Boring weekend in Joost IRC channel
September 23, 2007
Since the announcement of OnTheToob acquisition by Joost a cold wind has been blowing on the “not so secret” Joost IRC channel (do some Googling to track it down). Many Joost developers are hanging in it and are chatting about various subjects.
Recently things got really quiet. Some would say that development get this quiet before major releases. If the level of “quietness” is proportional to the level of “change” in the next client release then one might say that it will be huge.
At the same time you might have noticed the large quantity of new content showing in the Joost database. There has also been more activity going on it the Joost blog with multiple posts per week… Joost also did some minor adjustments to it’s content search result page. So work is going on behind the scene… it is just not echoing as it use to in IRC.
I do not have much to report as far as Joost news today… but keep an ear on possible chatter between the team at IOSpirit (Remote Buddy) and Joost. As you might have noticed I found this nice gem of AJAX based remote control interface in the Remote Buddy beta software. This does some of what I had described in previous post regarding using an iPhone/iPod Touch as a super remote control (search my previous post).
I sincerely hope that something nice come out of this. If Remote Buddy was Windows compatible I would say that Joost should acquire them to kickstart the development of the Joost iPhone/iPod Touch remote control interface.
So that is it. I have no idea when the next major release of Joost client will be… but I am sure looking for it.
Wired confirmed Joost acquisition of OnTheToob
September 4, 2007
In case there where any doubts about Joost acquisition of OnTheToob.com in some reader’s mind, an independent source (Wired) just confirmed the news:
The weekend’s rumors regarding Joost proved true, as the popular P2P TV site officially confirmed to Wired News the acquisition of OnTheToob.com. Created by Joost beta user Hal Schechner, the site functions as a programming guide for Joost users looking to get a grasp on the site’s 239 channels of content.
In addition to offering users a suite of programming guide options, OnTheToob also enables Joost users to create ala carte channels and RSS feeds out of the site’s 10,298 programs. A Joost spokesperson also revealed that Schechner has joined the Joost staff.
With the recent release of its Widget API, it’s clear that Joost is looking to spur engagement from the developer community. If anything, today’s news of the OnTheToob acquisition only solidifies Joost’s position as a customizable contender in Web 2.0’s battle against cable. But even though this a promising sign for developers, a lot of Joost’s fundamental problems with bandwidth, content, and consumer conversion still remain…for now.
Kudos Hal!
Joost acquires OnTheToob.com
September 3, 2007
OnTheToob.com, the best companion web site of Joost got acquired by none other than Joost.
Hal Schechner, the master mind behind OnTheToob, just got hired by Joost and his personal site project was acquired at the same time.
Hal will be starting to work for Joost tomorrow on September 4th 2007.
I was hoping to ask Hal a few questions regarding his past, present and future involvement with Joost but it is hard to get a hold of Hal (he is a busy man).
A bit of history:
So until some of those questions can be answered directly I will give you some details I was able to get from Hal during some of our chat sessions.
Hal as been involved with Joost since last April. He wanted to find out more information about new programs and channels added/removed by Joost. Unfortunately the information was not easily available.
So one night Hal and I where chatting in the Joost IRC channel (irc.freenode.net #joost-dev) and within minutes he had turned a URL based search query into a full fledged Web front-end and flat files back-end.
A few days later Hal was working with a prototype database back-end and RSS feed generator that was able to give you by the hour changes within Joost programs list. At that point some Joost employee where starting to notice Hal work. They where in fact using his RSS feed to keep track of what was added to Joost own program database.
OnTheToob was the next step in Hal’s mind to provide the information in a useful way to other Joost users.
The rapid development of OnTheToob was made possible due to Hal deep knowledge of Python. With Python Hal has been able to turn ideas into concrete Web results within minutes.
The future of OnTheToob:
At this point in time it is not clear what will become of OnTheToob.com. There are a few possibilities.
1. OnTheToob could be maintained as a separate site beside Joost and be maintained as is.
2. The most plausible possibility is that OnTheToob will be rolled-up as new features in an enhanced version of Joost web site. This should mean a better user interface and faster information availability since Hal will have direct access to Joost content database.
Hal involvement at Joost:
So what will Hal do at Joost you ask? I am not to clear on that. Apparently it will have something to do with application development (that was an easy one)! Hal will most likely be involved with user community development around Joost API. After all, Hal was the first successful user community Joost developer.
Hal will also be able to work from home with occasional trips overseas, and trips to NY.
Hal can be contacted at: feedback@onthetoob.com
OnTheToob add user channels to Joost
July 3, 2007
OnTheToob.com just added support for custom user channels. These are your channels and you can create them as you would with playlists on your music player. Once created you can share them with your familly and friends.
Once one or more channels have been added to your OnTheToob.com account, you will find a dropdown on the program pages (under the program title) that allows you to add that program to a channel.
You can re-order the programs in your channels, as well as delete programs from them, by clicking on the Your Channels link in the left hand navigation box, and clicking “edit” next to the channel you would like to edit.
To play one of your channels in the Joost player, simply go to the detail page of one of your channels (log in if you aren’t already, create a channel below, then click on it’s title on the following page). If you’d prefer, an example channel can be found Here. On that detail page you will see this icon 
to the right of your channel’s title.
There are 3 ways to load the channel into Joost. Chose one of the following (the first will work on any system, the other two may or may not work, depending on your combination of browser and platform):
- Click on the . You will be taken to an XML page. Copy the URL from your browser’s address bar, and paste it into the search field in the Joost client, then hit the search button
- Drag the from the details page into your Joost window.
- Click on the . You will be taken to an XML page. Drag the icon next to the URL in your browser’s address bar into your Joost window.
Once the channel is loaded into your Joost client, it will be there until you remove it (simply watch the linked video tutorial to find out how to remove a channel in Joost). The Joost client also refreshes your channels often (every hour or so) so changes you make will be seen by everyone who is subscribed to your channel, but the changes won’t be immediate.
OnTheToob, 1st Joost companion site found on the net
June 5, 2007
Have you noticed this new site? No? OnTheToob.com? It might not look like much right now be let me tell you something… if what I know and what I expect of it materialize then this will be the best companion web service of every Joost users.
The site is the creation of Hal Schechner and his crew that have brainstormed around what Joost was missing to be a better P2PTV experience. Hal has been actively finding bugs and exchanging ideas about the Joost beta client platform for the past two months.
Hal brought the only known Joost Content RSS feed to the web. Some Joost employees are actually using it to keep track of new content being added. It is by far the quickest way to find out when something is added.
OnTheToob is currently limited in functionality but expect this to change weekly as new features are added. You see… Joost is an open platform with tightly controlled content distribution. The current client is good at delivering video content to it’s users but rather limited in it ability to allow them to organize and search through it.
OnTheToob will change all this by allowing it’s members to “Tag” content and search what others have tagged. Tag are currently limited to words but special new tags might get added in the future.
Tag based search will allow someone to look for “funny kittens” and get links to Joost content that others have reported to show “funny kittens”.
One nice feature OnTheToob.com could add would be support for automatic creation of personalized user channels. The search result previously returned could be loaded in Joost as an RSS feed for continuous playback of all “funny kittens” video. As more and more people tag things as “funny kittens” the personalized RSS feed could dynamically update your personalized Joost channel… so the next day more “funny kittens” video would be available.
OnTheToob also offer you a well organized Channel List and Content List. You can also subscribe to RSS feeds of newly added Joost Channels and Content. This way you stay current with what is new on Joost!
I could talk about many more things OnTheToob could do… but I will let you discover them as they are added!
