I NEED to spend the next few minutes telling you all about Joost. In case you are not familiar with this application, it is basically TV on the Internet. It is on-demand TV for your computer. It is your favorite shows on your favorite channels whenever you want. It is awesome.
I just downloaded Joost a few days ago so I am by no means an expert. What I do know, however, is that I have just experienced something that has already began to change my life. Despite a small selection of channels and programming, it is easily to see the future where (hopefully) all major channels and programs can be viewed on Joost whenever I want. In fact, I’m watching Aqua Teen Hunger Force as I’m writing this post. Pretty cool, eh?
Joost, realizing TV is a lean-back medium, has kept itself lean-forward. While watching TV I can search for new programming and channels, IM with other members, play around with several widgets (one of which is a CNN news feed; it’s brilliant) and reduce it to half size so I can do other things as well (Joost definitely understand the joy of multitasking on the computer). And best of all, there is no real intrusive advertising – just a few logos with the option of learning more (whether this is a good advertising medium is another column altogether).
Of course, like any new technology there are a few flaws, the most noticeable of which are somewhat slow load times for programs and stalled playing when I start to do too many things at once. However, I am confident that these bugs will be worked out over time. (And right now I’m too excited to really care.)
And, to top everything off, Joost had designed itself to grow by allowing current users to invite new people to join the community. So, if you’re interested in downloading Joost and experiencing the revolution for yourself, you have to find someone who already had a subscription and ask to be invited; by the time you actually get one you will be so excited that you will spend a good amount of time engaging with it. Word of mouth evangelism and user generated content (posts like mine) will help Joost form an incredibly engaged community in very short time.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, the boys from ATHF have found a magic tshirt that has lead to the possible death of Santa Claus. I gotta see how this ends.
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