slamboard

I am a beta tester of the ground breaking new video platform known as Joost. I applied to Joost for an invite the moment I found out about it.

If I had sat around waiting to get accepted by them I might still be waiting. I think that maintaining a situation where demand is hugely outstripping supply was partly a marketing tool. Limiting the number of beta users has probably been important to the stability of the platform as well.

There was a booming and ethically questionable market for invites on eBay. I think the bottom dropped out of that as soon as beta testers got hooked up with 5 more invites to give away this week. I ended up getting and invite the old fashioned way; sucking up to a tech blogger that had a small number of invites to give away. Thanks TechnoMojo.

I gave one of my initial two invites to a social contact who didn’t even know about the program before I offered it to her. I am going to try and get some feedback from her soon.

The draw for me was the promise of long programs and full screen high quality video. I guess I heard about Joost from a news article mentioning their deal with Viacom. A recent e-mail campaign has made some pretty amazing announcements about what kind of content will be available down the road as a result of this business deal

I think with any video platform content is king. There is enough varied high quality content to keep me entertained. I really don’t have the spare time to burn through it all and get bored. I watched a fascinating documentary about the Vatican and a very odd indie movie about a socially and intellectually stunted punk rocker.

A major plus with the program is the ability to browse by title and/or channel while you are watching a video. You can even bring up an information window.

A small annoyance is the advertising. It is annoying for a few reasons. There is a short pause when your program stops for the commercial break. In the earlier version, the screen had the same graphic for every type of pause, whether it was a problem or just a pause for a commercial. This few seconds of uncertainty was annoying.

They have generally only had one advertisement running on any given day. When they get an increase in the number of advertisers, I would love to see a variety of them during a viewing session. It is probably asking too much to have them be as contextual as possible. When I was watching the Vatican special, the ad was a wireless provider ad that features a streaker. At least they have big name clients with television style ad campaigns. If they didn’t I would be wondering when the FREE was going to stop.

Speaking of ads, I am wondering when the announced prerun advertisements will be starting on YouTube.

I have had two recent experiences with popular sites being overwhelmed by viewer demands. I noticed that the new version of Joost, version 0.9, has a chat function, I think I will hang out there once or twice to see what range of user opinions are out there.

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The first thing I noticed when I installed the new version of Joost is that there is a new graphic displayed as your content is loading. If I remeber correctly, it is text that says COMING UP and then the title of you selected content. I prefer this to the older version with the colored prisms spinning around in the middle of the screen. They are still there in the bottom right quarter of the screen, but the text is there in the center letting you know that something is progressing.

I have been to busy to actually watch anything.

There is a new version of Joost fresh out of the development oven and I have been hooked up with more invites. I am going to do some testing of the program and the programming in the wee hours tomorrow. Joost is a full screen experience that is a bit too engaging to fit in the mix with work and e-mailing. I had a blast watching Saturday morning cartoons last weekend. They have some classics. There is also an anime channel and some quirky indie movies. Basically there is a lot of content.

Link to me and leave a comment and I might just hook you up with an invite for Joost version 0.9.

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I am pleased to see that waterless composting toilets are taking a leap forward in both technology and marketing.

If you want to do your part for the environment but can’t imagine having a toilet that doesn’t flush, there is always the old trick of putting a brick in a bag in your toilet’s reservoir. That way you reduce the volume of water used with each flush.

toilet

I have been trying some of the same tactics that I talk about on this blog on another couple of blogs. I was pleased to look this morning and see that the ALEXA score for one of my blogs had dropped below 1,000,000. Right now the score for this blog is much higher than when I started.

I think the tipping point with the other blog was putting my face on the page. Actually, it was taking part in a weekly theme involving self portraits. Now I have to go over there and blog enough to get my ugly mug off the front page.

alexa