JoostTeam

The Skype-eBay plot thickens. Joost and Joltid, both companies owned by Skype’s founders, have filed a lawsuit against former Joost chairman and CEO, Mike Volpi. The suit also names Index Ventures, the VC firm where Volpi is a partner. We’ve embedded the legal document that appears to have been filed this morning, below.

According to a press release issued this morning:

The lawsuit alleges breach of fiduciary duty against Volpi, aiding and abetting breach of fiduciary duty against Index, interference with prospective business advantage, misappropriation of trade secrets, breach of contract against Index, breach of confidence, and civil conspiracy. The suit seeks an injunction requiring the defendants to return to the plaintiffs all documents and files containing confidential information that the lawsuit alleges was misappropriated from Joost, and enjoining the defendants from making any use of the alleged misappropriated trade secrets, among other things.

read more via The Plot Thickens: Skype Founders And Joost Sue Former Chairman And CEO Mike Volpi.

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• Skype Founders Sue eBay – Big Surprise (gigaom.com)
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As you know I am currently testing an alpha copy of Livestation for the iPhone. I can tell you that so far I am pretty happy with it and and that it will be a keeper!

Why will I keep this one application and why did I got rid of joost iPhone app? Because it make me smarter and Joost… well! How come may you ask… because I can now watch various news channels live as I ride the bus to and from work every day. This is about 1.5 hours I can spend educating myself about what is going on in the world while sitting on the bus bench.

And because there are many news channel I can watch various perspectives on things… like from Russia, France, UK, etc.

I wish more channels would be available, news channels from Canada in french for example… but those will certainly come if Livestation becomes a popular iPhone application.

Did I mentioned that I am watching Livestation over 3G while moving down the street on the bus with almost perfect reception? Yep! Good thing I took the 6GB plan from Rogers because at 100MB an hour I could be in for a major hurtal!

Livestation are cautious to tell you that you are about to consume a lot of bandwidth when they sens that you are running over a 3G network connection. This is very sensible of them.

The application still need some work before being ready fro prime time. Livestation is also working on different way of encoding the video stream… so some will play beautifully over 3G and others will look like digested dog food!

So am I pleased with the application? You bet! I bet it will have a huge success. I really wish Livestation network will be up to the task awaiting because it will be a flood gate of bits flowing out from it to thos iPhones. Their desktop application was popular but this will be at least 20 times more popular… and I am sure it will be more like 100 times more popular very soon.

Given the difficult economics one can ask how will they survive this huge bandwidth usage given very low publicity revenue…

I really hope they have the solution!

Mike Volpi told beet.TV that Joost will be available shortly on the iPhone over 3G cellular network connections. They chose to stick to WiFi to start with to make sure the technology would work as expected over solid WiFi connections. They will soon update the application with a version that will allow Joost video playback over 3G.

The list of supported video will be limited at first to the ones encoded with an mp4 profile suitable for the iPhone and 3G bandwidth… so don’t expect all 46,000 to be there day one.

I am glad I have a 6GB cap on my data plan via Rogers. I might start to chew more and more on it as I watch more and more video over 3G

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• Joost Launches Video iPhone App on WiFi; 3G Capacity Coming Soon

It’s about time! I have been waiting for this moment to happen for over a year. Back in september 2007 I was already proposing that Joost create an application for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Today they announce that exact thing and I must say it is pretty nice. No need to have an account on Joost to watch the content. Video playback start plenty fast and quality is what you got to expect from Joost as a service.

On the minus side you have the ackward interface of the player. Joost chose to depart from common Apple iPhone interface you might have grown used to and implemented some funky buttons to stop video playback and zoom video to full screen. Another grip is the mute button that is a bit too close to the playback controls. But I have to give them kudos for actually building their own player from the ground up!

I hope this get iron out in a subsequent release.

Overall Joost on the iPhone offer a nice experience as long as you are on a WiFi network. Joost won’t work on 3G…

Any way, here is a copy of the Joost blog post about the release of the application:

Image via CrunchBase

Joost has finally completed it’s second coming.  Right, Joost updated it’s offering by moving to a new social web site plus a web plugin a month ago… but what everyone was waiting for was for the new Joost flash based solution.

Over the last few days Joost has been testing the new client… sometime rendering it’s service unusable in the process… for example triggering a schizophrenic page reload in a loop.  But now all appear stable and running just fine with the new flash based player.

Joost finally saw the light regarding flash.  I had proposed they move to this platform a year ago but was told by a few people that this was not on the roadmap and that a plugin was more in line with the vision… obviously they where right and I was right but in the long run I am sure that only the flash flavor will remain.

As soon as the flash solution became available I removed the plugin from my system.  I hate to see it consume CPU cycles after I leave Joost web site.  Now with the flash client all is done when I leave Joost site.

What kind of technology does Joost use?  Apparently a simple flash front-end to an mp4 encoded h.264 video stream and AAC audio.  If I was Joost I would be a bit worried about getting my content “captures” as one can easilly download the whole file and save it to the HD be simply using QT to open the same web link the player use.  For example: link to joost source video.

Joost apparently corrupt the h.264 video stream making it very hard (but not impossible) to edit.  It is also possible to upload it to other platform like youtube (Joost… be nice to me, I am only pointing the obvious ).  Uploading the Joost saved video linked above to youtube give the following result:

The video quality in the flash player is the same as what you use to get with the plugin… therefore I suspect you get the same file as the plugin minus the encryption bits.

This is truly the second coming of Joost and is a welcome one.  Hopefully more and more content deals will now be made to make Joost a viable competitor to hulu… or at least a viable complement of hulu… essentially filling the space that is currently left empty.

Update:

I noticed Joost is employing download throttling on the video download to only serve up fast enough to allow for continuous realtime playback.  This is a sort of deterrent to Joost video copy as it make it painfully slow to copy content… essentially you can’t copy faster than realtime.

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• Joost gets Flashy, works with virtually any web browser
• Joost Turns On Its All-Flash Website. Is Anybody Watching?

Image via CrunchBase

Revision3, the TV network for the Internet generation, will begin syndicating its entire content catalogue of shows including Tekzilla, Diggnation, Wine Library TV, and The Totally Rad Show to Joost™—the world’s first broadcast-quality Internet television service. The shows can also be viewed at Revision3 and on each show’s individual site. Fans can tune in to Joost™ for their daily dose of these shows and more.

“Web entertainment is about putting the viewer in charge, letting them watch ground-breaking material wherever and whenever they want – on any service,” says Jim Louderback, CEO of Revision3. “Joost offers one of the most enjoyable ways to experience online video, and we’re proud to be a part of their offerings.”

Both Revision3 and Joost are committed to bringing their viewers excellence in innovative programming. Joost makes it simple for people around the world to watch high-quality video content for free. Taking advantage of the convenience of the Joost, Revision3 will make each show accessible in multiple, high-audio-and-visual quality formats.

Danny Passman, global head of programming for Joost, said, “Our goal is to help users create communities around our compelling content. Great shows like Diggnation and Wine Library TV – shows that appeal directly to our audience – will find big audiences from around the world on Joost.”

About Revision3:
Revision3 is the first media company that gets it. Born from the Internet, Revision3 is a TV network for the web, creating and producing shows for a new audience: passionate fans who want to watch shows about technology, modern culture and music that entertain, educate and help to expand their life experiences.

The company was founded in 2005 by technology visionaries Kevin Rose, Jay Adelson and David Prager, because they couldn’t find anything they wanted to watch on traditional television. The company is now led by Internet TV pioneer Jim Louderback. With more than 35 million downloads, Revision3’s programs can be found everywhere from Revision3 to a wide range of platforms, including Apple iTunes, Bittorrent, DivX, YouTube and PyroTV. Shows can be watched on any device, from a cell phone to an Apple Nano, on a computer or a TV.

Source: http://revision3.com/blog/2008/09/23/revision3-joins-joost%E2%84%A2/

Anime, Comedy and Music Podcasts Added to Joost’s Social Video Website

Image via CrunchBase

PITTSBURGH, BUSINESS WIRE — Wizzard Media (AMEX:WZE), the world’s largest podcasting network, today announced that it will bring a catalog of branded and independent video content, including the widely acclaimed “Tiki Bar” comedy, “Hilary Duff” music and fashion and the popular “Track-Shun” anime to Joost(TM) (www.joost.com), the world’s first broadcast-quality Internet television service.

“Joost has long been recognized as a leader and innovator in delivering superior quality video programming to the Internet,” said Chris Spencer, Wizzard CEO on making the announcement. “We are thrilled at the opportunity to join with them in extending the reach and distribution of the vast catalog of content we represent for our publishers. Our publishing partners are equally enthusiastic about the increased global distribution as well as the opportunity to generate revenues.” Read more…

Image via CrunchBase

Here you go guys and gals! Joost finally lifted the cover on it’s new web browser offering. I reported on the new web solution two weeks ago and presented a short screencast about it… but now you can try it all for yourself.

At this point in time Joost is still requiring the download and installation of a client side plug-in to playback content… but guess what? They will soon offer (within a month I am told) a pure Flash based version so that anyone with Flash can view the “Standard” programming.

What does this mean? If you want to watch the current selection of content you will only need the Flash version. To watch the new HD Joost content and Live Broadcast you will need the plug-in.

So most users will more than likelly be fine with Flash! Finally Joost will be available to the Linux community.

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• Hands-on with the new Joost: Software still required

Following the trail of Techcrunch I decided to take things in my own hands and made my own screencast showing the new Joost web site and plug-in in action. You can watch it below in SD or follow the link in the screencast to watch it in HD on Vimeo:

New Joost web site preview from Bernard Maltais on Vimeo.

I Just found out that the new plug in for the new Joost.com web site will be, at least at 1st, only for Intel based MAC and Windows PC with the following system requirement:

Windows XP and Vista

System requirements: Windows XP or Vista and one of the following browsers: IE6, IE7, Firefox 2 or Firefox 3.

Mac OS X Intel

System requirements: Mac OS Intel 10.4 or 10.5 and one of the following browsers: Safari, Firefox 2 or Firefox 3.