A big thank you to everyone who participated in the first public Joost LIVE Test yesterday.We do have much more exciting content in store, but the interviews with our team and a "behind-the-scenes" look at our Leiden development center drew more viewers (and requests for rebroadcasts) than we could have hoped for or predicted.

A lot of good news came out of the test, like:

• We learned a lot (this was the whole point, so again - thank you to all who participated!)
• The client software remained very stable throughout the test period. I'd like to extend a special thanks to my entire team, especially the LIVE, client and QA teams, for getting the new client out the door. It involved a lot of late nights, and if you tuned in yesterday, you probably couldn't have guessed that the "stars" from Leiden hadn't gotten a lot of sleep lately.
• We were able to stress the system in a way that hadn't been possible in our private and semi-private tests.
• The Channel Chat was a success - personally, I enjoyed connecting with people from around the world and chatting about a piece of content. At times we had more than 200 people chatting together.

As I believe I've been quoted saying, our live P2P streaming is a test, and we expected some things to break. Some people experienced disruptions of service - I'd like to thank those users for their help and patience as we work to refine the service.

We're still poring over logs and learning from the test, but it has already been very helpful and will allow us to provide a much better service in the future. The Joost LIVE Test with March Madness starts next week, but we might be conducting more tests before that. Stay tuned to find out more.

Maybe deep down, in a place I don’t talk about at parties, I might want to be a news anchor. The thought of doing an on-air interview might be appealing … but the thought of having to WATCH that video makes me a little sick to my stomach. But a couple of weeks ago I got my chance when we did some interviews for our Joost LIVE Test.

Last week we showcased these interviews as a part of the first Joost LIVE Test, and as Matt said, we learned a lot. I suffered through watching myself interview my Joost colleagues … and in what kind of shocked me, the interviews were a big hit.

Because that test was so useful for us AND because there was so much demand to see the interviews again, we’re going to have another Joost LIVE Test today.

Make sure to download the new client, (which we released last week JUST NOW), and tune in at the following time:

• 7 p.m. CET
  
• 6 p.m. GMT
  
• 2 p.m. EDT
  
• 11 a.m. PDT

Also, make sure to log into the Channel Chat (go to My Joost -> Widgets -> Channel Chat) so you can talk to people from around the world (and Joost employees) while you watch.

Updated: We've just released a new version of Joost - grab it here now before the test starts if you can. We've fixed a lot of the bugs that we found from the first Joost LIVE Test, so we'd like you to test this new version.

We are about 24 hours away from the start of March Madness. And a special congratulations to Mount St. Mary’s for being the 64th team to make the tournament.

Our entire live service offering, including March Madness, is an experiment – but that said, we’d rather crash it a couple of times before the games begin so we can fix as many bugs as possible. The more things we get to break before the Joost LIVE Test with March Madness begins, the fewer glitches we’ll experience (and you’ll see) during the games.

It’s the same time as yesterday’s test, but – different content! We won’t be featuring the (surprisingly popular) interviews with the LIVE team today, but Andy and Robert will return to their guest-anchor chairs.

Tune in at:

• 11 a.m. PDT
  
• 2 p.m. EDT
  
• 6 p.m. GMT
  
• 7 p.m. CET

And hop on the Channel Chat if you’re so inclined.

Thanks again for your help!

March Madness starts today – and with that, the next step in our Joost LIVE Test. We’re pretty sure that some things will go wrong, but we’re still really excited. It’s a big milestone for our company.

Over the last couple of months, I’ve learned a lot about the challenges to doing live online video streaming in general, and over a peer-to-peer network specifically – and now I'll attempt to share some of that knowledge with you.

First of all, there’s the need to deliver each “packet” of video sequentially – since Joost uses a P2P network, our network has to constantly figure out which peer to go to get the next “packet.” Since the “peers,” or users, are constantly changing, this is a bit of a complicated task even when delivering on-demand video – and it’s more complex when delivering live video.

If I haven’t bored you entirely yet, you might ask why? Well, because of delay. Delay is always something we’re concerned about, but clearly it’s more of an issue when we’re streaming a live event. You don’t want to wait minutes, or even extra seconds, to find out if a player is going to score on his fast break. (When this happens, it’s called stuttering.)

The other main challenge is the “thundering herd.” For a live event like March Madness, every network has to plan for what could be its peak demand. This is likely to happen in the moments right before the game starts. Suddenly, masses of people flood the network – which might result in crashing the service or, (more likely for us today, at least) a number of people NOT being able to watch the stream.

And that’s pretty much where my technological understanding of our live P2P streaming ends … but from what I understand, these challenges are only the tip of the iceberg. There’s always the chance that there will be a problem with the feed, that someone might unknowingly unplug an important box, or the electricity will go out all over the world … or something like that.

Anyway, we hope you’ll join in and participate in the Joost LIVE Test with March Madness today, and for the next three weeks. The service will get better over the course of the tournament as we find and fix bugs – which we do every time we test (and break) the service.

I heard that while watching the Gonzaga-Davidson game on Joost this afternoon and couldn’t help laughing. It was the first time I’d heard the term, or at least the first time I remembered it, though this is the first time I’ve actually been encouraged to watch March Madness while I’m at work. Anyway, I got a kick out of it – as if the second day of the tournament needed a catchphrase to get people interested.

Anyway, we had some challenges yesterday, which I commented about here. The good news is that everything is working much better today.

Some people are still experiencing some temporary losses of service (a.k.a. error #3). If you do experience this error, you can try the following things to get the game back:

• Nothing. Seriously, the games have been programmed to try to automatically reconnect if they fail. You’re best bet it to let the game try to reconnect itself; if you go to Explore and try to restart the channel, you’ll stop the auto-reconnect process.
  
• Choose another game, watch that one for a little, and then switch back to the one you were watching before.
  
• Exit out of Joost and then restart.

People have also asked why they get the blue screen with Joost LIVE Test before the commercials – don’t be alarmed, this is a normal part of the feed during the games. There have also been reports of some audio problems. We’re aware of this and are working to fix it.

That said, THANK YOU to all of you who have come out to participate in the Joost LIVE Test over the past couple of days, AND for those of you who have completed the survey after watching March Madness. We’re working hard to continue to improve Joost, and your feedback really helps. A lot.

It's time for the Sweet Sixteen. Which means, at this point, that it's almost statistically impossible for my bracket to do anything other than fail miserably. But it's been almost a week without college basketball at this point, (doesn't it feel like it's been much longer?), and we're ready for more testing to get underway.

In fact, we've decided to experiment a bit with the technology to provide a higher-quality experience. So we (and by we, I mean the engineering team, who is literally working around the clock), have started to play around with the video quality. Because we're testing this, we'll have two channels for each game. One will be in standard quality, and the other will be in a higher quality.

But don't take my word for it - test it out and see what you think.

I was on vacation last week. Needless to say, I missed a lot. Davidson’s run to the Elite 8, Angelina and Brad’s non-wedding, the fact that Dick Cheney is still alive … as well as many other things that were probably more significant.

Despite the fact that I was on a remote Caribbean island, and despite the fact that most of the important news of the week completely passed me by, people were talking about Britney’s guest appearance on How I Met Your Mother. Let’s be honest: the girl has not exactly been good at keeping herself out of the news lately – even the intellectual The Atlantic Monthly devoted a cover story to her.

This episode certainly was hyped, and I don’t like to miss out on a pop culture event. So what was the first thing I did when I got back to the land of (stolen) Internet access? It was a Saturday, so I didn’t check my week’s worth of email; instead, I fired up Britney’s HIMYM episode on Joost.

The episode didn’t have quite enough Britney for me. Her role was kind of tame, but she did a fine job. Scrubs alumna Sarah Chalke also guest-starred in what was maybe supposed to be Alicia Silverstone’s role?

If you missed it and live in the U.S., check it out now. Otherwise, here’s more about her cameo.