Reuters partnering with Joost to provide content
April 28, 2007
Today’s content update from joost brought something interesting… 14 new Reuters shows:
Some of the Reuters content is fairly recent… dating from April 16th 2007. This is just 12 days old.
Joost has not announced a formal partnership with Reuters yet… but this sure look like it! You heard it here first.
Joost new content RSS feed
April 27, 2007
A brave soul has finally made it possible to keep track of what is new on Joost! So far Joost has added content to it’s database but there was no easy way to tell for sure what had been added (or removed).
Hal Schechner has written a python based content parser that scour Joost web database daily and compare the results from the previous day. The parser then write xml RSS feeds listing:
Simply subscribe to those feeds and you will know what is new to watch everyday. Eventually an RSS feed per channel could be prepared to track new content on a per channel basis.
For those interested in the RAW data used to create the RSS feed you can look at it here: http://hal.schechner.com/joost/content/. You may even find content you did not expect in it ;-)!
The RSS feed software is very beta and there is no saying if Joost will allow Hal to scour the content DB much longer. This should give Joost an idea of what functionality it’s users might want to see in the future.
Good Day from London!
April 27, 2007
Credit - colmmacc
”
A few weeks ago one of our intrepid Operations staff made the long trip to London to build our newest LTS cluster.
With the exception of some interesting navigation around London’s one way system, the build-out went very smoothly and we now have a high speed service for Europe.
”
Source: http://www.joost.com/blog/2007/04/good-day-from-london!.html
Joost Token for the best SMF forum Theme for joostteam.com
April 27, 2007
I have a few tokens to give away at this moment.
For those with web design talent I will reserve 1 or 2 of them to give to the two best SMF theme design to lineup the forum look and feel with the main site. The forum does not need to look 100% like the main site but overall color and background picture feel is preferred.
You are welcome to include your personal email/website link in the theme so visitors can contact you about your work!
I will close the contest on May 3rd at 23h59 and post the winner the following day. The winner theme will replace the current one upon winner announcement.
Cheers and good luck!
Discuss this post in the forum
Joost Network Architecture
April 26, 2007
Colm Maccarthaigh gave a presentation about the design of the Joost network.
You can view the presentation by following this link: http://www.stdlib.net/~colmmacc/slides/Joost-network.pdf
The highlights of the presentation are:
- No firewalls
- No hardware load-balancers
- High availability (this is TV)
- Lots of bandwidth (this is TV)
- Ethernet only
- Rapidly provisionable
- Business requirements
- Cost-effective
- Joost servers are the original seeders
of all content - Joost servers also handle the “long-
tail” (which is still pretty long) - Joost servers “top-up” the DSL
“bandwidth gap”
NYTimes: This Internet TV Program Is Brought to You by …
April 26, 2007
”
Joost, the Internet television service being developed by the founders of Skype, has lined up several blue-chip advertisers, including United Airlines, Microsoft, Sony Electronics and Unilever, as it prepares for its introduction.
Those brands are among 30 advertisers listed as “launch partners” for Joost, which plans to send free, advertiser-supported programming to computer screens using the Internet. According to several people with knowledge of the company’s plans, Joost will begin the broadcasts on Tuesday.
The first advertisers also include the Purina division of Nestlé, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Motorola, the Opel and Vauxhall units of General Motors, Taco Bell, Lions Gate Entertainment and the United States Army, according to advertising agencies working with Joost.
While some advertising on Joost will resemble traditional 30-second television spots, others will take advantage of the interactive qualities of the Internet. Joost is not the only company planning advertiser-supported Internet television.
Arc has worked directly with Joost on the Purina ads, for instance, bypassing media agencies, which typically buy advertising slots on conventional television.
Meanwhile, another advertising company, the Interpublic Group, said it would bring 10 clients to Joost via the Interpublic Emerging Media Lab, which examines new digital advertising platforms.
”
Source of summary: http://www.nytimes.com/
ClickZ News: Joost Signs Major Advertisers
April 26, 2007
”
Online video platform Joost has signed three-month contracts with a group of 31 big brand advertisers, including Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, Nike, General Motors and Visa. It will offer these marketers traditional units such as :30 mid-roll spots as well as unique formats, including a small digital overlay ad.
The Coca-Cola Company, HP, and Intel are advertising globally on the system.
Ad units include still images, video spots, overlays and widgets, in addition to branded entertainment and channel sponsorships. Joost has also created an ad unit called Ad Bug, consisting of an advertiser’s animated logo in a corner of the screen, similar to station ID components in cable and broadcast TV. Clark said users can click the ads to get more information from advertisers, link to an external Web site or view another video on the platform; a movie trailer for example.
Joost is working with research firm Frank N. Magid Associates to test new ad formats, measure user consumption habits, and assess ad effectiveness. Joost proposes to deliver only one :30 spot per block of programming, usually long-format television-style shows. Joost offers a downloadable application, still in beta, that blends the high quality, sit-back video experience of television with the on-demand, self-guided experience of Web video.
”
Source of summary: http://www.clickz.com/
Joost quickly closed spammy listserv service
April 24, 2007
Today Joost send SSBG members (Super Special Beta Group) an announcement about the availability of the new beta cient 0.9.4. So far so good…
The problem is that the communication vehicle used to make the announcement turned out to be an open listserv server that quickly started filling all SSBG members inbox with roughly 100 email within 2 hours.
Many SSBG members complained that they had been unwillingly enrolled into the email list service and did not want to receive any more emails. It did not took long for SPAM email to start flowing to all recipients until Joost quikly pulled the plug at around 23:47 GMT on Apr 24 2007.
What went wrong! Obviously someone at Joost forgot to see the dark side in providing beta tester with a different communication channel. This is certainly not the kind of “oversight” one might expect from a business that will soon challenge the way we have watched TV. Let hope this is just an isolated incident that will not repeat itself over and over.
Joost certainly has to get better a providing and receiving feedback from it’s beta testers. The listserv disaster was aiming at making communication better… but sadly it turned out to do more harm than good.
Joost will now have to do so damage control and explain why things went so wrong so fast. I feel for those guys. Joost, if you read me, keep up the good work! Don’t let this bring your spirit down! What doesn’t kill you make you stronger.
You can discuss this in the forum.
Joost beta 0.9.4 now available… 0.9.5 on it’s way
April 24, 2007
0.9.4 Release
Part of that work is in improving the way the P2P is treated now that we have learned more about its behaviour with a larger population of users and that is why 0.9.4 is being released which has significant performance enhancements, though no new visible features.
Windows Updater Test, 0.9.5
The following is for Windows users only at the moment, we don’t have the packaging quite right yet for the OSX version.
0.9.5 is an early release and has a number of new features which I’m not going to go into here (more fun to find them out for yourself perhaps), except for one major feature that we would like you to try which will require a little effort on your part to do so, But, that’s what being part of a real beta test is, right?
The feature is the incremental Updater, its effectively the same Update mechanism as used in Mozilla/Firefox and it updates as you’re watching Joost. And yes its in your current version of Joost now.
We have set up updates for both 0.9.4 and 0.9.2 all you have to do is point your copy of Joost at the beta test Update Server, run Joost and let it stay running for an hour or more. The update is delivered slowly and is about 3Mb in size. If you stop and start Joost then the Updater will pause and resume so the updating process is completely transparent.
Joost adding hundreds of new TV shows… including Rhino Records
April 24, 2007
Since yesterday Joost has added literally hundreds of TV shows to it program list.
As of today Joost has 92 individual TV channels with a total of 3281 TV shows.
This recent additions of show brings the following new channels:
Since 1978 Rhino has been the worlds preeminent reissue label, producing deluxe editions of classic albums, multi-artist box sets and videos from every corner of pop culture. Rhino is also a leader in digital entertainment and the art of having fun!
Snowvision is the leading channel for snowboarding content, broadcasting top-quality professional snowboarding videos along with engaging segments on the culture behind the sport.
Travelistic is a travel video channel devoted to bringing engaging, informational and experience-driven shows to an international travel community.
I do not believe that Rhino records has been announced yet as an official Joost Partner yet… (unless it was part of the deal with Warner Music Group) so you might have heard it on Joostteam first!
Update Apr 25 2007:
For some unknown reason Joost pulled out the Snowvision, Travelistic and Jump Off TV channels from their sites.
Update Apr 27 2007:
Channels are now back online for your viewing pleasure!
