Joost

Memory hog. Unnecessary full screen interface. Super cool.

The creators of Skype and the college staple Kazaa, have released a legal, industry backed, video on demand application. At one time it was known as "the Venice Project", it has been renamed Joost, and is currently undergoing beta-testing. To sign up for the beta-test and download the software, follow this link ---> Link! The interface is relatively smooth, I was able to stream a good quality Gym Class Heroes music video and an episode from Laguna Beach. This is the strength of Joost, somehow they convinced companies like Viacom to allow them to distribute their content on a sponsorship based system. When I loaded up the video, up popped a quick brand logo for Motorola, it appeared, disappeared, and the video started. Considering Joost is in beta, it is a strong sign that video loading and playback was smooth; Joost operates on a form of p2p using h.264 as the video decoder. The more users, the more nodes that can be downloaded from, and thus the smoother playback will be. It's not even under wide internet adoption and it's already smooth. Good sign.

There have been other video services that have been similar, but this is the best one I've seen so far. Democracy 2.0 was cool, but the content was limited; think of it as populated by free video podcasts or a YouTube that was trying to deliver tv length shows (Democracy 2.0 streamed the Wine Library TV, that was cool).

YouTube is going to have some serious competition. The only drawback so far is that the software isn't anywhere near as optimized as it needs to be. It was eating up ~ 130 MB of RAM and slowing down my computer. Mind you my machine is an Athlon XP 3000+, 1 GB of Ram, and a 512 MB Radeon 9800 Pro, which while not bleeding edge, is still a pretty fast rig.

Still... sweet deal.

Amuse Me

It is really a gift that YouTube exists. Nowhere outside of the internet has there been such an open forum for holding political pundits accountable for what they have said. Whether it be Joe Biden calling Barack Obama the "first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy", former Senator George Allen calling S.R. Sidarth, an Indian man, "macaca", etc, everyone's verbal gaffes get their time in the sun. Open forums like YouTube and Google Video have largely done what the mass media has been afraid to do the last decade, hold people accountable for lies and hypocrisy and internally regulating their own misdoings.

It is always amusing to watch conservative firebrands like Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter taken to task for journalistic irresponsibility and fallacious logical arguments. I have a hard time believing that Republicans take Malkin and Coulter seriously, there is just no way. I have an even harder time believing that these two women are products of American higher education; Malkin graduating from Oberlin College and Coulter from Cornell University and later University of Michigan Law School. How can it be that such prestigious universities produced two such individuals that have little regard for fact checking. It is especially surprising in Coulter's case given that she graduated Cornell cum laude and was the editor of the Michigan Law Review. Two very bright women. You have to wonder if they sacrificed their own credibility for the sake of being outspoken and prominently featured on FOX News.

Watch as Malkin and Coulter both get caught up and trapped by their own non-nonsensical speech.