Free Joost Invite No Strings Attached

*** UPDATE 5/2/07: I now have 900+ invites as of 9:00AM this morning so request away ***

I recently began toying with Joost. If you aren't familiar with the service you aren't alone. Joost is an IPTV service (think VoIP but for TV). Basically you can watch TV over your computer for free. The service is ad based and actually has a lot better picture quality than you would expect. The only potential downsides are 1) you need a broadband connection 2) there isn't a tremendous amount of content out there right now on the service 3) you need an invite to use the service.

Well, I have ONE invites available. For those of you who have yet to receive one and want to try it out here's your chance. Make a post in the comments and make sure you leave your email address so I can contact you and send you the invite.

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