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Digital Culture

Joost

Joost™

So I managed to convince a friend to get me into the Joost beta. Joost is the Interweb video project formerly known as The Venice Project from the developers who brought the world both Kazaa and Skype. They clearly know their stuff, and Joost has some interesting things going for it.

 

Pro

  • Licensed content.
  • They currently have deals with just a few producers of significance, the biggest being MTV.
  • Great technology: the video is smooth, but the quality is a little low…less than broadcast TV.
  • Meta-information: there are TONS of meta-informational widgets you can add and interact with while the video is running…this is one of the killer parts of the service. IM and other widgets while you watch is very nice.

Con

  • Can’t save videos locally (that will change in hours, I’m guessing, as soon as it launches, whether they want it to or not)
  • Closed system: no way to add videos yourself, and you can bet that since they are licensing stuff that will be difficult to change
  • No killer content: there’s nothing here you can’t get somewhere else on the net, usually in a higher quality

The interesting thing about Joost is that it will be much, much better than television in execution. Channels you choose, playing content you want when you want it, for free. The problem with this is, of course, TV has already lost…Joost has to compete with bittorrents of nearly everything ever put to video or audio, YouTube, and new forms of entertainment like ARGs and Second Life. It might become better than TV, but that’s a little like saying that the telegraph is better than the Pony Express. Neither really matters anymore. I look forward to what they have up their sleeve, but I’m cautiously calling this a yawn so far.

By griffey

Jason Griffey is the Director of Strategic Initiatives at NISO, where he works to identify new areas of the information ecosystem where standards expertise is useful and needed. Prior to joining NISO in 2019, Jason ran his own technology consulting company for libraries, has been both an Affiliate at metaLAB and a Fellow and Affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, and was an academic librarian in roles ranging from reference and instruction to Head of IT at the University of TN at Chattanooga.

Jason has written extensively on technology and libraries, including multiple books and a series of full-periodical issues on technology topics, most recently AI & Machine Learning in Libraries and Library Spaces and Smart Buildings: Technology, Metrics, and Iterative Design from 2018. His newest book, co-authored with Jeffery Pomerantz, will be published by MIT Press in 2024.

He has spoken internationally on topics such as artificial intelligence & machine learning, the future of technology and libraries, decentralization and the Blockchain, privacy, copyright, and intellectual property. A full list of his publications and presentations can be found on his CV.
He is one of eight winners of the Knight Foundation News Challenge for Libraries for the Measure the Future project (http://measurethefuture.net), an open hardware project designed to provide actionable use metrics for library spaces. He is also the creator and director of The LibraryBox Project (http://librarybox.us), an open source portable digital file distribution system.

Jason can be stalked obsessively online, and spends his free time with his daughter Eliza, reading, obsessing over gadgets, and preparing for the inevitable zombie uprising.

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