Today Joost extended it’s beta program. I got an invite, so I downloaded it, to see what the buzz was all about (participants are Warner Music, Endemol, Ministry of Sound TV).

My first emotion was the obvious special “beta participant” feeling, the second was amazement how good the GUI “feels”, the third one was: this will become BIG. It has a real natural “game” interface: just simple controls but it feels pefectly and it’s…. addictive.

It has some very good TV Channels on a variety of topics and undoubtly there will be gazillions more on there soon. The GUI is excellent, giving a real “game” experience, full screen modus and various widgets like chat on the TV channel, RSS feeds on the side etc… 

On the “football screen” above (a Football channel) you can see the controls, which disappear when you don’t move the mouse. It allows access to loads of channels, and all programs on each channel are directly selectable!

“My joost” is a widget overlay, where you can see on the left that I placed a clock on it, an RSS feed, a chatroom to chat live with other participants,etc…

 I am watching the channel “XL Recordings” here  and the programm is called  “Basement Jaxx – where is you heads at - Live recording at… ” etc… which I can see immediately via the infobox.  Via the programm selectors I can then select any live show or whatever they have in their programm list (like a zillion Prodigy recordings).

I think the content is important for Joost and the beta catalogue in there is really good. Here you can see a list of channels which are playing on Joost. Well… I’m going to watch some SciFi movies now on the SciFi channel… If you need an invite, just leave a comment and as soon as I get them I will distribute them (the first two will be for TsuiHark and Nepeta, who have already reserved the first two invites). THIS IS HOT!

Read Wikipedia for more background info on Joost.

update: first 3 invites sent to nepeta, tshuihark and victor (first commentator)