Joost has now officially launched to the public, moving from a Beta testing stage to one which makes the IPTV service available to everyone, at least in principle.

It has been more than 5 months since I first began testing the invite-only beta of Joost, which has since accumulated 250+ channels and 15,000+ television shows.

Although the Joost software has been updated now to version 1.0, the service makes sure to state that “Joost is still Beta software — there’s a lot more work to be done before we’re satisfied, and yes, you may find a bug or two.”

In the time that Joost has been in beta, it managed to go from promising to a poorly-planned disaster in my point of view. Now, Joost has received some cosmetic changes as well as a host of new features. Will this be enough to put Joost back ahead of the competition though?

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Adsense is now starting to make an appearance at YouTube, news that is long overdue, but Google unveiled the new feature so quietly and discreetly that I discovered it at Problogger and not at YouTube, which I use almost daily.

I’m surprised it’s taken this long to happen, considering the fact that blogs all around the world use both AdSense and embedded YouTube video players but never together. Now AdSense will be in the embedded YouTube video players that reside all over the web.

As of yet, there is no word on when this program is set to launch, but there is an active page at YouTube’s website, which explains the benefits. Will ads above videos be anywhere near as relevant or successful as Google’s basic text ads though?

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Many of the traditionally impenetrable television networks are dipping their toes in to online content on the web. Most of this seems to be on a trial and error basis.

Many are now providing full episodes of their big shows online, but CBS seems to be going further than that, and has noticed the shorter attention span of its web audience compared to television viewers.

In what seems like a step backward, CBS has now launched EyeLab, a service with a collection of short clips from several hit shows that air on the network.

The videos will appear to be more along the lines of the user-generated content on YouTube, which CBS is hoping will keep viewers entertained and serve marketing purposes.

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Tom Huntington, a spokesperson for DivX has announced that DivX, a growing video compression software company, has signed a two year deal with Yahoo! that replaces a previous agreement that DixX had with Google.

As the terms of the contract state, DivX software will now be offered with a co-branded Yahoo Toolbar and a version of IE7 pre-configured with Yahoo tools. Yahoo!, in exchange, will now provide links to DivX and its online video service, Stage6, within the Yahoo toolbar.

Could Yahoo! possibly be a better partner for DivX than Google?

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Microsoft have announced the forthcoming release of Internet TV, a feature which will allow people to enjoy a range of television and video content on their PCs and TV sets without a TV tuner in their PC.

On September 28th 2007, US users of Windows Vista Home Premium edition and Windows Vista Ultimate edition will find the new beta release inside Media Center.

The free service will be supported by advertising from YuMe Networks, which, interestingly enough, is a competitor of Podaddies which has recently been working with Apple.

At launch, expect over 100 hours of streaming content including full episodes of various television shows, full-length music concerts by popular artists, movie trailers, MSNBC news segments and sports clips from FOX Sports.

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It seems that Sling Media is about to be acquired for the princely sum of approximately $380 Million.

Dave Zatz is reporting that Echostar Communications Company, the people known for its Dish Network Satellite TV will be shelling out that amount for the company.

Sling Media is the maker of the Slingbox and Slingplayer which allow you to placeshift your TV programming from your home across the internet to allow you to view that content anywhere there is an internet connection.

Any time an innovative company like Sling Media is purchased by a larger media/distribution company there are concerns about the future path of that innovative company and this will be no exception.  

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DEMOfall has some great debuts on show this year including a YourTrumanShow widget called VideoMap. This little tool links friends and their videos across several social networks such as MySpace and Facebook.

The intuitive, embeddable widget is a graphical relationship map that renders a graphical representation of video collections. The new widget can be placed and accessed by anyone on the Web and it allows video producers and fans to share content from inside the widget.

Your Truman Show

YTS was founded last year by Arturo Artom and Luca Ferrero. The San Francisco company is a video blogging enterprise that helps everyday people distribute great stories in their video diaries. 

The beta version allows anyone to create a personal channel, share life stories and view other people’s lives. This latest widget promises to connect people even more closely via what is essentially a mental map to their YTS presence.

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