Don’t have an iPhone to run Joost on?

Not to worry. We’re happy to provide a sneak peak at yet another platform you can play our content on, and introduce our Joost Android client.

The app provides all the features you might know from the iPhone:

• Browse by category, like anime, comedy, drama or sci-fi
• Check out the “Popular” videos to see what people are watching
• Find out what our team likes in “Joost Picks”
• Or Search for a specific title or video name

Unfortunately we are still having some issues with video playback of some of our videos, and thus we’re not quite ready to put it on the Android Market yet. But in the meantime, if you are feeling adventurous or just cannot wait :), you can try it out by following the steps below.

1. On your phone, open the Settings.
2. Navigate to “Applications”.
3. Ensure that “Unknown sources” is checked. This will allow you to install apps from places other than the Market.
4. On your phone, open the browser.
5. Direct your phone’s browser to this blog post. The QR code below links directly here.
6. Then tap this link. It links directly to the app, and your phone will start downloading and installing it. You will be asked for confirmation first.

Here is an example Twitter search widget:

It’s a pretty basic example of a widget that uses the underlying video’s metadata to search on Twitter for things related to the video and display tweets on top of it.

Technically widgets are separate SWF files that are loaded by the Joost Player and displayed on top of the video. The Joost Player then exposes a simple API to the widgets:

• video metadata: title, description, duration, etc
• current time in the video, meaning that time based interaction is possible
• ability to play/pause videos

That means that anything you can do in Flash, you can do in a widget plus you can access information about the underlying video.

We’ll be posting an alpha version of the “Widget API” soon, so this is just a teaser so far

It makes it a lot easier to play Joost content on a PlayStation 3 by presenting a simplified interface that allows you to navigate content using the controller. It does not have full EPG navigation, but you can browse our Joost Picks and popular content, and also search for shows. NB: Note that this is a Joost Labs project, so your mileage might vary We are, for example, aware of the playback occasionally not working.

To use it, go to the Network icon on your PlayStation, open the Internet Browser and press the Start button which will open the Address input field where you enter:

http://labs.joost.com/tv/

You can save time by bookmarking it using the Select button.

The keys on the controller have the following functions:

Basic:

• Up/Down: Vertically navigate through the menus
• Left/Right: Horizontally switch between the main menu, video list, and video info
• X: The only button you can use to select menu items

Advanced:

• Hold X down: Show the video controls
• X + Up: fullscreen
• X + Down: Pause
• X + Left/Right: Previous/Next show in the video list
• O: Exit fullscreen

As always we’re happy to hear about comments and suggestions.

We’ve introduced a fresh new  release of Jigsaw — Jigsaw 0.2. For you this means it’s slightly smarter, more social, and a bit prettier than before.

We’ve also introduced a toolbar making it easier for you to find all the possible actions. For example the “change direction” button helps you quickly switch upcoming music. A Twitter button allows you to tweet about your favorite songs directly.

We’ve also added support for direct linking to some of the features.  For example, you can listen directly to colmmacc’s music,  listen to music like Audioslave, or just listen to some random pop.

There are clearly still a lot of opportunities left, so expect updates! If you want to make sure your favorite feature gets in the next release, be sure to let us know.

You can watch it here 24 hours a day, 7 days a week - http://www.joost.com/live/euronews

This is a labs project, so it is not yet integrated into the main site, (e.g. search, browsing, or adding to your queue) and unfortunately due to geographical content restrictions we are unable to broadcast euronews in: USA, Canada or Sweden.

Joost live screenshot (euronews)

Project Jigsaw is a small project that experiments with how we present music videos, both visually and how the music line up is created. It allows you to play music using “artist name”, “tag name” or “last.fm profile name” to fill your queue with good music. You can also use the search box to search for more music and then drag’n'drop them to your queue, or re-arrange your queue by drag’n'dropping videos around.

Jigsaw Screenshot

We have over 10000 music videos on Joost, so Joost can be used as a pretty good jukebox. As we do not have all the music in the world on Joost though (naturally ), we use last.fm to look up related artists for the artist you’ve chosen and find music that is related in our content catalogue.

FAQ:

• Why did we do this? Because we love music, and we like to experiment.
• Where will this go from here? Who knows
• Why is it missing feature X? Because it’s an experiment, it’s not meant to be perfect
• Will it break tomorrow? Possibly (”get it while it’s hot” … and works! )

So go ahead and try it out. We look forward to hearing your feedback on it!

In the next couple of weeks we hope to make this place with some information, tips, insights and various experimental projects.  This would enable us to be more collaborative and incorporate early feedback from you in order to shape some features or projects in a way that meet your needs and expectations.

If you like working with early projects despite some rough edges we are definitely looking forward to your feedback !