beat.co.nz

After many downloads and failed attempts at getting this software to run, I’ve finally got some success with the latest release.

I first signed up for Joost ages ago, and have downloaded perhaps six revisions of the software – all without success, until now.

The quality isn’t stunning but it’s quite acceptable, and the range of channels is great. Fifth Gear, Reuters, music channels, cartoons, and plenty of others. Haven’t watched them all, just a few at the moment. It’s better than stuffing around with an aerial, anyway.

Joost entry at Wikipedia shows some of the background – but basically it’s TV over IP via P2P with widgets for chat, newstickers, blog posts and more (although it supports wordpress.com, it wouldn’t allow me to connect to this site – but it did promise more development in that area soon.) It’s developed by the people who created Skype and Kazaa.

Joost is available for XP, Vista and OS X Intel. I’m not sure if it will be better than Freeview (no rugby world cup on Joost I don’t think) but it’s interesting nonetheless.

Stuck for an idea? Afrigadget has some wildly good feats of ingenuity.Home made welders, and a bicycle / human powered knife sharpener (which has video to show how good it is.)  

Daringfireball had an interesting take on the apple news today at WWDC 2007.

Interesting too that the built in search engines in Safari (and other browsers) earn money for the developers. That’s not widely publicised.

The new public beta version of Safari is on apple’s website.

The ol’ Commodore 64 wouldn’t have believed its eyes…
The internet really has opened up a whole world of possibilties for individuals, businesses, and artists.

This link is kind of interesting / disturbing … it’s called bioart. I found it on the boing boing site, but the engadget site has a quicker feed it seems.

It’s not auctioning off a kidney (turns out that was a hoax) but it’s likely to put you off your morning toast.

And engadget is also reporting the world’s largest TV is becoming available at retail outlets. It’s a freakin monster. Just compare the size of the remote.

Good thing the dollar is up against the greenback – this thing retails for over US$53,000.

Considering being an organ donor? why not pitch this idea to the networks? Yes, contestants battle it out for the right to win a kidney – text your votes in now… 0900 left, or 0900 right…

Meanwhile, in Australia a Big Brother contestant’s father has died (he had been terminally ill for some time) but she still doesn’t know. The company who makes Big Brother has been sold, and apparently they also make Deal or No Deal – which will hit our screens soon.

Meanwhile Balls of Steel, which shows things like a guy taking a paint stripping hot air gun to the chest, or another guy getting his arse belt-sanded, is probably the most jaw-dropping show I’ve seen for a while. It’s a step up (in pain at least) from Distraction, a nod towards the Japanese game shows – which are a world of their own’… have a look on youtube for japanese game shows, you’ll see what I mean.