I finally had time over the Easter Long weekend to sit down and check out Joost.

Now rather than go into the pros and cons of this new tech I'll show you how to experience Joost without having to download the program.

Take $20, go to your nearest Blockbuster (or independent video retailer) and ask them where the 20c weekly movies are. Then with your $20 spend all you have on the cheapest movies you can find. Don't worry about genres or titles just pick a few from everywhere. Take them home and pile them up with the spines visible.

Now sit back and tell yourself it's the future of TV.

Ok seriously though, now to actually be a little constructive with my feedback:

Joost is currently in Beta so it's still a little rough but with the content available right now it's probably a few good months away.

Adverts: The adverts have no intelligence to them and interrupt the shows at odd times. I was told they would be geo targeted but I saw 5 T-Mobile ads and I have no idea how to get a T-Mobile. Following that I had a heaps of Garnier ads on the GameStar TV channel? If they can Geo Target it and they have no relevant advertisers then don't show me anything.

Lack of Features:
There didn't seem to be a "favs" or "to watch" list. Unlike TV, I expected to plan a play list of shows I wanted to watch then site back. But I found myself constantly getting bored then flicking through the channel listings. I spend longer looking for good content than actually sitting back watching it.

Then there are feature which seem useless like Chat. Don't just add features in because you can, concentrate on what it's meant to be good at then expand from there. I'd prefer to read peoples reviews or comments on a piece of video like on Youtube. You watch and then read the comments. Some of the time you find out interesting tid bits about the video, a lot of the time its just banter but it still adds to the experience.

Show Info:
Most of the content is supplied with very little data. This may be due to it being so old, but having a gaming channel with no date as to when this show aired is useless. I don't want to hear about a crap game released in 2005. And what if I want more info on a movie above the supplied sentence?

All in all to me it feels really sloppy. It feels clunky and it's boring.

Oh, and for those that feel they are missing out here's the quality of TV on the Sci Fi Channel. The almost complete series of Total Recall 2070. it wasn't good in 1999 and it certainly isn't any good now.

Has anyone had a different experience with Joost? Maybe I'm jaded or expected more or at least enough to keep me interested for longer than it took to type this.

While not exactly advertising, this is still very interesting what Microsoft is doing with their new Photosynth application.

Check out the Pope's stomping ground here in faux 3D. Note: You'll need a PC and IE 6-7 to access this but it's worth it.

It'll be interesting to see if this will be embraced by the advertising community like Google Maps and Earth have been.