Joost Beta
SEATTLE — I’ve been a beta tester of the Joost video-over-the-Internet service since it was still called “The Venice Project”. They’ve made some great improvements, especially in the performance and usability.
In the early days, selecting a channel (let alone) a program could be agonizing — even with a speedy network connection. They’ve obviously been adding more and more capacity (perhaps not quite enough though) and watching during non-peak hours has become almost enjoyable.
The user-interface that’s been getting rave reviews, didn’t do much for me. I’m probably a little slow, but I like asking the old usability questions:
Where am I? How did I get here? What do I do next?
And the Joost interface violates pretty much all three with it’s slick icon-based screens. You have to at least mouse-over the icons to figure out what they’re all about (at least they gave us this).
I blame Office 2007 and it’s ribbons.
Joost just announced that we now have unlimited invites:
We’d like to share some good news and celebrate the launch of the newJoost beta – Now For Friends. This means you can now invite as many friends as you want to try out Joost.
I’m going to be updating this page with some of the badges and logos they provide. In the mean time, just leave a comment if you’d like an invite (assuming I can log in) and I’ll see what I can do.
technorati tags:joost, invites, usability, technology, video