This streaming video service, which was previously codenamed “The Venice Project,” already has a definitive name (Joost), as confirmed by Frederikde Whal, president of the company.
The service, which is currently being tested by a select group of users, will allow TV viewing on computers, as well as offering features such as video conferencing and the ability to search for video programming.
Joost plans to offer trial access to the service to a larger number of users shortly, which will coincide with the release of version 0.8.
A public version of the service is scheduled to be offered in the first half of this year.
The use of Joost, however, poses a problem for users who have a monthly payment system based on their bandwidth consumption, since it consumes 320 MB on average per download and generates 105 MB of upload traffic per hour content display.
These 105 MB per hour means occupying almost the entire connection of a standard ADSL line currently offered in Europe and doubles the 256 Kbps upload speed of this type of connection.
In the documentation provided to the beta testers it is noted that the service “will use up a margin of 1 GB of capacity in 10 hours of use” and explains that once when it stops being used it is necessary to make sure that it has been closed correctly so that do not consume connection bandwidth.
In addition to their new Joost service, Zennström and Friis founded the music exchange service known as Kazaa and Skype VoIP, the voice over IP calling application.
Web: www.joost.com.
