It's showtime!
The latest version of Joost is now available to our beta testers for download - and it's our biggest release yet.
We have also added a bunch of new content, so there's now more channels to choose from - including some from the biggest brands in entertainment.
To celebrate this we have given all beta testers fresh invitations to hand out! So if your friend is a beta tester, this would be a good time to ask for an invite ;o)
We have changed the login, registration and invitation systems for this release: now everything is happening in the client directly. So the first thing you must do when starting the new version, is to register and choose your own personal Joost name.
So for all you beta testers, you now get the chance to choose a cool Joost name before everybody else!
Enjoy!
Joost Visits IndyCar at the Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg
I may be writing this blog post in between applying Aloe Vera to my newly sunburned skin, but man, was it worth it.
A few of us from Joost's New York office had the great fortune to spend the weekend down in Florida to attend the Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg as guests of IndyCar. The plan was to meet with some of the best and brightest from IndyCar on Saturday, to discuss their partnership with Joost and some of the cool things we both have planned for the platform. Then Sunday was Fun Day, as we got to experience some IndyCar racing up close and personal.
The Saturday meeting went great. We gave IndyCar some updates regarding what's been going on with Joost around the world, and what everyone can expect to see from us in the near future. Then it was their turn to show us what they have been up to. These guys have some impressive plans for their channels on Joost. Expect to see a lot of great things from IndyCar, like classic racing moments, robust overlays, and cool new original programming. It's great to work with a partner as motivated as this group.
Once the business was out of the way, Sunday was all about getting in touch with the IndyCar experience. And they couldn't have been more gracious hosts. The day started out with a visit to the Paddock, to meet with the Vision Racing team and check out the IndyVision/Joost cars. All of us were beside ourselves to see the Joost logo on the side of an IndyCar. It was definitely a big moment for us as a company.
Then it was off to the Vision Racing pit to watch the Indy Pro Series Grand Prix of St. Petersburg. For a bunch of racing newbies, we were shocked by the speeds and sounds of live racing, especially when watching it trackside. Television just doesn't do justice to the true power of these cars.
After watching Alex Lloyd win the checkered flag, we were off for a pace car ride around the track. Retired driver Robbie Buhl brought us for a white-knuckled trip around the St. Petersburg course, talking us through the track from a driver's point of view and giving us a good scare or two around some of the corners.
After a quick lunch in the IndyCar Series Hospitality tent, it was off to the big event. We took our seats up in the suites above the grandstands, and after popping in some much needed ear protection; we watched the first half of the Grand Prix. Unfortunately, we had to catch a plane back to New York, and missed the second half. But as soon as we got on the flight, we fired up DirectTV to see that Indy star Helio Castroneves had won the race for a second consecutive year.
Overall, it was a terrific weekend. Not only did we get to hear about all of the great plans IndyCar has for Joost, but we got to experience their product first-hand. I think it's safe to say we're both excited to be working with each other.
Be sure to checkout the IndyCar Series channel on Joost. No sunscreen needed.
(A special thanks to Jarrod and Brian at IndyCar/IMS for all of their hard work putting this weekend together.)
Fine-Tuning
This month we've been expanding our beta-testing community by many thousands of viewers. In increasing this number, and along the way doubling the number of concurrent users, we have proven the benefits of P2P by seeing the majority of traffic for popular content being delivered solely within the Joost P2P network. However, it has also shown that mixing P2P and traditional HTTP traffic provides its own unique set of problems. We were aware of the kinds of issues we would encounter and now we are getting the full P2P effect that we designed for we can work on improving the interaction with the other back-end services. This means that some viewers will get errors when trying to view some shows, which is regrettable, but it does have the positive benefit that knowing that now means that we can work on fixing it, which we are doing.
So please bear with us as we fine-tune the client to make the most of this new broadcasting platform. The bug reports and statistics we're getting from the beta-test deployment are incredibly useful to us as we optimise the system. And thanks again for helping us improve Joost.
CBS Has Its Eye On Joost
I'm extremely pleased to tell you that America's most watched network will be available on the Joost platform when we launch this spring.
CBS has signed a deal with Joost to make top current and classic programming available for free, to our viewers. That means that you will soon have on-demand access to programs like CSI, CSI: Miami, CSI: NY, CBS Evening News, CBS Sportsline, Survivor and much more.
CBS is the first major network to sign on with Joost and joins our rapidly expanding list of emerging and established content partners. Click here for a complete list of programming available on Joost: http://www.joost.com/whatson/channels.html
Of course, all content will be available in full-screen, high-quality video and you'll be able to interact with other Joost users just as you can now. Being able to offer this kind of experience is why Joost was created.
This is an exciting time for television and Joost. Stay tuned...there is plenty more to come.
Los Angeles now serving the website and Long Tail Storage
As described earlier by Dirk-Willem, we shipped a batch of machines to Los Angeles to setup a long tail storage cluster and a version of our website. After having the servers had spend a good week of quality time with the U.S. Customs, we managed to get them delivered to our data center and proceeded to set them up. When you now use the latest beta client and you are in the United States, it is very likely that you will be peering with one of these new servers. This will provide faster access to content to those who are not in Europe.
Credits: Pictures taken by Justin Erenkrantz.
Next up will be two more data centers around the world that will provide faster access to other parts of the world. As this one of our first roll outs it had its bumps, but overall it went pretty smoothly. I would like to thank the operations team and honory team member Justin Erenkrantz for making this all reality.
Good Day from London!
A few weeks ago one of our intrepid Operations staff made the long trip to London to build our newest LTS cluster.
With the exception of some interesting navigation around London's one way system, the build-out went very smoothly and we now have a high speed service for Europe.
Credit - colmmacc
