slamboard

All I have to say is this…

Meh

I have lost all interest in the technology because it isn’t working for me. I think I will try to find some critiques of the telephone from when it was in Beta. I should be able to use lots of public domain images in my posts.

Anybody can get Joost these days. I gave up on the internet television thing because it wasn’t working for me. My ISP might be a big part of the problem. It is now out of Beta and all the early users have like dozens of invites to give out. It’s like Gmail used to be except Gmail works.

It seems like creating streaming video platforms with the goals of quality and reliability and good content is a Herculian task that the creators of Joost failed to accomplish fully.

I think in some respects, they have the same conundrum that city planners have with trying to smooth out traffic flow. If you make major changes to improve a route, more traffic with surge into that route because of the improvements and essentially negate the benefit.

I haven’t even tried Joost in weeks and I am considering removing it from my computer. I believe I saw a report that it is out of Beta at this point, but I am not sure. If you are blessed with lots of speed and bandwidth, you might want to check it out. I think the functionality of the site for an individual user varies based on their location relative to other active users and also what programs they are attempting to view. But I do not know this.

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.

joostyoutube

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.