New CEO at Joost
Joost recently hired Mike Volpi as the new CEO of the Internet TV startup. Some people are focusing on the fact that he is “not fully acculturated” since he will be steering a company hoping to revolutionize the television viewing paradigm.
Personally, I think it’s a good thing. Mr. Volpi was the person in charge of mergers and acquisitions at CISCO during its rise in the 90′s. I believe that Joost will need a solid business man to help them forge ahead in the technology realm and a person that has the ability to break through the legal issues regarding copyrighting and licensing that is sure to ensue.
Some people have knocked Joost for its resource intensive client, while others have pointed to existing P2P Internet TV networks. I will say that Joost is still early in development. Applications usually have not been optimized in the stage they are in. I am willing to give them a chance to correct that. Yes, there are other networks that have been around. Why haven’t they taken off the way Joost has? Marketing? Maybe. Interface design? Maybe. How about content? Possibly. Not having tried the others yet I just can’t say. I will tell you that my opinion of the user experience in Joost has been very positive. The bugs that are there will be worked out, I believe. At this point, Joost is still my pick.
Go Mike!
Early thoughts on Joost (and invites!)
I’ve been a member Joost beta program for a couple of days now and I have had the chance to browse through the early content and watch some of the offered shows. I thought it only fair that I share some of my initial impressions.
*** Edit – I thought I’d reorganize this a little so the people just looking for invites could get to that quicker. ***
Invites
I almost forgot. If you need an invite, please feel free to leave a comment. Make sure to enter your email address, it will not show up in the comments and I wil not give it to anyone other than Joost when I send your invite to you.
*** /Edit – On to the review ***
Getting Joost
The sign up and installation was a snap. The client is a fairly small download in install, it’s nice when that is the case. The invite itself had a serialized link that let me get to the download page. The sign up itself was in the software, not on the web page so I could have downloaded it and waited for a while had I been so inclined.
Next was the initial experience. Loading it up I now had to create my account. It only required basic information, again easy and simple. At this point my thoughts on the interface were that it was very “Flash” like in its operation. So far it was clean and simple, good job!
Joost Interface
Once I was logged in I was able to look through the offered channels, available programs, recommendations and more. I must say that the interface continued to impress me. It is quite simple and intuitive. Objects fade in or out rapidly, but with enough delay to make it look smooth. The same goes for objects that slide in or out from the side. Nice!
There are some customization features that allow you to keep widgets active while you’re viewing a program if you like. The clock of course is my favorite one, however the inclusion of embedded Google Talk is nice.
Joost Content
The early programming is nice. There is a decent variety from documentaries (The National Geographic Channel) to music videos (Warner Bros. channel), comedy (Comedy Central), sports and more. I hope that more become available as this gets closer to a production service.
At this point I had to start remembering that this is still in beta. Some of the programs I tried to access simply did not seem to work. I would get the message that it was “Coming up next”, however it would just sit there with no indication of what was going on.
Other programs did work and they were nice. For the most part the video was smooth, the controls were once again nice and easy to use. In my opinion the quality was better that other streaming video content I’ve interacted with.
It also seems as the content is in constant change. That is nice and a huge plus for a service such as this!
The Hiccups
As I mentioned, this is a beta phase and as such one should expect small anomalies. So far that’s all I’ve had, is small ones. First, it did not remember my personal information the first 3 times I went in. It was a minor annoyance since all I had to do was type my name and email address, but still it was an annoyance. Now it seems to have that information tucked away just fine.
Next, as I mentioned before, is the phenomena of some of the shows just sitting there is a bit annoying. It would be nice to have a little more information about what’s going on. It’s crashed on me twice so far. that’s not too bad for beta. Once was during one of those moments of “Coming Up Next” episodes.
Summary
It seems that Joost is trying to become a serious TV content provider / alternative to satellite and cable. I am not certain that the general population is ready for that, I think there will be a subset that will embrace it. If Joost is able to keep the content fresh and expand the offering they should succeed in that niche. If they really want to go after the average television market, they will need to get their hands on “Prime Time” content.
It is a beta product and there are minor issues as expected. I think that they are easily worked around. The interface is inviting, people will like it. They do include commercial content, which I assume is how they are paying for it. The ads are not bad however. No worse than what is currently on broadcast television. For the ability to watch what you want when you want it, that’s not bad.
How does this play into the DVR market? My current TV watching habits include recording some shows each week, then sitting down and watching them on a couple of nights with my wife, skipping through any advertisements to maximize the viewing experience. It is nice and it is almost an on-demand type of lifestyle. The one thing I cannot do is record a show that ‘s already started to get the beginning that I may have missed, or record more than 2 things at once. Granted, the last scenario rarely occurs, but it does happen on occasion. Add to that the fact that DVR’s are about as complex as the old VCR was. It’s not difficult to operate, and the ability to schedule a recording is much easier than the old VCR days, however there is a large population that simply does not want to mess with it. The ease of the Joost interface and the on-demand and search-ability may make it a nice alternative.
Overall, I am excited about Joost and I hope they live up to their goals. It could change the way I watch television again, the same way the DVR did when it was introduced. Bravo!
Get Joost!
So a friend just gave me the skinny on Joost. It looks sweet! The catch? You need an invite! Unfortunately my friend is in search of one as well.
So, if you have one to spare, I’d love it! I will of course post blogs about my experience so those of you that have not seen it will get my impressions.
*** Update ***
I’ve received my invite! Actually, I received a few offers and I want to say thank you to all!
I’ll be posting a review in the next day or two 
Bend 4th grade kids create online museum
4th graders from Juniper Elementary in Bend have created an online virtual museum. Their teacher decided to introduce the students to technology for a history project by bringing in digital cameras, computers and the Internet to bring a high level of excitement and interest to the kids.
The children took on the exercise with great enthusiasm. The end product is a testament not only to their ability to produce their virtual museum, but to their learning and creativity to help teach others about the history of Oregon.
More on Podcasting – Review of Audacity
Today I finished up my 2nd installment of “Tips With Marek” for the weekly DDOcast by Jerry Snook. I put a little more time into producing this one by going back through the recording to remove pauses, breathing and all of those little unwanted background sounds that come with most recorded voices I also decided to add a little intro and outro music to give it a little more professional feel, even though I am far from a professional in the sound editing arena!
I had been using a fairly simple sound editing program for things such as deleting unwanted pieces (screw ups, etc.) and cropping things where necessary. The program (unnamed at this point) was doing fine, but it was slow. When it came time to merge in my music I found that it just didn’t have the functionality to easily accomplish what I was after.
I decided to give Audacity a try. I had used it in the past for some very simple editing but I recalled that others had used more recent versions for more complex tasks. I hopped on over to the project page on Sourceforge and downloaded the most recent release, 1.3.2 (beta). After reading through some tutorials and a little of the documentation, I was off and running. Within an hour I had the file I was looking for, not bad for someone who had never had to do it before! Audacity blew me away!
The ability to add, manipulate, move and merge multiple tracks into one file was not only comprehensive and powerful, but it was easy to do. The simple drag-n-drop interface worked like a charm. Built in plug-ins for fading worked for part of my clip, and the ability to use the “envelope editor” for more advanced volume control of the merged pieces was wonderful! I will be uninstalling the other software and moving my editing to Audacity. Kudos to Dominic Mazzoni and Roger Dannenberg for starting the project and to the entire team, from contributors to the leadership council for a stunning product that certainly rivals commercial software in the realm of audio editing!
Bill Gates Is Sending Me 1 Million Dollars
OK, that’s not true, but this post sounds like one of those spam chain emails that we have all seen. I finished reading this article from Greg’s Cool [Insert Clever Name] of The Day and decided to do a little more research on the matter. After reading through the material at the i’m Initiative Home Page I realized that maybe, just maybe somethings that sound too good to be true are really true! Microsoft is sharing a portion of the proceeds from the advertising with the charity of your choosing from their list. Now when I use IM, i’m making a difference for the Boy’s and Girl’s Club of America.
I will admit that I have been reluctant to upgrade to Windows Live Messenger, I just do not like the advertisements. Now, I don’t mind them because I know that my conversations are helping. All I need to do is use Live Messenger 8.1 and put a special tag at the end of my name 
, so that I still show up alphabetically (Greg’s tip), and it works.
The current charities that are being donated to and the codes you need to put at the end of your name are:
| Text Code | Cause |
| *red+u | American Red Cross |
| *bgca | Boys & Girls Club |
| *naf | National AIDS Fund |
| *mssoc | National Multiple Sclerosis Society |
| *9mil | ninemillion.org |
| *sierra | Sierra Club |
| *help | StopGlobalWarming.org |
| *komen | Susan G. Komen for the Cure |
| *unicef | The US fund for UNICEF |
If you support any of these charities and you are an MSN or Live Messenger user, I urge you to participate. Thanks Greg for sharing this one!
[Update] I see that this has become a popular topic today. This is an encouraging sign for these charities!
[Update 2] Now I wish I would have upgraded to Live Messenger earlier! My old MSN Messenger had the odd problem of “lag”. Any time a new conversation window would open, regardless of whether it was me double clicking on a name or someone else sending me an IM to start a conversation, Messenger would lag up to 30 seconds. The window would show up, but I would not be able to type, nor would I see the sent message until the “lag” period had elapsed.
My problems have disappeared! 8.1 seems to be much more responsive. I still do not know why it was behaving the way it was (my previous version was 7.<something>) but that’s all in the past now! Not only are my conversations contributing to a fine charity, it’s doing it without the dreaded lag!
Review – VI emulation for Microsoft products
If you, like me, find yourself using Microsoft products for your daily operations (or are forced to as some) yet you have a background in which you have a comfort level using vi, the *nix based text editor.
The percentage of people that prefer to use vi is probably small compared to the people using notepad, emacs or pico or other simple editor. It takes a certain amount of masochism to plow through the various commands used to move around, edit, replace etc.. inside of vi but for those of you that have that trait as I, vi gives you a productivity increase that is unparalleled, in my opinion.
Now, if only we had that in Windows!
Fortunately we do. For several years now the vi project has had a Windows text editor which I use. It is a very good implementation within the Windows environment. For editing text based files where you do not need any further functionality, I highly recommend it.
Now, on to the fun stuff!
Jon at NGEDIT Software has a few products that have made my life a lot easier. It falls under the heading of VIEmu, the vi-vim editor emulation for Visual Studio, Word, Outlook and SQL Server. I can tell you that, after downloading the Visual Studio trial and running with it for a few weeks, I have purchased all 3 (Word and Outlook are combined in 1 package) products. They are wonderful!
You should not expect 100% vi-vim compatibility, there are some things that just do not work quite the same, however most of the basic and much of the advanced functionality is available. There are a few quirks as well, such as the need to use Shift+Esc instead of just Esc to get out of some modes, but they are workable once you get use to them.
I should say that this review was not sponsored in any way, nor did Jon or anyone at NGEDIT Software know about my writing of this before publication, I do believe in full discloser of sources and sponsorship when posting (thanks Robert Scoble for the inspiration), this is purely a fan-driven review of these products.
The Word and Outlook version is a bit young, only version 1.0, however the Visual Studio product has been around a while and the SQL product just a bit less time. So far all have been performing well and my productivity has increased, at least I believe it has.
If you are/were a vi-vim junkie living in a Microsoft world, I urge you to head over and try it out for yourself. I think you will be happily comfortable again within the embrace of vi-vim!
Viewstate Helper from Binary Fortress Software
Wow, I am going to be accused of becoming a Scott Hanselman sycophant if he keeps up the pace of the great posts he’s had lately! In his most recent post (as of the time of this writing) he points out a piece of software recently discovered. After reading through his review I had to try it out for myself. It is the ASP.NET Viewstate Helper from Binary Fortress Software. This is a very nice tool!
It sits in the background monitoring the HTTP conversations that IE has. It presents a historical list of the pages visted along with some stats about the size of the page and the Viewstate, if it has one. It also allows you to double click on a page to see the decompiled version of the Viewstate.
It tries to display the viewstate in a tree view, although I have found it doesn’t always work. It does give you a text representation that will get you what you need although you may have to search through it a bit if the viewstate is complex.
The one downside I have found so far is that it does not work with Firefox, or at least I have not happened upon how to do it. For the time, I can live with that. The information that it provided on a few of the sites we’ve created has already been eye-opening.
Jabra JX-10 Review
This weekend I upgraded my bluetooth headset from an older Jabra Bt500 to the Jabra JX-10. Wow! What a step up! I was fairly happy with my BT500 for a long time but this new one rocks!
The upgrade was partial a jealously thing, my wife just got a new Nokia N80 and the JX-10 headset, so I had to at least upgrade my headset to match. 
In addition, I have not been using the BT500 as much lately. the size of it just seem to annoy me for some reason. When I first got it about a year and a half ago I did not have that issue, but as headsets became smaller I began to dislike it. The battery life was also much shorter than the newer ones so I decided to upgrade.
I really like the weight and feeling of the new JX-10. It is almost forgettable that it is in your ear. The sound quality is very good and the way the speaker sits in my ear I tend to hear it better than the BT500.
The battery life, while I haven’t tested it yet, seems to be very nice. They claim 6 hours of talk time. My wife seems to charge it about every 2-3 days, which isn’t bad considering she hast to charge her phone every day since she uses it as an MP3 player.
I have just connected the headset to my laptop as well and I will be testing it out as an alternative for on-line gaming. It sohuld be interesting to see if I can make that work or not. I’ll let you know.
Brian Scott releases Cropper 1.9
Cropper is a nice little screen capture utility written in C#. It has a fairly nice plug-in interface allowing other developers to write extensions. An example of one that I use is the Flickr plug-in to automatically upload captures to my account. Very slick! Another plug-in also allows you to save animated GIF’s! That is one feature I have not seen in another screen capture utility.
Cropper is a fairly simple capture utility lacking some of the features of commercially available products. Another utility that I use is the FastStone Capture which has the ability to edit the captures (crop, re-size, add call-outs, etc…) before saving. That is the only feature that I can think of that I miss in Cropper to make it my full-time capture utility.
I started work on a plug-in to add the editing functionality with version 1.8 but never had time to pursue it. I ran into enough roadblocks that I shelved it. I may dig that out again to see how it may work with the enhanced plug-in interface. There are many things about Cropper that would make it a better choice, in my opinion. The keyboard ability to move the selection around is very nice.
Overall, FastStone is probably my day-to-day capture program, but I’ll be keeping an eye on Cropper. If some of those features are added I will likely switch its role to my normal capture utility rather than the one I use when I need to upload to Flickr.
UPDATE: I realized that I was using version 4.7 of FastStone Capture yet the current stable version is 5.2. After installing it I found some great new features, including different edging options. There is also a portable version! I am currently using the USB menu system from portableapps.com. I simply downloaded the FastStone Capture portable version, extracted the folder inside the zip file to the PortableApps folder (you want the folder, not just the files), refreshed the PortableApps menu and viola! It works great!
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Pale’s Social Graph
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