I was lucky enough to be an early beta tester of Joost, the new P2P video offering from Skype and Kazaa founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis. Each beta release gets better and better and the latest version is particularly impressive. I can see it being a huge success in Europe and the US where bandwidth is fast and cheap enough to stream the almost high definition content. South African users will be frustrated by the wait for video to download and alarmed by the bandwidth used (around 440 MB/Hour). Nevertheless it is a mesmerising glimpse into the future of television.
It is an open secret that I have been developing a Joost like videoblogging platform called za.tv in my spare time for the past 6 or 7 months using Flex 2. One of the things that alarmed me when I got my hands on the Joost beta was how similar my UI was to theirs. I guess it is a compliment (they have 150 of the world's best engineers and designers working on their product), but it made me go back and look at the UI elements of za.tv again and make some tough choices. Designing UI for full screen video applications is a whole new ball game, and we are going to be seeing a lot of creative thinking and new ideas in this field in the near future.
I have 5 Joost beta invites to give away. If you would like to check Joost out and see what all the fuss is about then leave your email address in the comments section below this post (use a human friendly format like jaxon at soup dot co dot za), and I will send beta invites on a first come, first served basis. The private beta program issues new invites every few weeks - as more come available I will send those out too.
23 April 2007 Update: All of my invitations have been sent out and I have another 8 addresses on the waiting list so I am closing the comments on this post. If I get enough further invitations I will open comments here again. If you have put your name in the comments already I will send you invites as they become available.