Joost: IPTV is a Sweet Idea

I hate cable companies (almost as much as I hate cell phone companies). Any way I can stick it to them is cool with me especially since I get free internet access in my apartment but pay for cable. Joost - formerly the Venice Project - promises to be an interesting legal alternative to downloading shows on bittorrent, paying $2 a show at iTunes, or $50 a month for cable. For those of you who haven't heard of Joost it is a new piece of software by the guys who created Kazaa (P2P file sharing), Skype (VoIP) - and made a bundle in the process. Joost lets you watch TV free over your internet connection (IPTV) and just signed on Viacom to provide content.

The only potential problem I see is that providers like Comcast and Time Warner are already throttling heavy internet users to less than broadband speeds. I wonder how many people will get throttled as a result of Joost.

The program is in beta right now and is only taking members by invite only like GMail did but I hope it starts ramping up members because I would love to test it out. Also like GMail a website has come to the rescue and promises to match up people with invites and people desperately in need of them like me - aptly named "joostswap." Head on over if you are interested and maybe you can offer something interesting enough to score yourself a coveted invite. Make sure to let me know if you get an invite how the program works and