakesh Airport - Bin el Ouidane return.

Itinery

Friday 28th arrive at Marrakesh Airport - Morning and afternoon arrivals with a small Marrakesh shopping trip for the early birds. Its a pleasasnt and photogenic 3 hour drive from the Airport with the snow capped high Atlas flanking us all the way to our lake side hotel.The nearest large town is Beni Melal and its just up and over the mountain before you will be checking in and enjoying a typical Moroccan welcome.

Saturday 29th - excursions and activities available or just chill in the Berber lounge and take in the splendor of the mountains.

Sunday 30th - The mini bus departs the hotel at 10am for the amazing day trip to the waterfalls at Ozoud. Dont forget your camera and swimming gear, its a real breath taker. Plenty of shopping opportunities in the bustling local arts and crafts market that winds it way down the cliff side. Enjoy lunch overlooking the falls with wild monkies, its a wonderful place to spend the end of 2007.

Monday 31st - Grand Moroccan Gala dinner dance.
Traditional spit roasted honey glazed sheep and a buffet of delicious Moroccan and Berber dishes. Accompanied by live Berber musicians and dancers, candle lit gardens and the star filled night sky.

Tuesday 1st - A day for... fishing, kayaks, hiking, quads - check out availability and prices with reception.

Wednesday 2nd Jan - return to Marrakesh.

€500 per person* based on double room occupancy SPS of €20 applies.

Ring Fraser on 00212 783 487 33 or email at info@moroccocarp.com
Reserve your place today!!

You might need to bring:
Clothing:The nights are cold and the days are warm so bring clothes that will handle the big daily temperature change. Good fleece and mountain/ski gear is ideal for nights, shorts, t-shirts and suncream for the day.
Swimming gear, towel, water shoes.
If you want to fish: sleeping bag, reels, alarms, indicators and end rigs.
Everyone: A good torch, travel adapter (2 pin round plug) Sun cream, hat, your best French.

Important Info:You need a minimum of 6 months on your passport to travel to Morocco.Try and book your flight tickets to arrive at Marrakesh airport on the 28th December at around 11am or 3pm. The return flight should depart Marrakesh in the mid morning to allow time for the 3 hour drive.
Medical: The Hotel and lake is at 800m (2400 feet) please consult your GP if you are taking heart/blood thining medication prior to booking. Bring Parecetamol (not Aspirin) Imodium for upset tums and some PG tips - Im running low.

Money: The local currency is the Dirham (MAD) get some from the bureau de change or the ATM's at the airport on arrival. Dont change too much as you cant change it back at the end, the hotel will accept payment in other international currencies if you run out of Dirhams.

Joost adds Heavy to its ever growing content lineup

2007-07-30T21:23:00.000+01:00

Joost has added another cracker to their ever expanding content line up with the addition of the popular video site Heavy.com.

Heavy will provide programming to Joost from a selection of its brands: Heavy Animation, Heavy Comedy and Heavy Gurls. Among the notable shows on these channels are the new sci-fi anime “Kung Fu Jimmy Chow”, then the Superficial Friends, and lastly episodes of “Ashy to Classy,”, “Kensington Report”, “Heavy’s Angels” and “The Massive Mating Game.”

Thanks to Mashable

A day trip to the Cascades de Ozoud

2007-07-29T12:49:00.001+01:00

Cascades05, originally uploaded by radcarper.

The stunning waterfalls of the Cascades de Ozoud, Morocco can be visited on an organised day trip from Morocco Carp.

To see more photos of these fantastic waterfalls or for more details of family and fishing holidays in the unexplored middle Atlas mountains of Morocco please check out our new web site.

Joost invitations available

2007-06-15T18:22:00.000+01:00

The Jooster has plenty of Joost invites so if your still waiting drop us a comment to this post with your full name and email, dont worry we wont publish the comment and we will send you your Joost invite.

Editors note: I am receiving many requests for invites with just an email, I cant help you, please send your FIRST and LAST name and your EMAIL or we cant send you an invite

The longest-running provider of online Hip-Hop video content, launches on Joost.

2007-06-15T18:18:00.000+01:00

Since its inception in 1996, 88HIPHOP.COM has been a key gathering point for the global community of Hip-Hop performers and fans alike, a site that provided crucial early exposure that helped launch the careers of many of the genre's biggest stars, including Eminem, 50 Cent and Nelly. With this new announcement, 88HIPHOP will bring Hip-Hip music and culture from around the world, including both new and rare classic content from one of the most authoritative online video archives dedicated to Hip-Hop, to Joost.

'By partnering with Joost, we'll be able to use the Internet to reach the broad global audience devoted to Hip-Hop music and culture, in an on-demand, interactive television-like platform,' states Randy Nkonoki-Ward, Founder and President of 88HIPHOP. 'Together with Joost, we're offering a new generation of performers and independent video producers a respected brand through which they can showcase their artistry worldwide, in a context that puts it beside many of the greatest performances and moments in Hip-Hop's history. And since we stress creativity and passion, we also provide advertisers with an efficient means to reach the style- and brand-conscious community of Hip-Hop lovers.'

Thanks to Top40 charts.
Further reading:
88hiphop

The future of tech is in the developing world

2007-06-15T18:07:00.001+01:00

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- It can't be said too often, because so few people even still understand its gravity: The adoption of technology in the developing world is tech's biggest trend. A new report by Forrester Research predicts there will be 2.25 billion PCs in the world by 2015, up from 755 million today. The vast majority of that growth will come in places like China, India, Brazil and Eastern Europe.

This growth has implications for everyone developing technology, whether chips, devices, software, or Internet and communications services. If you want to go where the growth is, you have to think about the developing world. But in many cases this will mean a complete reset of business models, towards lower costs, higher volumes and ever-easier user interfaces. Writes study author Simon Yates: "Reaching these users in a cost-effective manner with technology that is relevant to their lives requires a fundamental shift in the way computer hardware and software is designed, assembled, financed, and distributed."

read the full story at CNNmoney

Madeleine McCann - you can help

2007-05-17T08:42:00.000+01:00

All of us at Jooster would like to offer our support for the search and safe return of young Madeleine McCann. Madeleine was abducted from her bed on the night of 3rd May 2007 whilst on holiday in Praia da Luz, Portugal.

Madeleine has a very distinctive right eye, where the pupil runs into the blue-green iris.

Here is the link to the official Save Madeleine Website

Please click onto “News and Downloads” and you’ll be able to download the Madeleine Poster. They are available in English, Spanish, Portuguese and French. Please help by putting up posters in your local town and area.

We can all help by keeping this in the news and media. The search for Madeleine needs to be European wide so please forward this page to all friends and relatives anywhere in Europe.

Please let’s all do our bit to help the safe return of innocent Madeleine.

Joost raises $45 million in funding

2007-05-13T13:58:00.000+01:00

Joost, an Internet-based TV service being launched by the creators of Skype and Kazaa, said Thursday it has raised $45 million from five investors including CBS Corp. and Viacom Inc. and an influential Hong Kong telecommunications executive.

Index Ventures, a European venture capital firm, and Sequoia Capital were the lead contributors to the investment.

Joost invites for everyone

2007-05-03T09:42:00.000+01:00

The last week has been a busy one for the chaps at Joost.

Joost Beta was opened up to "family and friends" of existing Joost users, which is great news for the world in general as soon everyone will be enjoying the new internet TV experience. If you've not got any friends then drop us your full name and email and we'll send you one

If that wasn't enough excitement in a week, they also announced that more than 30 top brands from around the world have signed up as advertising partners and as of today, ads from some of these ad launch partners will begin to play on Joost.

The Jooster thinks this is going to be a very interesting experience and the investment in Wunderloop has clearly paid off.
Imagine the largest brand names on the planet instructing the most creative publicity agencies, to produce a new form of 30 second commercial to be published on a new platform..... that has to be the best brief going.

Let us know what your favourite advert is and we'll run a poll.

New content has been added including exciting new programming from five content owners - Turner Broadcasting System, Sony Pictures Television, Hasbro, the NHL and SI. Beginning later this week, you'll begin to see shows from these providers on Joost - shows like "Aqua Teen Hunger Force," "The Transformers," "G.I. Joe," "Starsky & Hutch," "Charlie's Angels" and "NewsRadio." We'll also have video shorts and interviews from SI's Swimsuit magazine photo shoots, with behind-the-scenes footage and full-length videos following later this month. Finally, for all you hockey fans out there, the NHL is coming to Joost.

Joost™ launches commercially and internet TV is about to go mainstream!

2007-05-02T21:42:00.000+01:00

Existing Beta Testers can now invite friends and family through the new "invite friends" widget.

Campaigns from 32 Launch Partners Begin to Run on Joost in May

New York - May 1, 2007 - Joost™ the world's first broadcast-quality Internet television service, today announced that it has commercially launched. Campaigns from the 32 companies announced as advertising partners last week will begin airing on the platform this month. Additionally, as a part of this launch, all existing Joost beta testers now have an unlimited number of invitations that they can send to their friends, family and colleagues.

"Today marks the beginning of an exciting phase for Joost - we are officially open for business," said David Clark, executive vice president of global advertising for Joost. "We're enabling our viewers to share Joost with their friends and family, and we're working collaboratively with the world's leading advertisers and agencies to design a new ad model for the next generation of television."

Last week, Joost announced that it had signed more than 30 blue-chip brands, including The Coca-Cola Company, HP, Intel and Nike, as advertising launch partners. Beginning today, advertisements from some of the ad launch partners will begin to play on the platform. Advertisements from all ad launch partners will be on Joost later this month.

Previously available in an expanded beta, Joost now is available to an unlimited number of friends, family and colleagues of existing beta testers. Starting today, when beta testers visit the "Invite Friends" widget in the "My Joost" area of Joost, they will be able to invite anyone they know to the Joost community. Both new and existing users can download a new version of Joost today.

The latest content lineup on Joost

2007-05-02T21:20:00.000+01:00

Channel Available in
Alliance Atlantis Sci-Fi Worldwide excluding United States and Canada
Atlantic Street United States
BET United States
Beyond the Pit United States
Bite TV Worldwide
BoomChicago Worldwide
Braindead Worldwide
Bridezillas Worldwide excluding United States
Channel Frederator Worldwide
Chat the Planet Worldwide
Classica Channel Worldwide excluding Austria, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland
Comedy Central United States
Critical Shorts Worldwide
DR Worldwide
Explora Channel Worldwide
Fabchannel Concerts Worldwide
Fifth Gear Shortcuts Worldwide
Fight Network Worldwide
Floating Worlds Worldwide
GameStar TV Worldwide
GONG Europe
Guinness World Records TV Worldwide
Havoc Action Sports TV Worldwide excluding Japan
Havoc Music TV Worldwide excluding Japan
Healthination Worldwide
Hot & Wet Worldwide
i-concerts UK
IndieFlix Premier Hits Worldwide
IndyCar Series Worldwide
Intimate & Interactive Worldwide
Joost Suggests Worldwide
Jump TV Arabia Worldwide excluding Middle East
Jump TV Latino Worldwide excluding Canada and Latin America
Lassie Worldwide
Lazy TV United States
Lazy TV UK Worldwide
Life on Terra Worldwide
Lime Worldwide
Live @ Much Worldwide
Logo United States
LXTV Worldwide
Ministry of Sound Access All Areas Worldwide
Ministry of Sound Music Videos Worldwide
MTV United States
MTV Benelux Selected countries in Europe, South America, US and Japan
MTV Nordic Selected countries in Europe, South America, US and Japan
MTV Staying Alive Worldwide
Much Does Wakestock Worldwide
MuchAdrenaline Worldwide
MuchMusic Video Awards Worldwide
MuchNews Weekly Worldwide
MuchOnDemand Worldwide
Music Nation Worldwide
Nardwuar Worldwide
National Geographic United States, Canada
Nettwerk Worldwide
New Atlantis Worldwide
Off the Fence Docs Worldwide
OnSet Worldwide
PokerHeaven TV Worldwide
Ren and Stimpy United States
Rehearsals.com Worldwide
Saavn Worldwide
Saturday Morning TV Worldwide
SecondsOut.tv Worldwide
The Circus Channel Worldwide excl IT
The Diddy Channel United States
The Hobby Channel Worldwide
The New Music Worldwide
The Recipe Channel Worldwide excl ES, PT
The Roger Sisters Worldwide
The Soccer Channel Europe, United States, Middle East
The Trance Channel Worldwide
VH1 United States
Virgin Fest 2006 Worldwide
VOY TV Worldwide
Warner Bros. Records United States
Whereitsat.tv Worldwide
WildLight Worldwide
Witness Worldwide
World Poker Tour Worldwide excluding United States
World's Strongest Man Worldwide
XL Recordings Channel Worldwide

* Copyright © 2006-2007 Joost™ (Baaima N.V.)

The Roger Sisters Worldwide
The Soccer Channel Europe, United States, Middle East
The Trance Channel Worldwide
VH1 United States
Virgin Fest 2006 Worldwide
VOY TV Worldwide
Warner Bros. Records United States

Joost unviels a new web site and latest channel line up

2007-03-27T03:41:00.000+01:00

Channel	Available in
Alliance Atlantis Sci-Fi	Worldwide excluding United States and Canada
Atlantic Street	United States
BET	United States
Beyond the Pit	United States
Bite TV	Worldwide
BoomChicago	Worldwide
Braindead	Worldwide
Bridezillas	Worldwide excluding United States
Channel Frederator	Worldwide
Chat the Planet	Worldwide
Classica Channel	Worldwide
Comedy Central	United States
Critical Shorts	Worldwide
DR	Worldwide
Explora Channel	Worldwide
Fabchannel Concerts	Worldwide
Fifth Gear Shortcuts	Worldwide
Fight Network	Worldwide
Floating Worlds	Worldwide
GameStar TV	Worldwide
GONG	Europe
Guinness World Records TV	Worldwide
Havoc Action Sports TV	Worldwide
Havoc Music TV	Worldwide
Healthination	Worldwide
Hot & Wet	Worldwide
i-concerts	UK
IndieFlix Premier Hits	Worldwide
IndyCar Series	Worldwide
Intimate & Interactive	Worldwide
Joost Suggests	Worldwide
Jump TV Arabia	United States
Jump TV Latino	United States
Lassie	Worldwide
Lazy TV	United States
Lazy TV UK	Europe
Life on Terra	Worldwide
Lime	Worldwide
Live @ Much	Worldwide
Logo	United States
LXTV	Worldwide
Ministry of Sound Access All Areas	Worldwide
Ministry of Sound Music Videos	Worldwide
MTV	United States
MTV Benelux	United States
MTV Nordic	United States
MTV Staying Alive	Worldwide
Much Does Wakestock	Worldwide
MuchAdrenaline	Worldwide
MuchMusic Video Awards	Worldwide
MuchNews Weekly	Worldwide
MuchOnDemand	Worldwide
Music Is My Life	Worldwide
Music Nation	Worldwide
Nardwuar	Worldwide
National Geographic	United States, Canada
Nettwerk	Worldwide
New Atlantis	Worldwide
Nickelodeon	United States
Off the Fence Docs	Worldwide
OnSet	Worldwide
PokerHeaven TV	Worldwide
Rehearsals.com	Worldwide
Saavn	Worldwide
Saturday Morning TV	Worldwide
SecondsOut.tv	Worldwide
The Circus Channel	Worldwide excl IT
The Diddy Channel	United States
The Hobby Channel	Worldwide
The New Music	Worldwide
The Recipe Channel	Worldwide excl ES, PT
The Roger Sisters	Worldwide
The Soccer Channel	Europe, United States, Middle East
The Trance Channel	Worldwide
VH1	United States
Virgin Fest 2006	Worldwide
VOY TV	Worldwide
Warner Bros. Records	United States
Whereitsat.tv	Worldwide
WildLight	Worldwide
Witness	Worldwide
World Poker Tour	Worldwide excluding United States
World's Strongest Man	Worldwide
XL Recordings Channel	Worldwide
What's Popular	Worldwide

Viacom strikes against YouTube with $1 Billion suit

2007-03-14T14:26:00.000+01:00

Viacom, which owns MTV Networks and Paramount Pictures, sued Google in federal court on accusing the Internet company of "brazenly exploiting" the power of the Web to make easy money off Hollywood's hard work.

In February Viacom broke off licensing deal talks with YouTube and ordered that all its content to be pulled. Then hardly leaving time for the dust to settle they signed a broad licensing deal with Joost.

To read more about the litigation check out the LA Times article.

Bringing TV to the Web - Time Magazine

2007-03-05T00:19:00.000+01:00

An excellent article by Jeremy Caplan and photo by Harry Borden-TIME

Once you've sold a company for $2.6 billion, life on the beach can be tempting, particularly if you're Scandinavian. But for dotcom veterans Janus Friis, 30, and Niklas Zennstrom, 40, whose sale of Skype to eBay rocketed them toward Gatesian wealth, the lure of a Great Leap Backward has proved stronger than sun and sand. Having launched Kazaa, one of the first music-file-sharing networks, in 2001 and Skype, the first big Internet-powered phone service, in 2003, the duo began work a year ago on a secret venture dubbed the Venice Project, whose goal was to bring yet another disruptive technology to your computer. "We took a 'lean-back' approach," says ceo Fredrik de Wahl. "On the Web today, you have to know what you're looking for, lean forward and click. But we wanted people to be able to just lean back and watch."

In other words, just like network television circa 1964. That's a revolution? A potentially huge one. For years, Microsoft and others have tried, and failed, to bring the Net to TV screens with duds like WebTV. But the Venice Project, renamed Joost (as in juiced), is doing the opposite: moving TV to the Internet. And unlike Apple TV, Slingbox and other hardware offerings, Joost requires nothing more than software. For now, it's by invitation only, but by this summer it will be open to the public. You'll download the free Joost software, then use it to watch channels ranging from Lime, a lifestyle station, to National Geographic. And potentially thousands more, from anywhere, in real time — and without the stuttervision that dogs streaming video today.

It's the creation of a team of 60 top engineers — veterans of Apple, Flickr and Firefox — and has already wowed bloggers who have had an early look. "Joost could make YouTube, Google Video and Apple TV look like 1988," gushes tech-blog UtahSaint.

Viacom, which recently yanked its programs from YouTube, has signed a deal to supply Joost with movies from Paramount and programming from mtv, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and other stations. Time has learned that Joost will soon announce another big deal — with JumpTV, the world's largest distributor of international TV stations, to begin distributing programming from some of the 270 stations in 70 countries that JumpTV owns rights to. The deal will launch with prerecorded Spanish and Arabic programming from stations in Latin America and the Middle East. Eventually JumpTV plans to provide Joost with live streams from TV stations around the world. That will move Joost further from video on demand and closer to live TV.

While sites like Myspace and eBay emphasize a dizzying array of features and options, Joost opts for minimalism. Unlike YouTube, Joost has no user-generated content. Instead of video clips of rapping grandmas, crashing skateboarders and blathering strangers, Joost focuses on network-quality programs. And unlike Apple's iTunes, which sells TV shows and movies, Joost is free, though its content is peppered with one to three minutes of ads an hour. It's a 50-year-old broadcast model updated.

The controls are vintage I Love Lucy too. The basic interface has simple up-down menus so it can eventually be translated to cell phones and devices like Apple's iPod. No need for a 37-button remote. "People are tired of being locked into the way TV is set up," says Friis.

Simplicity is the magic of the service, something that YouTube, with its millions of videos in thousands of categories, lacks. And it's in high demand. Steve Johnson, ceo of Choicestream, which helps video sites customize their offerings, says viewers prefer receiving personalized recommendations to wading through reams of search results.

But it all comes down to what you can watch. Content is still king. While Joost now offers fewer than 50 channels, it will soon have hundreds, and eventually thousands. To keep things simple, you can stick to a few channels. Or you can open the floodgates. "Today TV is 500 channels but we're not far — maybe three years — from a 5,000-channel world," says Hilmi Ozguc, ceo of Maven, which powers Internet TV for media companies like CBS and Univision. "And in 10 years, we could easily be at 50,000 channels from all over the world. You'll have a fly-fishing channel and a channel just for Lost." Warner Music exec Alex Zubillaga says he can envision a Paris Hilton channel and one each for the Grateful Dead, Diddy and Madonna.

Joost is lean-back from a content point of view, but its attractiveness to advertisers is in getting you involved. Ad execs love Internet TV because its audience is measurable, targetable and interactive. "If you spend 10 minutes learning about a new car you're interested in," Ozguc says, "that's worth gold to advertisers." By 2010, Parks Associates estimates, the online-video market will grow fivefold, to more than $7 billion. So far Wrigley, T-Mobile and Maybelline have signed on, and others may customize ads not just by location but also by viewing style. Watching Lassie, Benji and other dog flicks? Purina might have a message for you. "There's no reason why a real estate company couldn't put an ad up linking to a video walk-through of properties in your neighborhood," says David Clark, Joost's advertising director.

And if you choose to, you too can do more than just watch. You can chat with friends (using existing instant-messaging services like Google Talk) in an unobtrusive transparent window while you watch a game or a mystery. Or you can vote on an American Idol�like contest. It means being able to share shows in real time with friends rather than having to wait until the next morning's watercooler chat. Or not.

And this time, Friis, a Dane, and Zennstrom, a Swede, won't have every media lawyer in the U.S. waiting to sue them, as was the case with Kazaa. TV networks are pleased with Joost's advanced encryption, which they say makes it virtually piracy-proof. Joost's founders learned the importance of that the hard way: Kazaa was forced last summer to pay more than $100 million to settle copyright-infringement claims.

Encryption wasn't the biggest problem in creating Joost. The primary puzzle was piecing together a network powerful enough to stream near dvd-quality, full-screen video to millions of computers simultaneously. The trick, it turned out, was to employ distributed computer power, using viewers' own PCs to speed video along. Having developed similar person-to-person networks for Kazaa and Skype — to transmit music files and phone calls through the Net — Joost's engineers finally nailed the solution last summer. Shouts of joy went up when they streamed their first video. It depicted, appropriately enough, sharks circling prey.

YouTube stirred enormous buzz with its growing video community last year, and Zennstrom and Friis, who had no formal business plan, faced a quandary early in the project's development. Should they chase the user-generated-content train or go after video of a different kind? They chose the latter path, despite the dollar signs dangling from YouTube. Given the fortunes Zennstrom and Friis had already accumulated, they could afford to gamble on the venture, which they have largely funded on their own. "They're cutting edge, passionate and aggressive," says Lucas Mann, co-founder of MusicNation, an artist-development company with a music-video-contest channel on Joost. "They're cyberpunks."

Whether entrepreneurs or rebels, they're certainly not idle rich, though Friis confesses he has started eating at nicer restaurants, ordering good bottles of wine and traveling business class instead of economy. And the Joost team isn't afraid to let loose. Friis admits the gang got "fairly intoxicated" celebrating the long-awaited release of their test software just before Christmas. Now, as they polish their software for its summer debut, the founders say they're juiced up about opening Joost to the world. From time to time, the billion-dollar question tugs at Friis. "I do ask myself sometimes," he says, "why I'm not sitting on some island on the beach relaxing. When this works, though, it'll all be worth the work."

Joost Beta tokens

2007-03-02T15:43:00.000+01:00

Thank you to everyone that commented, Im going to try and get everyone tokens:

Starting from the top of the list I will distribute the 10 tokens to those that sent me their full name and email.
If you are on the comments list below and have not received your token drop me your contact details and I will send it on.
If any other Jooster's have spare tokens they can send them on to the desperate folk on this list. I will update it as I send out tokens.

19 comments:

Julia said... JOOSTER SENT TOKEN
You beta believe that I would joost love to be token of those Joost Beta Tokens you're offerin'!
Pick me! Pick me!
Thx,
Julia

March 1, 2007 3:45 AM
ed said...
"You beta believe". NICE! I gotta use that more often and you'd better patent that! Please invite me! I don't have much to offer but torrent invites if interested! THANKS!
sephiroth4@gmail.com
ed said...
sorry!!!!! You know what for! I really didn't mean to spam you up! Like this email is doing...grr...Im done! ;)

March 1, 2007 5:17 AM
leenx said...

up for a token!!!!

craesmeyer # gmail.com

March 1, 2007 5:20 AM JOOSTER SENT INVITE
Stan said...

Hello,

I'm totally Joosted by your blog. I made it to be my homepage to not miss any post. It would definitelly be sooooo cool if you could pick me for the beta.

Thanks a lot.

Stan Kastanek
candyghost@gmail.com

March 1, 2007 9:48 AM
Tinus said...

Can you Please Please send me one at t.guichelaar [at] gmail.com

Thanks in advance!
Tinus

March 1, 2007 10:06 AM
Darran said...
Doing medical research over the weekend, I need this :) 48 hours with out leaving the bed - Joost would pull me through!!!!

March 1, 2007 10:49 AM JOOSTER SENT INVITE
P said...

I need to relax in front of Joost after a hard week with annoying teenage pupils. I've almost ripped all my hair off.

Pierre Segersvärd
pierresegersvard¤gmail.com
March 1, 2007 4:23 PM

Hi Brian,
I understand Greg a fellow Jooster has already sent you a token. I hope the lecture goes well and I'm sure unveiling Joost to your audience will be amazing (I would love to see a video of the audience reaction to the first glimpse of Joost and what it can do)
Regards
Fraser The Jooster

Brian Bridges said...

I'm presenting three sessions at this week's CUE Conference. Normally, i give a pre-prentation presentation to those who arrive early. i'd LOVE to add a Joost demo to wow the audiences.

Brian

March 1, 2007 5:32 PM jooster sent token
Larry said...
I want a Token Joost because.
Larry said...
I would like a token Joost because.

March 1, 2007 8:01 PM
oTaKu said...
Been waiting for this since the days
of "The Venice Project"
Please send me a token, I can't wait any longer.
Thanks

March 1, 2007 11:21 PM JOOSTER SENT TOKEN
frankandlori said...
Just
Overly
Obsessively
Seeking a
Token.......
thanking you in advance,fg
mrfrankgreene@aol.com

March 1, 2007 11:28 PM
gmork said...
I would really like in invite to, and I will share my two invites to the other/remaining commentors on this page!

March 2, 2007 12:26 AM
Firefly said...
Who would want a silly token? I don't understand this sillyness. But I will take one for my friend who has no Internet. He is crazy but I will give him Joost token to be nice. OK I will watch too - but just for research... ;) fireflydigitalmedia@gmail.com please!

JOOSTER TOKEN SENT
March 2, 2007 3:27 AM (michael dont worry I will send you yours as soon as I can ive got all your details)
mvjs said...
Boost me up with a Joost invite!
I'd be thrilled to get a Joost invite!
Cheers
michaelvjsmyth [at] gmail.com
Michael Smyth

March 2, 2007 7:10 AM
Bublie said...
Hi!
Once again the same lonely soul from Belgium.
I am still waiting for a invite for Joost and its sad it takes so long if ever to get one.
Please!
Tks,
Bye
kiranmisra03@gmail.com

March 2, 2007 9:34 AM
Stan said...
Hello Bublie,
you're not alone from Belgium ;o)

March 1, 2007 9:59 JOOSTER SENT TOKEN
Cheesesaid...
Hi I am Andrew Oh, and would like a Joost invite. THANKS!
andrew.aoh @ gmail.com

andrea ferreri
andreaferreri@gmail.com

To send a Jooster beta tokens I need full name and email

2007-03-02T12:18:00.000+01:00

I will be sending out the beta tokens this afternoon to the first 10 Joosters that entered our giveaway.

So drop me an email here at the Jooster. I need your full name and email address to send your token out.

1 Beta token give away from Greg a Jooster beta tester

2007-03-01T17:59:00.000+01:00

Greg sent me this email today which I thought I would post as is:

Hi, can you post the following on Jooster please. I'm sure some guys will be happy with this as I was when I got my invite offered on Jooster ;-)
Thanks,
Greg

Labels: Joost beta tokens

Title: Wanna try Joost today? 1 beta token giveaway
Post: I've got 1 Joost Beta token to give away and I'll send it out to the first comment to this post. Remember to include your full name and email address.

Want to watch Joost this weekend? 10 beta tokens giveaway

2007-03-01T02:47:00.000+01:00

I've got 10 Joost Beta tokens to give away and Ill send them out this Friday afternoon to the first 10 comments to this post, I will decide who gets tokens based on first comments posted or if we get more than 10 entries, then it will be the comment that made me snigger the most. Remember to include your full name and email address or I cant send you your token.

Joost takes the moral high ground on content deals

2007-03-01T01:05:00.000+01:00

Viacom MTV, Comedy Central, VH1 ...quality content....

The two internet entrepreneurs Frijs and Zennstrom say their rebel and lawsuit-tinged past led to their ethical content policy at Joost IPTV.

Joost recently partnered with New York-based Viacom and French based i-concerts, both organisations that respect the artists rights, and are exploiting the new and emerging digital distribution platforms on their behalf.

The founders of Joost, Friis' and Zennstrom's former Internet company, the file-sharing service, Kazaa, pushed legal boundaries and resulted in the music and movie industries aggressively suing the company. Selling Kazaa didn't end troubles for Friis, a Dane, and Zennstrom, a Swede, who didn't enter the United States for years because of the lawsuits filed against them.
In November, Kazaa's new owners settled the last of the suits agreeing to pay at least $125 million to the record industry and movie studios.

i-concerts - up to 20 hours of fresh programing

Joost has reached agreements to download programs from Viacom networks such as MTV, Comedy Central and VH1. While the deal's terms were not disclosed, Viacom and Joost will share advertising revenue. Zennstrom said to the New York Times:

"The reason we're doing this is because of our history," Janus Friis told The New York Times. "We know how these things work. And above all, we know that we don't want to be in a long, multiyear litigation battle."

Further reading:
Viacom
Playfuls
NY Times

Joost to feature Marley and B.B King in content deal with i-concerts

2007-03-01T00:46:00.000+01:00

i-concerts™opens to artists a new stage for reaching their fans, controlling their live media rights, and benefiting from all existing and emerging digital distribution platforms.

i-concerts™ is a new broadband and wireless syndication platform for the video-on-demand distribution of concerts and live music programming.

LONDON, February 28: The music VOD service i-concerts has secured a U.K. distribution deal making its programming available on the upcoming global broadband content platform Joost.

Joost will feature approximately 20 hours of i-concerts programming that will be refreshed regularly. The content will cover all genres of music and include performances from artists such as Bob Marley, New York Dolls, B.B. King and Andrea Bocelli, as well as multi-artist live shows such as London Live (aka The Album Chart Show). The i-concerts channel will also serve as a showcase for the wider i-concerts catalogue that is already available extensively on a series of IPTV and VOD platforms across Europe.

Founded in June 2005, i-concerts is carried in France by Free Telecom and Club Internet (T-Online France) as a broadband PC VOD service. i-concerts has also signed distribution agreements with Belgian cable operator Telenet and BT Vision in the U.K.

“i-concerts is a terrific addition to our growing music offering,” said Yvette Alberdingkthijm, the EVP of content strategy and acquisition for Joost. “Joost enables music labels and properties like i-concerts to find new fans and connect on a deeper level with existing fans.”

Joost ranked 6th hottest 2.0 startup

2007-02-24T21:22:00.000+01:00

Joost jumps straight in as the 6th hottest startups in Web 2.0 space right now:

1. StumbleUpon
2. Slide.com
3. Bebo.com
4. Meebo
5. Wikia
6. Joost
7. Dabble
8. MetaCafe
9. Revision 3
10. Blip.tv
11. Fon.com
12. Loopt
13. Mobio
14. Tinypictures.us
15. SoonR
16. Turn.com
17. Adify
18. AdMob
19. SpotRunner
20. ViTrue
21. SuccessFactors
22. JanRain
23. Logoworks
24. Rearden Commerce
25. SimulScribe

Thanks to Business 2.0 magazine rankimgs

Joost ´s content lineup strengthens with Viacom deal

2007-02-21T00:47:00.000+01:00

The Jooster can reveal that just two weeks after ordering its content to be pulled from YouTube, Viacom Inc. announced a broad licensing deal with Joost.

The deal, which follows the recent collapse of similar talks between Viacom and YouTube parent Google Inc., involves licensing hundreds of hours of programming from Viacom cable networks such as MTV, Comedy Central and Spike as well as movies made by the company's Paramount studios.

This really strengthens the Joost content line up, which we feel was looking pretty rock solid already with the announcement late last week, on the release of the new 0.8 beta version of a host of new content and channels.

New content with Beta V. 8.0

Documentaries from National Geographic
Loud noise and fast cars from the Indy Racing League
Healthy living programming from Lime
A variety of reality series in the Lazy TV channel from Endemol
Cartoons like Rocky and Bullwinkle in Saturday Morning TV (Classic Media)
A lineup of independent film makers from IndieFlix
More reality TV with the Bridezillas series from September Films
Video gaming tricks and reviews form Gamestar
Comical, irreverent and edgy programming from Bite TV
And cool new Bollywood music videos from Savvn

UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE

Subject Line: Joost Unplugged!

Great news from the Joost Content Team.  Today we're announcing a major
partnership with Viacom. Which will bring programming and lots of
channels from Viacom's key brands and properties available on Joost
on our imminent launch.

MTV will offer popular shows, both past and present, including Laguna
Beach, Beavis & Butthead, Real World, Punk'd and My Super Sweet
Sixteen,
while COMEDY CENTRAL will feature episodes from Stella, CCP's
and Freak Show. Nickelodeon, CMT: Country Music Television,
MTV2, Logo, Spike TV, mtvU, and Gametrailers.com will also provide content.
VH1's offerings will include episodes of Flavor of Love,
Surreal Life, and I Love New York. BET's Networks' offerings will
include some of its biggest shows, including Beef, DMX: Soul of a Man,
Comic View and recent smash hit American Gangster. 
Also, Paramount Pictures, Paramount Vantage and Paramount Classics will be
providing full-length feature films from its catalog of classics and recent
releases.
This content isn't available yet. We're working hard on shipping,
transcoding and feeding the P2P network (and no, despite malicious
gossip to the contrary - engineering is not giving Star Trek or
Ren&Stimpy top priority) it will all be there for our launch.

Stay tuned!

Dw. -- Dirk-Willem van Gulik, CTO, Joost.

Joost Beta token - Plugin winners

2007-02-11T19:57:00.000+01:00

Thanks again to everyone that left ideas for Joost Plugins.
Joost Beta tokens on the way to:

The Winners
Tyler Trushin
Dieter Huelskamp
Juan Luna
Aurelian
Wandal
Paolo

I need your full name and email. Aurelian, Dieter and Paolo please email me with your details.

Beta token entry - A Plugin for Joost

2007-02-11T19:54:00.000+01:00

Tyler T

I would love to be able to take cuts from different shows and be able to make funny edits, or I would like to see a tiny pop-up at the bottom of the screen that will have a link to any important breaking news if something extremely important happens.

iPhone will use Multi touch technology

2007-02-10T01:47:00.000+01:00

Perceptive Pixel is a new startup founded by Jeff Han, the creater of the Multi Touch technology, acquired by Apple in June 2006 with the purchase of Finger works.
There were rumors that Apple had tried, unsuccessfully, to hire Jeff at one point to work on the launch of the iPhone, but Jeff had other ideas, and states that Perceptive Pixel, Jeff´s new vehicle is about to change the face of computing.

iPhone

"Multi touch uses a technique called Frustrated Total Internal Reflection (FTIR) to accomplish the tasks shown. It involves the use of a transparent screen with the images rear-projected onto it. For touch-sensing, a camera is placed behind the screen to detect the user interaction"

And Jeff made his feelings clear on the iPhone commenting to a NY times journalist.

"The iPhone is absolutely gorgeous, and I've always said, if there ever were a company to bring this kind of technology to the consumer market, it's Apple. I just wish it were a bit bigger so I could really use both of my hands."

Watch this incredible video to see Jeff Han and Phil Davidson showing how a multi-touch computer screen will change the way we work (and play).

The future looks bright for multi touch technology; whilst it creating an understandable level of WOW factor during its release in March 2006, its only starts to seem truely revolutionary and a ground breaking moment in global communications when you think of it in the context of Apple.

Apple are about to pump this technology, or something similar, to the millions - worldwide and that just has to be a good thing.

Further reading:
Multi touch screen
iPhone
Jazz mutant

Beta token entry - A Plugin for Joost

2007-02-09T00:22:00.000+01:00

Dieter Huelskamp;- Due to my master thesis I would recommend a plugin for geo-navigation, then you just pick a place from the globe to get latest news from any interesting place on this world.

I think most interesting for Joost will be, how much interesting content will be available, not wheather I can chat whilst having tv in the background etc.

Hopefully Joost will make watching WebTV easier then using democracy + rare media rss feed offer in the web.

If you think Dieter´s Plugin is a good idea leave a comment for them on this post -

FYI: all entries to the competition need to include your full name and email address

Beta token entry - A Plugin for Joost

2007-02-07T21:19:00.000+01:00

Well I have not used Joost, so I do not have an idea of the available plug-in. But I am trying to be on a position of a user and I like to have the following plug-in:

1)The most important an Outlook plug-in to see new emails and next appointments. (I am going to see TV in the 5 minutes between appointments or in the meantime of an Email answer)
2) A weather plug-in customizable. (It’s important to know the weather in your area to decide to stay or leave somewhere else)
3)A dictionary translator (sometimes watching a movie you need to know what something means)
4)As the previous comment, an small area to watch another channel so you can switch between them (imagine commercials or boring sections of a film). Well I hope to have won a token..... Thanks JJ

If you think Juan's Plugin is a good idea leave a comment for them on this post -

FYI: all entries to the competition need to include your full name and email address so that Joost can open your Beta account and send you the password. Aurelian and Pablo please get in contact with yours. thanks -ED.

Beta token entry - A plugin idea for Joost

2007-02-07T13:15:00.000+01:00

What I'd like to see is a multi-tuner sort of feature, that would let me watch a movie and keep an eye on the game. I could see it as picture in picture system or a split screen system.

February 7, 2007 7:48 AM

If you think Aurelian´s Plugin is a good idea leave a comment for them on this post -

Joost Beta 0.7.4 released including dual monitor support

2007-02-06T21:16:00.000+01:00

Dirk-Willem van Gulik of Joost support announced that version 0.7.4 of the Windows client has been uploaded.

Joost has incorporated a lot of customer feedback into this version - from better coping with certain local configurations, firewalls and virus scanners, fixed crashes, added
locale support - all the way to user interface tweaks such as better fonts.

They have also improved upon the small window behavior, improved the tooltips, and
added channel numbers in the EPG (Electronic Program Guide) that are selectable from the keyboard.

Airbag support is now included in the client which will create a minidump
file in the minidump directory within the profile directory if the client program crashes.

Dual monitor support has been added and the window can be dragged from screen to screen or to overlap screens. Dirk commented.

"We're far from done - the zero in 0.7.4 still signals a beta - so any and
all suggestions are very welcome"

Why not enter this weeks competition to win 1 of 6 Joost beta tokens?

Beta token entry - A Plugin for Joost

2007-02-06T11:15:00.000+01:00

If it is possible, a streaming (even at very low resolution) of a different channel would be great! In this way we will be able to check if something interesting is happening on another channel and swich only when it is necessary. I could be useful especially for sport events.
I want a token!!! ;-) Paolo

If you think Paolo´s Plugin is a good idea leave a comment for him on this post -

Want to watch Joost TV? 6 Beta tokens to give away

2007-02-05T22:11:00.000+01:00

I was chatting on Skype with Matt at Joost this morning and he told me that they are really focusing on plugins.

What are plugins? I hear you ask and its a fair question, particularly if you've not seen Joost in action yet.

Put simply, plugins are widgets that load onto your Joost screen and kinda hang there, semi transparent, its hard to describe, but they look great and they work.

The Joost beta version that I'm running includes a clock, feed reader, instant messaging - Jabber and Google Talk, rating plugin, notice board, and channel chat.

an example of the chat plugin on Joost

6 Joost Beta Tokens for Jooster readers

6 Joost Beta tokens to give away this week and I will award them to the best comments left on this post.

What Plugin would you like to see and why?

Enter today and you could be watching Joost this weekend - simply leave a comment on this post and if it makes the grade Ill publish it and let Jooster readers vote on your plugin idea.

IPTV a brief overview of the market

2007-02-05T20:31:00.000+01:00

IPTV is creating "buzz" in the blogsphere with the recent entry of Joost and a war chest of billions; the fight for media dominance has never looked more uncertain.

Cheap bandwith, web 2.0 and the power of social networking has really made an impact, but with things changing so fast its hard to keep up. I hope this article lightens a few corners.

Duncan Barnes BSc (Hons) Broadcast Technology and currently a freelance technical director for Sky Plc, summarizes the changes that have taken place in the IPTV market during the last year.

Peer to Peer in general; When I wrote my dissertation figures were put P2P as responsible for 60% of global internet traffic by Cachelogic, unfortunately the research notes citing this which were freely available at the time are no longer so and as statistics on this differ it would be difficult to reference here a comparable current figure. I think it would be accurate to say that it has increased significantly and that Andrew Parker’s (Cachelogic CTO) point still holds true that “P2P is driving consumer broadband uptake…and broadband is driving P2P uptake”. When I originally wrote the text media companies were starting to explore P2P as a delivery medium, the BBC and others mentioned below have indeed started to make significant moves in this area which will push its impact in the legal arena although despite the best efforts of the MPAA and others, the piratebay and other torrent search engines appear to be catering for an ever increasing user base.
BBC iPlayer; The BBC iPlayer which at the time was in a limited user test period with little information besides screenshots and projections of what the service could offer has now moved into a public consultation phase but in my view its appeal and potential impact has been damaged significantly by the proposed limits passed on in recent findings by the industry regulator Ofcom. Ashley Highfield (BBC Director of New Media and Technology) said in 2005 that “when switch-over begins, I want internet television to be a viable alternative to satellite, Freeview and cable”. This it still has the potential to be but if the programs capacity is limited ‘in the public interest’ then it may not be so promising.
Apple TV; Now this is probably going to be quite popular to say the least among the mac community, Apple’s success with the iTunes business model is likely to work the same way with the video world as it has with the music world when Apple TV launches. Naturally its Quicktime based, will have DRM etc and as with the current iTunes/iPod business model offers a fantastic vendor lock-in solution where the system works perfectly if you have entirely Apple hardware but requires iTunes to work with Apple TV and is probably not going to work with anything else!
Sky Anytime; When I wrote a year ago there was very little information available about what this was going to be and Sky declined to comment when I enquired, saying that they were ’still developing an offering’. A year down the line and Sky Anytime is looking to be quite a good service, via PC, Phone or Television offering a wide range of content from the Sky channel line-up including shows such as Lost and 24 as well as films and sports.
4od; The Channel 4 on demand service allows you to download a wide selection of content both for rental and to keep although as can be expected with all the more well known companies there is the expected dose of DRM in there so you can’t take the content onto your laptop from a desktop to watch on the train or onto a portable player like the video iPod or the Creative Vision W
.
TIOTI; Tape it Off the Internet was at the beginning of last year just a subject of blog posts with little real information known, the service has now opened up in beta although I must say I was unfortunately disappointed with a service which didn’t help me find content and instead got in my way and added another link in the chain. I’ve mentioned this before so I won’t delve into it too much again but I do believe it would have worked much better as a desktop client including a media player such as VLC and a bittorrent client alongside its social offerings.
Joost(The venice Project); Last year Joost didn’t exist at the time of writing, in the last year this has grown from a simple and quite nondescript website into Joost beta which markets itself as ‘infinite choice, and TV that is truly interactive. TV anywhere, anytime…’. While the interactive side appears to be limited, the brainchild of the people behind both Kazaa and Skype seems to be heading off to a good start and when it launches (?) should hopefully flourish as an online provider. To be honest I prefer the idea of a company who is not already a media giant (BBC, Sky etc) ruling the roost for IPTV offerings and hope it goes this way. Time will tell but Joost seems to be one to watch in both senses of the word! Wired magazine have a good if a little lengthy article on this but it has some informative diagrams as well.
Youtube is so widely discussed and such a figurehead of online video that there is not much point in mentioning its continued growth over the last year as well as Google’s expensive aquisition of it, suffice to say it has been a significant mover!
Sopcast and Rawflow; The main difference between the two of these is that Sopcast is currently a free offering where as Rawflow is pushing itself more at larger broadcasters/content providers. Both services use P2P for transmission and support live content although I haven’t had the opportunity to experience this yet. Rawflow supports Windows Media, Real Player, Shoutcast and AAC based streaming media and the DRM capabilities of these formats. As the Sopcast system employs a similar approach although information is limited it would seem it offers the same potential.

Read the full article

Joost content programmer competition winners

2007-02-05T11:37:00.000+01:00

I just want to say thank you to everyone that entered the Jooster content programming competition, the winners have been announced and the beta tokens sent - so there should have been some very happy Jooster´s this weekend.

The Winners:
Michael Bohnstedt
Michael Staal Olsen
Kenny Collins
Chen Jin Xing

I was speaking with Joost this morning and we are working on a new Beta token giveaway for this week, stay tuned to the Jooster to find out how you can win a Beta token.

IPTV - cutting off the air supply, an excellent article by Narrowstep

2007-01-31T01:04:00.000+01:00

Just came upon this excellent article posted on TVover.net and would recommend it to anyone with an interest in the technical challenges posed by IPTV and the state of the UK DSL industry.

Alexander Cameron shares his views in an informative article titled "Cutting Off the Air Supply" read the rest of this article

Jooster Content Programmer - Chen Jin Xing

2007-01-30T12:52:00.000+01:00

Thank you to Jin for the fourth entry to our Jooster content programmer competition.
If you agree with Jin´s content choices leave a positive comment for him on this post, we will be announcing the winners and giving out the 6 Beta tokens at the end of the month.
If you would like to enter the competition click here - there is still time and Ive got 6 tokens so get scribblin!

Jooster Content programmer -Jin

Buzz. That is the key for Joost. To create content that will get water cooler talk the next day. To create content that gets people talking.

I've taken a different approach than just signing popular content providers that already exist. While I would still sign popular and up and coming content providers, I would focus my content programming by having an anchor show for each of the major categories (reality television, sports, comedy, music, film). Here is how I would do it - originality and exclusively. I would do this through reality television and branch off to sports, comedy, music, film/drama from that.

Reality TV is cheaper and easier to produce than regular sitcoms. I would produce many different reality tv shows that can only be exclusively seen on Joost. I would have viewer involvement in the outcome of the show so users can get excited about it and talk about it then next day. I would give the users a chance to win prizes as well to encourage participation and more buzz. I would have a new episode/show everyday so users will come back for more. What would the reality TV shows be about? I would create a show by petitioning for the top writers, producers, and directors to submit their own original work. These will be shown on Joost for viewers to vote for. The top selected contestants will be put in a series of challenges on producing their own commercials, sitcoms, and short length movies that viewers can watch from day one. The grand prize? Your own original film/drama show to be shown exclusively on Joost. Now not only will the viewer's choice for the best writer/producer/director be the winner but they will stick around and see what he or she comes up with for their own show. Moreover, other contestants of the show who didn't win but still showed off their work and had fans could also be offered different shows.

I would create a similar reality tv show except target comedy writers and performers. The winner would receive their own comedy special and show.

For music I would turn to the top reality music show. I would get all the top participants who didn't win the Idol/Superstar series from all over the world such as Pop Idol (UK) and American Idol (US) and create an international world idol. Now this will generate buzz from all over the world with different countries having representation and will give exposure to these unknown artists.

For sports, I would try and create a brand new sport that would interact with Joost somehow. For example, in competitions, fans can choose what matchups they want to see. Like some of the other major categories, I would create a reality tv show that would try and find the best creator of the new sport in which people can see how it was first created from the very first day and feel like they are part of the action. Now that I've created some buzz and some income, I would go out and sign the producers of the popular YouTube "lonelygirl15". I would make the show daily and exclusively on Joost. There is already a loyal fan base from YouTube and Joost can use YouTube to create teasers and generate interest in the newest episode. These shows would be the anchor shows for each of my major categories to help bring buzz to Joost. The main theme would be to use reality tv to create new and innovating new shows, sports, and music. Once people see these shows, they will see some of the other content provided and be hooked on the experience – an original show they helped create from the start.
Great site, I hope I win an invite. Can't wait to try it out.

Jooster Content Programmer - Kenny

2007-01-29T19:55:00.000+01:00

Thank you to Kenny for the third entry to our Jooster content programmer competition. If you agree with Kenny´s content choices leave a positive comment for him on this post, we will be announcing the winners and giving out the 6 Beta tokens at the end of the month. If you would like to enter the competition click here - there is still time and Ive got 6 tokens so get scribblin!

Jooster Content programmer - Kenny

If I were in charge of content programming for Joost I would try and create content that would keep users coming back for more.

I would do this by putting the most popular and best programming on at all times while adding features that will make users choose to use it rather than watch their own TV.

To appeal to the sports fan, I would target a deal with ESPN to broadcast their news, highlights, and games. I would also try and cut deals with the local teams to broadcast their games so a sports fan of a particular team can see each of their team's games. I would try and appeal to the fantasy sports players by allowing widgets to show stats and scores of players on their team. When there are multiple games on the same time, Users can choose to watch multiple games on the same screen and can select a particular game to watch it on the full screen. Of course, widgets will allow displaying on other statistics and scores that are easily selectable and can display player profiles and highlights of the games. To make it unique, I would try and get exclusive deals for games that aren't televised anywhere else.

For reality TV, I would target some of the top rated reality TV shows like American Idol, Survivor, Big Brother, and the Amazing Race. For reality shows that require people to phone in and vote for their favorites, I would use Joost as an alternative to be able to cast the vote instantly. Also, since shows like Big Brother run 24 hours a day, I would have a channel where Users can view it anytime, rather than just 1 hr of the show every week. To make it more unique, I would show scenes that didn’t have time to make it on the regular TV show. For the big fans of the show, I would create separate channels where Users can customize the content they want to see. For example, an American Idol fan that has a favorite will be able to watch all performances by the one contestant.

For comedy, I would try and cut a deal with Comedy Central which displays comedian acts and shows. To make it unique and making users want to come back for more, I would try and do content deals with specific comedians to show live shows that can only be seen with Joost. I would also offer deals where if someone were to watch a comedian and wants to see them live, they can get exclusive offers for tickets and shows.

For music, I would show live performances and music videos all the time. MTV used to do this but now doesn't play any music. This channel would be dedicated to music all the time. Users can search for specific music videos and performances or even lyrics. Like for comedy, I would also offer deals where if someone were to watch an artist and wants to see them live, they can get exclusive offers for tickets and shows.

For film and drama, I would target the film distributors and cut deals with them so people can watch movies on demand. This would compete with NetFlix users who have to wait for their movies to ship. I would also try and reach deals where newly released movies will be able to seen as well on the same time. For newly released DVDs, I would give an option for Users to purchase it through Joost and be able to copy it onto a DVD.

Reading about Joost, I have realized that the possibilities are endless. With the right content, I believe everyone will be using Joost in the future.

Mattias Ljungman Biography

2007-01-28T17:31:00.000+01:00

Mattias Ljungman biography

Mattias Ljungman has been working in Venture Capital since 2000. Investments that he has been in charge of includes the social networking site Lunarstorm, IPTV set-top box provider Amino Technologies (listed AiM) and the TV shopping channel Sit-Up TV (bought in 2005 by Telewest). Mr Ljungman has sat on the board of CLS Capital Partners, Keronite, WightCable, WightCable North, Mobilaris, Veg Tech, Roko Sports and Solna Sports Park.

Prior to working in Venture Capital Mr Ljungman worked for the strategy consultancy LEK Consulting and for a fund management company called Valu-Trac.

Education: Mr Ljungman has a Masters of Science in Economics and Business from Stockholm School of Economics, Bachelors of Arts in Geography with a focus on Environmental Studies and a Minor in Economics from McGill Unviersity

Atomico Investments

Recent Investment

Niklas Zennstrom Biography

2007-01-28T17:30:00.000+01:00

Niklas Zennström biography

Niklas co-founded Skype in 2003 to offer consumers worldwide a free software for making superior-quality calls using their computer. Skype has since expanded its offering for all major computing platforms - Linux, MAC & PC and mobile/ handheld devices. With more than 100 million registered users (hopelessly outdated by the time you read this!), Skype is the fastest growing communications phenomenon in history.

Prior to Skype, Niklas founded and served as CEO at Joltid, a software company that develops and markets peer-to-peer (P2P) solutions and traffic optimization technologies for service providers. Niklas co-founded and served as CEO of KaZaA, the consumer file-sharing sensation that became the world's most downloaded Internet software in 2003.

Niklas also co-founded Altnet, the world's first secure P2P network that promotes commercial content and integrates the full value chain of promotion, distribution, and payment for digital content. Altnet was the world's largest issuer of DRM licenses.

Niklas was CEO of the European everyday.com portal, and held various business development roles at get2net. He started his professional career at Tele2, when there were only 23 employees, with the goal to expand the business footprint across Europe. Today Tele2 is the leading consumer-oriented pan-European telecom operator present in 23 countries.

Niklas Zennström holds dual degrees in business and MSc Engineering Physics/ computer science from Uppsala University in Sweden. He spent his final year at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

When Niklas is not creating new cutting-edge disruptive businesses, he enjoys sailing, skiing, outdoor activities and travelling. Niklas is happily married.

Links: Atomico investments, recent investments

Who are Atomico Investments?

2007-01-28T17:22:00.000+01:00

Atomico Investments.

"We set out to be a different kind of investment group. We exist in the space between angel investors and venture capitalists.

We invest in internet, telecoms, technology and media companies. But more than that we invest in global companies who want to change the world.

When we invest our money, we also invest our advice, knowledge, experience, inspiration, and the access to a fabulous network of people."

Manifesto:

We believe:

Strong businesses come from working with people with diverse experience and ideas.

We’re entrepreneurs, just like you.

We invest in entrepreneurs, not business plans.

We like businesses that have ambition to transform customers’ experience in a market and seek to possibly change the world

We are an investment group, not a venture capitalist.

We won’t take over your business. We will make our advice and our network available to you. Our job is to support the entrepreneur.

We believe in trust, instinct and judgment.

It doesn’t matter where you’re from. The next global business will come from anywhere in the world

In five years we will see more eBays, Googles and Skypes

We try not to say ‘no’. Instead we say ‘what if…’.

We don’t want to win any awards. We do want to help realise your vision.

The Atomico portfolio:

wunderLOOP is the market leader in integrated behavioral targeting services for advertising, content and e-commerce. wunderLOOP is built on over seven years of research and development by leading psychologists, mathematicians and advertising experts. With its ability to enable real-time targeting, wunderLOOP is unique in its ability to really understand the consumer. This gives wunderLOOP the potential to take online advertising to the next level for the benefit of both consumers and advertisers alike.

The team behind wunderLOOP includes Michael Kleindl (Chairman) who co-founded Adlink, Ulrich Hegge (CEO) who was the former board member of Gruner+Jahr, Electronic Media Services, Sven Bagemihl (Sales & Marketing) who was the former MD of Advertising.com Germany and Donald Hamilton (MD UK) who was the former MD of Adlink UK.

www.wunderloop.com

Decentral.tv is developing an innovative new platform for interactive broadcasting. Interactive Broadcast Broadband Communities will enable new TV content that involves the participation of viewers and communities.

Decentral.tv was founded in July 2005 by Erik Abair and Daniel Graf, creators of the world’s first MP3 Jukebox and key figures behind Philips Streamium product line.

www.decentral.tv

FON is building the largest WiFi community in the world.

Members called Foneros share their wireless Internet access at home and, in return, enjoy free WiFi wherever they find another Fonero’s Access Point. To join the community you just need to buy a FON social router, which enables you to securely and fairly share your home broadband connection with other Foneros.

FON founder Martin Varsavsky previously founded seven companies including Jazztel, Viatel and Ya.com.

www.fon.com

IQube is an investment company that actively assists early stage companies and entrepreneurs to grow and achieve commercial breakthrough. IQube allows the entrepreneurs to focus and flourish by helping them manage back office services like property facilities, business advice, accounting and PR.

|Founder Johan Stael von Holstein is a seasoned entrepreneur who has previously co-founded Icon MediaLab and Letsbuyit.com among many other companies.

www.iqube.se

Last.fm are building the world's largest social music platform.

Last.fm taps the wisdom of the crowds, leveraging each user's musical profile to make personalised recommendations, connect users who share similar tastes, provide custom radio streams, and much more.

Last.fm founders Felix Miller, Martin Stiksel and Richard Jones have been working together since 2003.

www.last.fm

Technorati is the recognized authority on what's going on in the world of weblogs. They help people search for, surface, and organize bloggers and their daily posts

Technorati tracks the number of links to, and therefore the relevance of blogs, blogs (vlogs), podcasts, and amateur movies and videos; all in real-time.

Founder David Sifry was previously cofounder and CTO of Sputnik, a Wi-Fi gateway company, and Linuxcare.

www.technorati.com

We invested in Viagogo a while ago. Viagogo is a ticketing reseller company whose slogan is “an online ticket exchange where you can buy and sell live event tickets in a safe and guaranteed way.” Their mission is to bring efficiency and transparency to what has traditionally been a murky market place, thus allowing consumers to buy and sell tickets in a safe and guaranteed way..

Now this is not a new market but Eric is a powerful operator. Prior to viagogo, Eric founded StubHub.com, the leading U.S. online secondary ticketing company for live events. Eric originated the StubHub concept and took StubHub from an idea on a sheet of paper to a rapidly growing, profitable business that has revolutionised the way that fans buy tickets in the secondary market. As founder and President, Eric developed the concept and business plan and was primarily responsible for sales/business development, strategic planning, financing, and public relations.

Eric now aims to change the European ticketing market and we have placed our bets on him making this happen.

Jott it! Voice it!
We have just invested in a really cool company that solves a simple problem. Jott digitises your “to do” lists. It uses your mobile phone to jott down thought, an idea, a task, an action item, a phone number, a gift -- it's anything else you want to offload -- to your email

Jott also lets you JottCast your friends or colleagues directly from your phone. At the beep, you record your Jott, the service automatically translates that to text and sends email and text messages to the people you want to JottCast. Tell me that is not an addictive!

The founders are John Pollard and Shreedhar Madhavapeddi both of whom have +11 years at Microsoft. These guys have solved a simple need and the solution is simple and “just works”.

WeatherBill sells weather derivatives to protect small businesses against adverse weather conditions. This is achieved by having an online platform which allows companies to purchase coverage that automatically pays for adverse weather conditions without any claims hassle. WeatherBill also provides free tools to help businesses understand how weather impacts their financial performance. Weather-prone industries -- from construction to travel -- are all set to benefit.

David Friedberg is the CEO of Weatherbill which he co-founded together with other former key members of the Google team.

www.weatherbill.com

The founders of Atomico Investments:
Biographies:
Zennstrom, Niklas
Ljungman, Mattias

Standing on the shoulders of giants - Zennstrom shapes his new Empire

2007-01-28T16:29:00.000+01:00

Niklas Zennstrom shapes his new Empire with the Atomico investment in Wunderloop.

Paul Durman of the Timesonline gives us this report:

THE founder of Skype, the London-based internet telephony sensation, and two of his original backers are investing in a German company that hopes to revolutionise web advertising.

Less than three-and-a-half years since Skype’s launch, the firm has more than 170m users who made 32 billion minutes of calls last year. This success — and Ebay’s $2.6 billion (£1.3 billion) purchase of Skype 18 months ago — has made founder Niklas Zennstrom a celebrity in technology start-up circles

Zennstrom is investing in Wunderloop, the internet advertising firm, along with Klaus Hommels and Howard Hartenbaum, two highly regarded technology investors. Hommels was European Angel Investor of 2006, while California-based Hartenbaum was featured last week on the Midas list of leading venture capitalists produced by Forbes magazine.

Hommels, who is a partner with Benchmark Capital in London, said Wunderloop had developed technology that enables websites to target their advertising much more effectively

This improved targeting could improve the revenue generated by adverts 10 or 15 times over.

The technology is already being used by leading web brands including AOL and T-Online, the internet arm of Deutsche Telekom. Tiscali, the Anglo-Italian firm, was also recently signed up as a customer.

Hartenbaum, a partner with Draper Richards in San Francisco, said: “When I am surfing the web, I get a lot of ads that are a waste of my time and a waste of the advertisers’ time — weight-loss products for women, for example. Wunderloop means that I get a better experience, and it works for the advertiser.”

Wunderloop will receive an estimated €8m (£5m) from investors. Hommels and Hartenbaum are putting in their own money, while Zennstrom is investing through his Atomico Investments. Also investing are the Samwer brothers, founders of the Jamba ringtone company that was responsible for Crazy Frog.

The pieces are all starting to fall into place and Zennstrom seems to have his finger in all the hot pies. WTD blog posted this excellent flow chart of the Zennstrom Empire and his headline poses an interesting question -

Zennstrom is investing in Wunderloop, the internet advertising firm. Here comes the new Rupert Murdoch Web 2.0. / Voice 2.0. Empire.

Are we witnessing the birth the of a new type of media mogul?

I hope so, because this new media Empire will be a better place than the current status quo. Bring on the free stuff, bring on the innovation and investment, bring on the freedoms of the web, and to finish this interesting post I´ve another little question for you.

Who would you rather have running the infrastructure of your media distribution - Zennstrom or Murdoch? right ...next!

Behind the scenes at Joost - meet the crew

2007-01-28T04:28:00.000+01:00

"TV was the evolution of Radio and Joost is the evolution of TV"

Henrik Werdelin - Executive Vice President

Gates slams doubters on Internet TV

2007-01-28T04:00:00.000+01:00

DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) -

The Internet is set to revolutionize television within five years, due to an explosion of online video content and the merging of PCs and TV sets, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates said on Saturday.

“I’m stunned how people aren’t seeing that with TV, in five years from now, people will laugh at what we’ve had,” he told business leaders and politicians at the World Economic Forum.

The rise of high-speed Internet and the popularity of video sites like Google Inc.’s YouTube has already led to a worldwide decline in the number hours spent by young people in front of a TV set.

In the years ahead, more and more viewers will hanker after the flexibility offered by online video and abandon conventional broadcast television, with its fixed program slots and advertisements that interrupt shows, Gates said.

“Certain things like elections or the Olympics really point out how TV is terrible. You have to wait for the guy to talk about the thing you care about or you miss the event and want to go back and see it,” he said.

“Internet presentation of these things is vastly superior.”

At the moment, watching video clips on a computer is a separate experience from watching sitcoms or documentaries on television.

But convergence is coming, posing new challenges for TV companies and advertisers.

“Because TV is moving into being delivered over the Internet — and some of the big phone companies are building up the infrastructure for that — you’re going to have that experience all together,” Gates said.

YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley said the impact on advertising would be profound, with the future promising far more targeted ads tailored to each viewer’s profile.

“In the coming months we’re going to do experiments to see how people interact with these ads to build an effective model that works for advertisers and works for users,” he said.

Advertisers are already racing to adapt their strategies to the growing power of the Web, and more and more promotional cash is tipped to migrate from television to Web sites in future.

Thanks to Reuters and Ben Hirschler for the article

Joost is no Red Herring

2007-01-28T03:35:00.000+01:00

They shook up the music industry and challenged the telecommunications sector. Now the Scandinavian duo that created Internet telephony service Skype is aiming to take on the television and cable industries.

Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, who were also behind popular peer-to-peer music-sharing site Kazaa, unveiled their much-anticipated Internet television service Joost.

News reports hailed Joost—in part because the duo seems to have the Midas touch—and appeared to suggest the team was on the verge of revolutionizing the way people watch TV. But building Joost into a broadcasting powerhouse won’t be easy: For the first time, the duo will need to outmaneuver powerful competitors and form partnerships with major content producers that have so far remained on the sidelines.

Joost, formerly known to the digerati as The Venice Project, certainly seems compelling enough. It will let viewers watch TV for free over the Internet. The service will feature channels that users can flip between to find shows and a keyword search function so viewers can pull up programs on demand. Joost will also let users chat among themselves as they watch Internet TV. Joost says it wants nothing less than to merge the best of television with the best of the Internet.

The Luxembourg-based company, which the Scandinavian twosome reportedly funded with proceeds from the $2.5-billion sale of Skype to eBay, aims to offer global audiences to professional content creators. It plans to generate revenues from advertising and undisclosed “interactive services” delivered over its peer-to-peer `platform, the same technology that powered Kazaa and Skype.

Joost also promises to alleviate some of the pain Internet users feel when trying to locate content, such as television shows, online. News Corp.’s Fox network, for example, posts programs to the company’s MySpace social networking site, making the content sometimes difficult to find.

“The ability to get content from multiple sources through one interface could make [Joost] very successful,” says David Hallerman, senior analyst at research firm eMarketer.

Timely Play

Joost’s timing appears impeccable. Online video consumption is booming as Internet users flock to new sites and services, including Google’s YouTube video-sharing site. A key difference is that YouTube deals mainly in short, low-quality video clips created by individual users, while Joost plans to offer full-length, professionally produced TV shows and movies. Joost also says it plans to eventually move the Internet service to television sets through set-top boxes.

But industry analysts say Joost must overcome several hurdles. Aleksandra Bosnjak, media analyst at Ovum consultancy, notes that Joost will eat up a hefty amount of bandwidth, which could be problematic for consumers who have bandwidth caps on their Internet service.

A greater issue is that Joost has signed up few content providers. So far the startup has inked deals with Warner Music, TV-production company Endemol, September Films, and Indy Car Series. But leading movie studios and television production firms are all notably absent from that lineup and without compelling content, Joost will be hard-pressed to turn a profit.

“If the service is advertising-based, then they need to get people watching in order to generate revenues—and without attractive content, that’s not going to happen,” says Ms. Bosnjak.

On the advertising front, Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile, chewing gum maker Wrigley, and cosmetic manufacturer Maybelline, owned by L’Oreal, have agreed to give Joost a try, but the company must entice many more advertisers if it is to succeed.

And there will be plenty of competition for advertisers from other newcomers. Google’s YouTube might deal in amateur video fare, but movie download services such as Movielink, Apple iTunes, and file-sharing programs such as BitTorrent all covet a chunk of the online video market.

The odds are fair that Mr. Zennström and Mr. Friis will score a third hit, but success this time around is no sure bet.

Thanks to Red Herring for this super article.

Joost on Vista - The first bug but Joost has it zapped!

2007-01-28T01:20:00.000+01:00

I am very interested in Vista, its going to take a big chunk of my time and effort (I´m very low on the former and high on the latter) in the not too distant future and Im sure thats the same for all of us.

I think 2007 will be the coming of the Internet TV age - led I believe by Joost, but it will also be the year of massive IT upheavals as millions of ordinary users come to terms with a new and potentially scary environment - The year of Vista.

The question of how Joost will run on this media centric OS has been intriguing me (seeing as I just invested in the top of the range Dell XPS 2010 and will be upgrading to Vista as soon as its available)

Paul Stamatiou was lucky enough to get his hands on a copy of Vista and he kindly gives us the lowdown on how it faired.

Paul´s account had me worried until his last entry at 5:19 pm. He found the Joost support forum. I will hold my praise for the moment until I get news from Paul that Joost is operating flawlessly on Vista, but my initial feeling is, Joost has got this cracked.

When you put that into context - Joost Beta software running on a beta OS. You just have to take your hats off to everyone at Joost.

Paul Stamatiou - The Vista Challenge

Last week I got a copy of Vista Business edition through my MSDN Academic Alliance account at Georgia Tech. Obviously, I was compelled to install it and test it out. I was able to successfully get a dual-boot OS X and Vista setup working so I bring to you today, The Vista Challenge. I will be using Vista for an entire day and will see if I can do so without booting into OS X. I will be chronicling my experience and challenges, so be sure to keep coming back for updates.

The Timeline

2:20 PM Just woke up.

2:34 PM First boot. I’ve been waiting a while for all these default gadgets to load up. I find it funny that the “Feed Headlines” gadget only lets you choose between 3 Microsoft feeds.

2:35 PM Feeling triumphant as I learned how to disable the Windows sidebar.

4:37 PM Installing Google Talk, Gaim 2.0.0 Beta 6 and Joost.

4:39 PM Joost gave me an error and won’t run in Vista, darn.

4:44 PM Sound Works! No idea why but it just started working on the iMac. I am very happy. Time to install iTunes and listen to my roommates’ music and/or iTunes radio.

4:58 PM Playing around with Windows Media Player and URGE. “Meh” comes to mind.

5:08 PM Reading up on BitLocker - the drive encryption that comes with Vista Ultimate. I have no need for BitLocker as I plan on loading up Vista through Parallels via Boot Camp so I can’t encrypt it. Unfortunately, the current release of Parallels can’t access Vista through Boot Camp.

5:19 PM I found a workaround for getting Joost to run on Vista.

And this is what the chaps at Joost had to say:

Software Conflict in Vista - Found a temporary bug fix ;)

Hi,

Yep Found a bugfix for the "Conflict error" in 0.7.2 version..

1. Disable "Compability mode on ALL TVP exe files, ONLY if you played with it in the 0.7.1 or < version.
2. Try starting the TVP, now only ONE error comes up (AcGenral.dll+some path to a directory or something)
3. Find the C:\Windows\AppPatch\AcGenral.dll file.
4. Now rename this files to something as "1AcGenral.dll".
5. You need to have Administrator permission, AND do this first to claim your right back in Vista to modify the file...
6. Right click on file Properties>Security>Advanced>Owner>Edit..>Other users..>Advanced..>Find Now>
YOUR_ADMINISTOT_USER_ACCOUNT>OK> ok to all boxes.
Now AGAIN Right click on file Properties>Security>YOUR_ADMINISTOT_USER_ACCOUNT>Full Control>Add..>ok
(Well that what microsoft calls usability! - they gone too secure - try to find a balance - instead of going in totally terror panic!)

7. Now finally you can rename the file..
8. Start TVP, and enjoy its working!

This excerpt was taken from The Vista Challenge or go to the Joost support page.

IPTV - The future of Television?

2007-01-27T03:03:00.000+01:00

A stimulating article from VOIP Now on the pros and cons of IPTV and its potential.

Content producers:
This means that marginal viewer ship in North America is no longer reason to cancel a show. Some of the best TV shows ever made are now in syndication around the world, and new episodes would no doubt be welcomed.
The Internet can and does support small productions. On the other hand, they now have more competition, since the cost of entry and distribution is greatly reduced.

Viewers:
Variety of content beyond what even Digital TV, with its 600 channels of the same damn thing in 4 time zones, offers. They also have access to obscure content that they may not otherwise see but is valuable to them.

Demographics.

Broadcasters:
Those broadcasters showing full episodes via streaming video on their websites can now determine the approximate location of their viewers via their computer's IP address. They can also segregate viewers, blocking anyone outside a certain geographic area.

Advertisers:
Their paid-for "content" can't be fast-forwarded over using tools like TiVo or DVRs. At least, not that I'm aware of, though this may change.

Viewers:
Blocked from watching content; geographic discrimination. But this isn't really that different than the current broadcasting model.

Read the rest of the article here

Joost Content Programmer - Michael Staal-Olsen

2007-01-27T01:18:00.000+01:00

Thank you to Michael Staal-Olsen for our second entry to the Jooster content programmer competition.
If you agree with Michael´s content choices leave a positive comment for him on this post, we will be announcing the winners and giving out the 6 Beta tokens at the end of the month.

If you would like to enter the competition click here.

Michael Staal-Olsen:

Well, I’m not the big fan of sport but if I should choose something I would take golf, tennis, badminton and curling. They are all quietly sports if you ask me. And then it isn’t about strength. It is about concentration and focus. Of course it is good if you’ve got some muscles but it is more about focus than muscles. Except of tennis and badminton. I think you have to be strong if you want to be professional. But it is still great to see how they can smash to an already hard ball. That’s what I call sport.

• ‘Dr Phil’ is a great show. He is good to show people the right paths if they’ve got problems inside or outside their homes. He is always relaxed when he gives his advices. I think it is nice to watch. I like talk shows. But not shows about dating and such things. I think it is boring to watch people that want a girl and then they ask a person for an advice. The person now tell him that he is a geek an then they have to buy him some new dress. I just think it is to unrealistic.

• I think that ‘The Simpsons’, ‘Joey’ and ‘Friends’ is my favourite comedy series. ‘The Simpsons’ is about Homer Simpson and his family’s odd and strange life in the also very odd and strange town Springfield. But maybe it is Homer that makes all the family looks like idiots. I think that there is about 17 seasons. I know that there also is coming a movie about them. I hope that I may watch it for my parents. But I hope that it won’t be a bad movie. I’ve heard about series that became movies and they became awful.

• Music is not my business. But I think that ‘Mew’ and ‘the Beatles’ is great musicians. It is a kind of soft rock. Not metal rock. Soft rock is quieter. And it is either good to listen to. It was sad that John Lennon leaved ‘the Beatles’. He was a good musician. And so were the others. ‘Mew’ has created such songs as ‘the zookeepers boy’, am I wry? No’ and ‘symmetry’. To me it listen like ‘the Beatles’ a bit. And then they are still playing. Actually they have won an award in Denmark as ‘the best song’. It must be fun to win such an award!

• I like movies as ‘Harry Potter’, ‘the Lord of the Rings’, ‘Scary movie (1-4)’, and ‘Kill Bill (1-2)’. They are very different but that is also nice to watch different kinds of movies. ‘Harry Potter’ has the mysterious, the magic and the war against the dark side just as ‘the Lord of the Rings’. They have also magic, war and so on. ‘Scary movie’ has the comedy. It is about some teenagers that think that they are going to die… and so they are. But it is not a scary death… it is a funny death… - ‘Kill Bill’ is not funny. It is about murders between murders. You don’t know why they fight before the end of the film. And then you will get all your questions get answered…

Manufacturing in China and innovation in Europe - move over silicon valley

2007-01-26T02:24:00.000+01:00

John Markoff of the New York Times wrote about a technology and media conference being held in New York this week and how its provided ample evidence that Silicon Valley’s dominance of Internet-style technology innovation is waning.

The star of this year’s event was Niklas Zennstrom, the Swedish co-founder of the file-sharing system Kazaa and the Internet telephony company Skype, which was sold to eBay for $2.6 billion in 2005. Mr. Zennstrom last week took the wraps off a previously secretive start-up, Joost, that intends to provide a peer-to-peer approach to distributing video online.

“We’re trying to take the good things about television and the good things about the Internet and put them together,” he said.

Like many participants here, Mr. Zennstrom voiced the opinion that Internet-based commerce would accelerate in its disruptive effect on traditional businesses. Skype, for example, now says that it carries 4.4 percent of all worldwide long-distance calling.

“We now have a pretty decent Internet infrastructure,” Mr. Zennstrom said, noting in the future that it would give rise to “many, many more disruptive industries.”

Read the whole article here.

Joost Beta review video, laptop and plasma screen test

2007-01-26T02:09:00.000+01:00

This is well worth watching even though its in Finnish. English subtitles guide you through and its interesting to see Joost perform flawlessly on both laptop and plasma.

Enter the Jooster competition and win a Beta tester token, click here for details.

Thanks to Hessunkavila for the video post

A daily dose of Joost for those still waiting....

2007-01-26T01:45:00.000+01:00

If your not on the Joost Beta testing waiting list then there is obviously something wrong with you. Check this video out and then tell us that you don't want to be watching Joost on a computer near you soon.

Alternativly if you dont fancy a long wait, enter the Jooster Content programmer competition and 6 Beta testers will be signing up to Joost on the 1st of February. Click here for more details on how you could win a Joost Beta token today.

Joost Beta Token goes for $51 on eBay

2007-01-26T01:27:00.000+01:00

It didn’t take long for Joost invites to find their way on eBay.

This particular auction ended at $51 however there has not been any others posted on eBay since.

On message boards and blogs all over the web, everyone seems to be asking for an invite but no one seems to have one.

Well we do!

Enter the Jooster content programmer competition, click here for details, for the chance to win a Joost beta test token.

We are giving away 6 to the best entries to the competition, delivered to the 6 winners by Email on the first of February.

Don't delay enter today and watch Joost next month.

Thanks to Joostfan for the link

Jooster Content Programmer - Michael Bohnstedt

2007-01-26T00:47:00.000+01:00

Thank you to Michael Bohnstedt for the first entry to our Jooster content programmer competition. If you agree with Michael´s content choices leave a positive comment for him on this post, we will be announcing the winners and giving out the 6 Beta tokens at the end of the month. If you would like to enter the competition click here.

Michael Bohnstedt:

I began surfing the “web” back when a 9600 modem was really cool and it doesn’t even feel like that many years ago, and here we are in 2007 and it definitely looks like Web TV is finally, taking the first step that I would dare call “One small step for Joost, but a giant leap for us Watchers”.

Sure, there are many Video on Demand sites out there, but honestly the quality might be acceptable for the adult genre but I don’t believe it will, in a big way, bring the Web TV to everybody’s living room.

It is important to note that all the seasoned brands in ADSL modems and the like, are right now pushing their respective “PC to your big Plasma/LCD screen gadgets” to the markets. The reason is obvious, the sales of big screen TV’s are ever increasing month by month and with prices going the opposite way, this trend will continue.

With this development in mind I have no doubt that, just like myself, a significant number of web users, will be ever more interested in a quality (content and picture) of Web TV which make it acceptable/endurable to watch on your big screen TV on par with channels distributed via Satellite or cable.

Sure, not everybody owns a PC, which made me wonder about Web TV and the just launched PS3. Living in Europe I don’t own a PS3 yet but have read reviews and articles enough, to convince me that with the built in browser, hard disk and more of a PC architecture that a gaming device, it would be conceivable that a PS3 version of Joost could be done. The PS3’s excellent output options and quality would make it the perfect conveyor of high quality Web TV to the big screen anywhere.

Travel, I do a lot of traveling and therefore also spent many late hours in hotels, and I am more often than not very disappointed with the selection and quality of the channels offered. But it is becoming more and more normal that hotels offer free high-speed wireless connection. With a free high-speed wireless connection, my laptop and Joost, many boring nights will now turn into me having to make up my mind which one of my favorite programs I want to watch… I can’t wait!

But, in the end the only way to ensure the success of Joost in my humble opinion, is all about 3 things, and I wouldn’t prioritize one above the other, they have to complement each other:
• Content
• Quality
• Ease of use

The perfect balance between the above will create the “stickiness” that all websites crave for.

Below are the categories/channels with my comments/thoughts I believe would help secure a large and relatively loyal crowd:
Sport, you can never go wrong with sport channels. You will always secure a huge audience in this genre and who would not love to be able to watch your favourite game whenever you feel like or can fit it into your daily schedule.
• Golf
• NFL
• NBA
• NHL
• Indy 500
• Formula 1
• X-Games

Reality TV, there is quite a “stickiness” to these types of programs.
• Big Brother
• There are too many for me to get into

Comedy, because we all love a good laugh.
• Comedy Central
• Cartoons

Music, it is always nice to check out the latest and hottest titles.
• MTV

Film/Drama, I am unsure about this category as I believe many, like myself, will still go and buy or rent whichever movie they have been looking forward to for months.
• Sci Fi
• Classics
• Westerns News, because we all need our daily fix of news.
• CNN
• BBC World
• ESPN News

Science/History, educating and entertaining for all ages, and I personally love to spend a dark winter day watching these channels.
• Discovery Science
• Discovery History
• TopGear

Nature, educating for all ages and the quality of these types of programs just keep getting better and better.
• Animal Planet
• National Geographic

Food, programs about food have never been more popular than right now, they are entertaining to watch and very inspiring for those who like to cook, but don’t have a background in the food business. This genre has also been combined with travel programs with very good results.
• BBC Food
• The Food channel
• The Food Network

Travel, unfortunately I have to work and therefore can’t travel the world like a millionaire all year round, but I have spent many rainy days dreaming myself to a different place on earth watching these channels.
• Discovery Travel
• Travel Channel

Gaming, watching the poker tournaments has been increasingly more popular the last couple of years and is still attracting new watchers.
• Poker

Anyway, the above is merely my personal thoughts provoked by the promising outlook with regards to the Web TV experience Joost will give us Web TV Watchers in the future.
I also apologize for my English, it is not my native language, I am from Denmark and currently live and work in Germany. My best regards and all the best to all you Joosters.

6 Joost beta tokens up for grabs in programming competition

2007-01-25T12:05:00.000+01:00

Our competition is pretty simple but the answer could get complex.

We want you to imagine that you are in charge of the content programming for Joost.
Write a short comment to this post with a minimum of 500, and maximum 1500 words, on:

What content would you sign up and why?

(Hey - they might be hiring, you never know)

Within your article you MUST include your content preferences on each of the following categories:
Sport
Reality TV
Comedy
Music
Film/Drama

I will Publish your comments as a separate post and Jooster readers can leave their comments on how well you've done! I have 6 invites to give away and I will award them to the 6 best Joost content programmers.
Please include your email (don't worry I wont publish it) so that I can send the winners their Beta token at the end of the month

So what are you waiting for?

The challenge is a tough one but then nobody said revolutionizing the Television industry was going to be easy. Prepare yourself to ride the long tail to niches never yet explored, open your mind and your memories.

Here is an inspiring video for the book The Long Tail to get you thinking on how the 80/20 rule, the distribution bottle necks, the Hollywood strangle hold, has affected your media preferences to date.

We want you to think out of the box, think Google and search, flickr and photos, technorati and blogs, think 2.0, and when you´ve finished all that thinking, do something about it, get your best thoughts down and help in the beta testing by writing about the best content and why you feel passionate about watching it on Joost.

The new Jooster logo and our Beta token competition

2007-01-22T01:26:00.000+01:00

Would you like to win a Joost Beta token

Subscribe to our feed today as we will be releasing details in the next 36 hours of a great new competition and giving away 6 beta tokens.

Want to watch Joost TV? stay tuned to Jooster

2007-01-19T23:49:00.000+01:00

If like me you are desperate to get a token for the Joost Beta program then stay tuned to Jooster.
Mat Hall from Joost dropped me an email earlier today and has promised me a few tokens for Jooster readers, so stay tuned to the blog for details on how you can get your hands on a token.

For now check out this excellent video posted by CBS news on YouTube.

Thanks to CBS for the video post

Q +A with Joost including open source , content and name choice.

2007-01-19T23:22:00.000+01:00

As I have promised you two days ago, I’m bringing you new details about the Joost application: screen shots with Linux install and some interesting answers kindly provided to me by Jillian Alexander about the possible selling of Joost and the technology used.

Despite the fact that on their official site they say Joost does not yet support Linux or Macintosh, I did manage to install the most recent build on an Ubuntu Linux 6.10 (Edgy Eft), of course using wine. Although I did install CrossOver Office 5.0 on my Ubuntu I haven’t yet been able to test whether I can run Joost with COO, but I will probably do that tonight. So, all in all, it did work on Linux. I shall soon ready some videos. I specified this because Marc James-Robbins (TVP) said that: “While a Linux version is definitely on the roadmap for the future, it will be a long way off before a version is able to be released to beta testers. As we have more info, we'll keeping people up to date via the blog and forums.”

I might also get the chance of running Joost on an iMac (with BootCamp installed, to see if and how it works), although from what I’ve been told, it does not yet work under Parallels (it needs to access the graphics processing unit for some of its operations, and Parallels does not support that at the moment).

There have been some discussions on the forum about a possible Pocket PC version of Joost, considering that mobile TV has a much larger audience. One beta tester even claimed that he managed to make Joost work very well on its HP iPAQ h6340 (168 Mhz), after wirelessly connecting it to his home TV (using 802.11b).

What I can also tell you is that Joost is using the H.264 video codec, which contains a number of new features that allow it to compress video much more effectively than older standards and to provide more flexibility for application to a wide variety of network environments.

Good news also for the open source community: it appears that the Joost client is based on XUL Runner platform, utilized by the developers of Mozilla (www.mozilla.com), which means that we might actually see in the future plug-ins or skins made by regular fans. The bad news though (as confirmed by Simon Lucy-TVP) is that the entire source code of Joost will not be open sourced: “There is considerable use made of open source software and where possible we will be contributing changes back not all those changes will be acceptable to the main trunk of whichever corpus but the changes will be available.

Already we've made contributions to the Redland project and had them either accepted or the ideas incorporated.

But no, the whole of the software cannot be made open source.”

The latest build is 0.7.3.1 and cannot be installed unless you uninstall the previous version (which is odd considering that they basically have the same code- but hey, it’s a beta right?).

PCs with the Intel 815 chipset and no extra graphics card can have problems with Joost, according to one post on the forum, and you should also NOT use any other Internet-based programs like Google Earth or even Skype (those limit the bandwidth available to Joost).

Using NetLimiter, I noticed that a channel that I watched usually downloaded around 450 kbits/s, which is impressive considering that my ISP has “reserved” for me only 512. But the upload was only around 20 kilos, which in my opinion should have at least two explanations:

1. no one wanted to watch during my test the same channel as me, so the upload was somehow being made “out of reflex” (we should also consider the size of the Joost actual network, which is quite restraint)

2. there might be some kind of unfixed bug or my Internet connection was bad at that time

And now the answers to my questions, posed in an e-mail from two days ago (thanks Jillian Alexander):

1. why was "joost" chosen as a name? It does not sound as good as skype or kazaa (according to comments from my readers it's quite confusing for them: they either pronounce it "djost" or simply "jost").

Joost is universally appealing and fits with our brand values. It’s a name that has energy. Additionally it’s a word that we like to use in a variety of different ways – as a noun, a verb and adjective, etc.

2. has the Joost team signed any contracts for streaming content on the Web, besides that already signed with Universal (at least that is what I have been told: that Universal agreed to put some content on Joost network)?

Joost has a number of content providers committed to it including

Endemol

National Geographic

Gamestar

North One

September Films

3. how is Joost positioned in the Web video business compared to YouTube? will you be fierce rivals or are you perceiving your brand as complementary to youtube?

Joost is a new way of watching TV – high quality, full screen entertainment combined with the scaleable, interactive and community benefits of the internet. NO other online video servie provides the breadth of content, full-screen viewing, instant channel-flipping functionality and channel creation Joost has developed. Joost does not show user-generated content.

4. some reports emerged concerning the bandwidth used by Joost (I personally tested the app and it worked fine on my home connection). Are users supposed to be scared that Joost will "eat" their entire Internet connection?

Just to put it into context, normally a video-stream in TV quality would set you back about 70GB an hour. As that rate is not currently possible over the internet, Joost uses state of the art compressing techniques to provide broadcast quality television, while respecting the bandwidth and keeping it as low as possible. Users are asked to check they have an upper limit on their monthly internet usage or that they pay for internet usage as they go.

5. besides the IM social feature of Joost, what other features are users supposed to wait for? Will users be able to upload content on your servers?

The Joost player includes links, ratings, chats, commentary, annotations, meta information and shared viewing. Joost content can be viewed through the player, integrated into webvsites or shared via email. There will also be several additional interview details released that will tie Joost into other community sites. Joost does not show user-generated content.

6. If the business has the expected success, will you sell it to others just like you did with Skype and Kazaa?

We are unable to comment at this time.

Thank you to Playfuls for this interesting post and Dan Nicolae for the Linux photos

Joost Beta review - Glimpse the Future

2007-01-19T22:41:00.000+01:00

We were invited to participate in the Beta testing of Joost, and I set out to visit the site and download the program. The program downloaded flawlessly, and startup was abundantly simple. The program is only a 12 MB download, but requires 500 MB of disk space to use as a cache. My dinosaur system was on the fringes of the system requirements in regard to processor speed, which turned out to be a slight problem that I will get to later. Starting the user interface almost immediately produced one of the coolest surfing videos I have seen in a long time. I must say, I was held spellbound for quite a few minutes.

The quality of video and sound at Joost is rather awe inspiring! The connection comes up full screen, and I scarcely noticed the UI until after the surfing stream ended. As with most new toys, we seldom read the directions and this makes any UI evoke a gasp, "Duh". However, like any 50,000 hour Internet veteran, I could figure it out - right? As it turned out, anyone could figure it out, as the interface utilizes subtle mouse-over prompts to direct the user through one of the sharpest set of controls I have ever seen.

As Paul Glazoski mentioned in one of his earlier posts, "Rather, it's the little things that make it shine brighter than the rest." Paul sure hit this one on the head, as this interface is exactly what many of us have suggested to other sites. The menu windows are transparent, with the softest impact on view-ability you can imagine. Whoever worked on this aspect of Joost is worth more money! The menus can be either dynamic or static, and the function inside the windows is as well thought out as the exterior. One almost has to get used to the controls being so clean and simple. You can view a much better example than mine of the combination of video and UI at Svetlana's earlier post.

How Does It Drive?

As I hinted to earlier, the full screen video and audio at Joost is fantastic. I use a Sony 19" LCD and the initial surfing video was like being there. Then I had a few problems, of course! The video began to skip a good bit, as did the sound. I suspected that the problem was my processor, so I put Joost on standby (which is a cool feature) and closed the few applications I had running. This seemed to help a little bit, but most of the rest of my tour was interrupted with spaces of skipping stream. I verified my CPU usage at MAXED OUT, and went about the business of finding similar problems from other testers. To my amazement, there really were not that many people with similar problems. The range of posts was very diverse, and most video aspects were related to ports, active-x controls, and the like. I am sure my difficulty was processor speed, as it is only 1.2 GHz, and not P4.

Is It Fully Loaded?

The site has almost all the options, but the 12 disc CD changer has only a few discs. Obviously, this Beta machine is not going to have this week's broadcast of "24", but I was extremely impressed with what is available at Joost. The list of available categories is really too long to list here, so I will simply tell you of the ones I could watch best. Fifth Gear is an automotive section where I viewed a great video on the new Porsche 911 Turbo. Hot and Wet is a section with hot stuff from the beach. There is a special broadcast of Paris Hilton that demonstrates a side of her personality we have not seen in her own section. The most unique and interesting streams currently are dealing with various topics from around the world. These video segments are of excellent content and quality, and the shorts are really captivating! These in particular, took on the flavor of National Geographic presentations, but with a more personable and original tone. This site can have anything the audio/video-file could ever want, but of course adding content will be up to so many factors.

Other features include: IM compatible with both Jabber and Gmail, notice board, news ticker news feed, Joost blog, chat channel with friends, rate it, and clock (which was cool). All these features came under the UI heading My Plug-Ins, with still more to come. All these features brought with them the same eclectic simplicity and function of the other tools. I can't emphasize enough to you that all these windows and tools are transparent. Every TV on the planet should have such a well thought out interface, seriously!

Negative Aspects?

To be honest, I don't see but one. The video bugs and compatibility problems are not worked out. Really, this is a non issue given any Beta release, and most of the problems I saw posted were not so serious. Any video streaming or transfer problem seems acute when it is happening on your computer, but once they are worked out people soon forget. From my perspective, any Beta of this complexity that did not have a few problems would scare me! The only other negative aspect of my test session at Joost was my old favorite nemesis the advertisement!

No free site can exist for long without them, but couldn't someone come up with a better commercial? Well, believe it or not they did! The commercials at Joost are brilliant! In between segments, rather than a 30 second tirade about how great some hyped up product is, Joost commercials are about 3-5 seconds long. Someone at Joost fabricated a commercial that is almost startling at first. The screen changes to (for instance) Cingular, followed by a short comment with high impact imagery. It is a little difficult to describe, but these are not ordinary frames of video. I think the message is,"Hi, Look at this, got it? Thanks! Now on with the show!" Very high quality, simple messages say it all and let you enjoy the show.

This is a lot to take in all at once. I am way out on a limb here, especially given my distrust of hyped products over the years. What Joost has done here is phenomenal, but it may be the tip of the iceberg given upcoming releases by other companies. At the very least Joost represents what really smart people can come up with given the resources and imagination to do so. At the other end of the spectrum, this could very well be T.H.E. web 2.0 release of the new year. With interactive and community capabilities, combined with superior audiovisual output and content, Joost looks like they are going to deliver on the promise. The bottom line is I gotta get a better processor!

Below is a screen from inside Joost. Capturing a still frame was difficult, but note the relative clarity behind the transparent UI. These elements can be customized to suit the user. Most frames set to the corners and set to static are virtually unnoticeable.

Thanks to Phil Butler for this excellent review

Joost Beta review from Platfuls

2007-01-19T00:00:00.000+01:00

Yes, I have been testing the application since January 10, and trust me, it’s truly amazing.

It’s quite extraordinary to just think that I have probably been among the very few people in the world (around 200) who had the chance of testing the Venice Project from the beginning of the beta tests (except for its developers, of course).

The story goes like this: when the first rumors about the Venice Project came out, I immediately visited the previous official site (theveniceproject.com) and filled in the form for a beta-tester account (that was somewhere in October).

After that I have had no news from them until last week. On January 10 I received an e-mail which informed me that my request has been accepted and that I can now log in with the e-mail ID and the password included in the e-mail.

Of course, I immediately downloaded the 9.54 MB application from the site and logged in. Unfortunately, there was a glitch: I could not disclose any information about my experience with the TVP (the name of the application) because of the famous NDA (non disclosure agreement), Just as the e-mail said:

“Today, we're inviting you to take a sneak preview of our work and take part in The Venice Project's first beta testing phase. This is a private, invitation-only beta test and the software is still in the early stages, but we would greatly value your opinions. We ask that you agree to abide by our terms and conditions and privacy policy as part of your participation in the beta program. So please don't give the application to anybody else, or even show it to them. It's very early days for us, and we want to make sure that the right people see the right software, at the right time.”

It was somehow frustrating not to be able to share with anyone the extraordinary experience Joost offers. But the agreement stated clear: “during the period commencing on the date you agree to these terms and ending on the date that the Platform becomes generally available […] you hereby agree to keep confidential and to not disclose to any third party any information or data that you receive, directly or indirectly, related to the Platform or its technology, and/or the business, operations, projects, goods and, services, plans and activities, or the existence of the trial” (damn lawyers…).

Since the Skype founders launched the new site (joost.com) I thought the NDA is no longer in action so I e-mailed them this morning. Fortunately, Kate Larkin, from the veniceproject.com responded in due time, confirming not only their full support for my early review of the TVP, but also begging me to excuse them for the “variety of technical problems with the site” from last night (I haven’t had any problems last night with Joost but had there been any, I would have blamed my ISP rather than their servers)

Ok, that was the introduction that should clear out any legal problems I might have.

So what is so special about Joost? Well, to be honest, everything. The fact that you have access to any TV program you like (of course, we’re talking about TV channels that have agreed to stream their content in the beta-version of Joost) is simply amazing. Music, documentaries, sports, you name it. And all this while you read a .pdf document or archive a folder. That’s right: you can resize the window of Joost/TVP to fit in just one corner of your PC’s screen; you can then concentrate on something else, with your earphones on, listening to the music from MTV or hearing what Bush has to say about Iraq (I personally enjoyed a making-of-video documentary about Paris Hilton featured on MTV, in which she said she has brains…).

The menus inside the Joost application have a nice, glass-like effect (something that you also see in the Aero or XGL desktop) and allow you to clearly see what is “underneath”. I guess some of you have already seen the pictures provided on the joost.com site or those previously posted on flickr.com
The highlighted feature turns orange and you have some additional buttons: a small i, for information about the program/show you are watching and a small arrow which indicates that there is even more to learn about the program (click on the target, Enter or simply push the right arrow button on your keyboard).

The scrolling between channels is easy and intuitive, and very responsive (but I don’t know how responsive it will be when the TV streaming in the background will overlap with gathering the infos about new channels or the existing ones).

What I mostly liked was the social Internet-TV experience you get: as you can see in one of the photos, everyone will have access to a “My Venice” (or My Joost) feature. You will be able to rate the channel (and hopefully, even a particular show-that will be one of my propositions for them) that you are viewing, while in the same time talking on Channel Talk or Google Talk (yeah, they are present here too) which are two different IM channels. You also get your news delivered in real time thanks to the News Ticker you see in the pics. All these windows (including a clock) are transparent, and can be moved on the screen.

You can also search for specific channels (but the search still needs some serious improvements) and in the future we will probably have the possibility to search for specific shows. Everything works on the same basis as Kazaa or Skype: every logged-in user becomes a signal-carrier for others. The more users are connected, the better the signal. Of course, it is recommended to have a broaband Internet connection, but the application is said to work fine even on sluggish networks (I didn't test that, but it was specified on the site). The P2P network will be ad-driven (I have already seens some advertisement to T-mobile).

My overall impression is that despite what other news agencies have said (probably without having access to the real TVP client) Joost is NOT a YouTube killer. Most likely they will continue to co-exist for a long time, simply because Joost is a P2P TV application while YouTube is a user generated video site, where everyone posts (almost) whatever they want (which you cannot do on TV). Joost doesn't bring a better alternative to the Internet video, it brings TV to the Internet, thus becoming complementary to YouTube, rather than its rival.ç

Thanks to Playfuls for the excellent review

Joost Beta review from Appscout

2007-01-18T23:30:00.000+01:00

I took Joost for a test drive this morning, and it looks pretty slick besides the occasional beta bugs (for instance, it isn't working with IE or Safari right now for some reason). Joost uses a local video player client that interacts with the Web to stream videos using an H.264 video codec, and there's a modified Mozilla browser built over it all so the client will work with pretty much any OS.

I don't know how Joost's proprietary codec works, but I like what I've seen so far. The video streamed smoothly and the quality was very good, even at full screen resolution, and the stereo sound was clear and crisp. Channel changing did take some time, though. Channels and content are heavily weighted toward the 16-24 crowd; viral-ish stuff, pop-flavored rockumentaries, extreme sports footage, and so on.

There are also widget-like plugins, like news tickers, a clock, a rating tool for rating videos, and an IM plugin that lets you use your Google Talk or Jabber account to IM through the service. (Click here to check out the on-screen widgets). Navigation takes a bit of getting used to, as Joost has opted not to use the typical Windows navigation symbols, but give it a few minutes and you'll be fine.

There isn't a lot of content yet, but as it's still an invitation-only beta product, that's to be expected. It's hard to judge a video service separate from its content though, since a video service is only as good as the video clips it delivers. Joost has the technical prowess to satisfy the video-watching crowd that wants a better picture and sound, but whether going after original content leads to a more compelling product than one that relies on user-generated/submitted stuff remains to be seen.

Thanks to Appscout for the review. Im still waiting.... anyone got a token they want to give me?

Fredrik de Wahl CEO of Joost takes a Q + A with Appscout

2007-01-18T23:10:00.000+01:00

To start off, how do you move the video around? Do you have a CDN, or is it straight peer to peer?

Fredrik de Wahl: We have a hybrid peer-to-peer approach. P2P delivery is great for very popular content--for things that are really challenging when you want to have mass distribution. For less popular content, P2P does not provide the best technical solution.
In these circumstances, a centralized distribution mechanism actually has very few problems and provides the best solution for the end user. So what we have done is taken an approach to this where we have a "long-tail storage system" which is acting as a seeding server for the network. The LTS is the originating point in the system and also the fallback in case for some reason the content does not reside on the P2P network. There's absolutely no way [for the user] to determine how and where the user gets the content from and that's the reason we designed Joost like that--the viewing experience is all about getting the content in full-screen, high-resolution, and the technology is acting in the background. The viewer of Joost just gets an extraordinary viewing experience from the technology.

If it's P2P, where does the content actually live on a user's machine?

It's not only a P2P network, it's P2P streaming. Everything is delivered to the end user or the viewer in bits and bytes which are a proprietary standard, and each packet is encrypted. Different packets are then cached after being viewed on your machine much like cached Web content from your Web browser, with the difference being that we then pass it on to others when they want to watch it.

Everything originates from the long-tail storage server in Luxembourg, and then if the content is also available in caches, the caches will start to chip in. When there's enough content in the different caches, you can stream everything just from the peers.

Are these Long-Tail Stations like Skype's "supernode" architecture? Does Joost own them or are they users?

The LTS is a server complex we have in Luxembourg at this point. We have a central point in a big server farm that's a central point in this whole network.

How much bandwidth do you need to sustain the high resolution of Joost?

We are today working toward a half-meg DSL connection...the application absolutely works on that. But we are in the beta phase, and there may be circumstances where that's not enough. I normally recommend 1MB even though our specs are built around using half a meg.

So will it work over mobile networks like EV-DO?

The bandwidth of such networks is quite different and the availability of uplink and downlink is a little bit different. However, the technology itself can be ported to such platforms. Our technology has a very platform-independent consciousness. For instance, the client itself is based on Mozilla, a very portable and secure platform. We use an H.264 codec, which is a very portable platform. We're not locked into a PC codec on any platform. Another example is SVG. Our user interface is projected on top of the media with a transparent look and feel to it. So that user interface is made in SVG, a very portable standard for moving to different platforms which is most commonly used in 3G cell phones. For us to go to a new platform, we're talking a development time of weeks, not months, and certainly not years. It's more of when the hardware is available in terms of processing power and storage and when bandwidth is suitable, that's when we would move to different devices.

I noticed a WB logo on your site, is that a content partnership that is already in place? What kind of partnerships are you looking for?

Right now in the test phase, it's important that the content also represent the test phase. We have comedy, sports, and music; content which is very appropriate for the early adopters and beta testers. Examples of content providers are Warner Music, Endemol, a production company, September Films, and indie-car racing. After we grow and invite more people, we'll add more content.

Will you be soliciting user-generated video submissions?

No, that we will not do, for two reasons. We're all about the TV experience--full-length programming, full-screen viewing, and high quality not only in terms of entertainment value but in terms of resolution. All of our programming is put into channels and you never stop viewing something--there's always something following, as with TV. And replicating this TV experience has a lot of value to viewers. People spend a lot of time watching TV still, even though there are a lot of negative things about TV, such as you lock yourself into one location, you lock yourself in time, and there are limited interactive features. We take these TV features, bring them onto the Internet, and empower users with Internet technologies. That said, user-generated content does not really match the fundamental philosophy we have today about the TV experience. We are not in the business of small clips, short clips, and low resolution. And also there are the copyright infringement concerns with these self-uploading mechanisms. We have chosen not to enable that on the platform. That may change in the future when the two big factors--quality concerns and infringement concerns--are solved. That said, we will allow smaller production companies to upload. We're unlocking a huge "mid-tail" section of the content industry which does not have an outlet today.

What process will these small-scale video producers go through to get their content on Joost?

We have a manual startup process--you're in a dialogue with us and you sign a contract, so we have a personal relationship with everyone. Of course, that will not scale so we're automating that process. Due to the fact that different content providers use different formats, this is also an experimentation process for us and the entire content industry and how we'll go digital. Our quality desires are very very high--we are looking for higher-resolution and better quality media that we can transcode into a DVD-like experience on the Web.

Thanks to Appscout and PCmag for the story.

Joost excerpts from - Why Joost is good for TV

2007-01-17T12:55:00.000+01:00

Zennström and Friis have day jobs as Skype's CEO and executive vice president of innovation, respectively. But in the cute way that Internet billionaires can do whatever the hell they want, they're teeing up the mother of all side projects.

"It's really pretty simple," Friis says, shifting into mantra mode. "We've taken the best things about television and added the best things from the Internet."

Can they wrestle the broadcast beast onto the Net? Friis and Zennström are players now, big names with a fearsome track record. Even more amazing (or scary, if you're a TV insider), they have zero stake in the traditional media pillars. They don't own shows, channels, or networks. They don't have billion-dollar ad deals to protect. Steve Jobs has married Walt Disney. Jeff Bezos is dating Hollywood. Google, the ur-online software company, is building a globe-girdling web of proprietary pipes and monster servers. And along come these two Eurogeeks -- where the hell is Denmark, anyway? -- toting serial-killer technology, a multimillion-dollar checkbook, a blank slate, and a crazy dream.

To pull that off, the history of both the Internet and television suggest an obvious price point: zero. "The ultimate value of Skype is free phone calls," says Friis, who cheerfully mixes rabble-rousing populism and cold-eyed business. "The ultimate value of what we're doing here is free TV."

The bad thing about being Internet rock stars is the temptation to jump into things that most people with a billion dollars would instinctively flee. The good thing is that you might actually succeed. Zennström and Friis have made larger-than-life careers of tackling ever bigger opportunities. Each time, they've dragged a hidebound industry kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Broadcasters, watch your backs.

At Skype's sleek London headquarters, the two Vikings are penned in a small glass-walled conference room. Zennström is still under the gun to prove the wisdom of eBay's purchase. He has confidence, though, in his recipe for turning bit-powered ideas into money-spinning businesses. "You can't just put a technology out there and hope there will be a business in it," he says. "You have to put together a whole consumer offering, a great instantaneous experience. A simple service that fills an obvious need and can be offered for free."

Read the most comprehensive article written to date on the Joost project.
Thanks to Wired News and Spencer Reiss.

The first Joost beta review

2007-01-17T05:03:00.000+01:00

I installed it, I started it, and in 5 seconds I was watching television.

I did it for an hour before I remembered that I’m actually supposed to review the thing. I guess there’s no greater praise, but for those who like details, I’ve included the details as well. So, here’s what I think about Joost, the latest project from the authors of Skype, formerly dubbed as the Venice Project, for whose beta I was lucky to be invited a couple of days ago.

Read the rest of this article here.

I am just itching to get an invite... anyone from Joost out there? please....

Joost vowes to change the way we watch TV and take on YouTube and Bit Torrent

2007-01-17T03:38:00.000+01:00

Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström, the duo that brought the world Skype and Kazaa, have chosen a name for their new online-video start-up.

The two want people hungry for Internet entertainment to roost at Joost.

Company executives had referred to the new company for months by the codename "The Venice Project." They chose Joost because they like the ring of it, according to a spokeswoman. The word doesn't have any meaning in Danish or Swedish--Friis' and Zennström's respective native tongues.

The plan, according to Joost CEO Fredrik de Wahl, is to offer studios, cable stations and anyone else who wants to distribute high-quality video over the Internet, a fast, efficient and cheap distribution method. To do this, the company will rely on the peer-to-peer technology that helped Friis and Zennström build Skype and Kazaa.

Their sparkling track record of creating hit companies aside, Friis and Zennström face a crowded field of competitors, such as YouTube and Apple, which are already well on their way to establishing themselves as video-distribution platforms.

Most important, Joost has yet to strike any marquee partnerships with top film or TV producers. Without them, the company's challenge is a tough one: convincing studio executives and the like to turn over their content to Joost when it has yet to attract a big audience.

BitTorrent, the San Francisco-based distributor of a competing peer-to-peer company, is also vying to license technology to Internet video companies. Another threat could come from the growing number of sites that offer top cable and movie channels without permission. One such company, TVU Networks, made a splash last summer by offering soccer fans the ability to watch World Cup matches on their PC. For a while, TVU Networks was offering HBO, CNN, the Disney Channel and NBAtv before many of those companies forced TVU to cease the practice.

What Joost has going for it is that the software replicates the TV viewing experience better than many of the other companies trying to wed TV to the PC. And this is a time when Hollywood is experimenting with the Internet. During the past year, Warner Bros. cut distribution deals with Guba, a little-known video-sharing site, and BitTorrent, a company that many consider to be synonymous with digital piracy.

Joost's nifty technology may be enough to sway the entertainment industry to place a bet on proven winners in Friis and Zennstrom.

A menu allows users to switch channels with a click of a link. Users will also have TiVo-like control of the content and access to any show offered regardless of time of day. They can also can skip ahead or backward within a show.

The Luxembourg-based company will support itself with advertising, specifically Internet ads that behave just like TV commercials.

"These are the kind of ads that the TV industry and viewers understand," de Wahl said.

Thanks to zdnet, and Joost Blog

Your daily dose of Joost

2007-01-16T14:06:00.000+01:00

This is a new blog to track the launch and success of Joost.

Heres what they have to say about themselves:

Joost™ is a new way of watching TV on the internet, which uses new and established technologies to provide the best of both the internet and TV worlds. We're in the process of making it as TV-like as we can, with programmes, channels and adverts. You can also see some things that we think will enhance the TV experience: searching for programmes and channels, for example, as well as social features like chat. There are many more new features to come!

Currently, channels are like playlists of videos. You can flip between channels, or use the programme guide to choose a channel or a video to watch. The channels start when you play them and not at any particular day or time. If you let them continue they will loop round to the beginning again. If you change channel and then switch back again, you'll start at the beginning of the programme again. In later versions we will have different kinds of channels, including ones that behave more like ordinary TV channels. Occasionally, you may see an advert.