April 6th, 2007
Preview Joost 0.9.1 for Mac OS X
The Joost client for Mac OS X was recently upgraded to version 0.9.1 and although I don't have any invites to share (sorry!) I have some screenies. Check out the screen shots in my gallery.
Joost, for the uninitiated is the latest project by Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström the wunderkind responsible for such disruptive technologies as Skype and Kazaa. It's a legal service to watch free television on your computer.
Joost is a new way of watching TV on the Internet. With Joost, you get all the things you love about TV, including a high-quality full-screen picture, hundreds of full-length shows and easy channel-flipping.
The Joost client worked well-enough for me although it's (obviously) bandwidth-intensive. It presents you with a full screen interface and a deep channel guide organized into categories. From there it's pretty simple, click on a channel and watch. It also features a number of social features like My Channels and Sharing.
The new beta features a redesigned UI that is more "Mac-like" with beautiful, translucent controls and widgets that exploit OS X. Joost for Mac also includes support for the Apple Remote. They've also added some new channels, including a games channel, a manga channel, a football channel, a Guinness World Records TV channel and more. Channels can take some time to load and previews some times don't ever load - but then again, that could be a bandwidth thing.
Media giant Viacom recently pulled its videos from YouTube and signed a partnership with Joost because it "is powered by a secure, efficient, piracy-proof Internet platform" that guarantees copyright protection.
Joost 0.9.1 for Mac OS X is still in private beta (although you can apply) and requires an Intel-based Mac running OS X 10.4 or later and a broadband Internet connection.
Some screen shots are in this gallery.
Jason D. O'Grady is the editor of PowerPage.org, which has been publishing daily mobile technology news since December 1995. For disclosures on Jason's industry affiliations, click here or to view Jason's full profile click here.
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