It’s interesting to see that YouTube has announced it’s move towards bringing a widescreen format to it’s website. Here’s the basic announcement:

We’re expanding the width of the page to 960 pixels to better reflect the quality of the videos you create and the screens that you use to watch them. This new, wider player is in a widescreen aspect ratio which we hope will provide you with a cleaner, more powerful viewing experience. And don’t worry, your 4:3 aspect ratio videos will play just fine in this new player.

This is not the first time widescreen videos have been spotted on YouTube however it’s a definite shift in that this will be the default format and uploads will be expected to follow in this format, even if it’s not what user’s expect.

A number of sites are talking about how this is just one of a number of moves that YouTube is making to start making inroads into the living room. The availability of higher definition movies, full length movies and live streaming all point in this direction. Many items we live with today have managed to become part of our everyday lives, from intelligent shoes all the way down to Christian books. It seems Google is working hard to make YouTube fit into this category, all they need to do now is improve application availability and make sure the Cloud is always available and I’ll be ready to hook up my TV.

The Server Component
The UCee Server component lets you create a number of playlists that will be broadcast to your clients and also shared with your “buddies”. These playlists can contain video, pictures, music and even stream directly from your webcam or microphone. The server component doesn’t run as a service, but instead tries to make itself one of your startup programs so that is always available for your clients and buddies.

The Client Component
The client component can run either on a PC or a mobile device. It gives you access to your playlist and the playlists of your buddies. I tried this functionality out and it seems to work nicely. If you have other buddies you should be able to send them text messages and even start a VOIP conversation with them. Unfortunately I didn’t get to try this, as I don’t really have any friends *grin*

The product seems to still be under development, as the website promises features that will be available in future versions. It looks like it hold great promise though, so watch this space!

So, I thought I’d give it a try. I headed down to the website. The first problem was the website detecting that I wasn’t running IE, or XP, which it was picking up from the UserAgent string (the identification attributes that browsers sent to web server to let them know what capabilities they have). The screen shot at the side shows the reported issues with downloading the application.

Luckily, this is quite easy to spoof, so I was quickly on my way downloading the package. I was all set to change the compatibility mode of the executables used by the application, but guess what .. it worked first time! (see screenshot)

I’ll keep you posted if I have any problems!

Personally I love what Joost are doing. The experience is pretty good and the software nice and easy to use. My friend Rory is actually taking it one step further and is building himself a Joost set-top box. How cool is that?

In the meantime, Joost now has around a million testers and are rolling out the Friends Edition 0.10.9. If you want an invitation, just drop me a comment.

You create your own radio channel by selecting a favourite song or band, and Pandora will start playing songs by different artists based on their similarity to your original choice. You get an option with every song to specify whether you like or dislike the song and this affects the next song Pandora plays for you. Great concept, and a great way of getting introduced to different artists who play the sort of music you like.

You can pay for the service or go for the free (with advertising option). I’m playing with the free one and haven’t seen any ads yet. Great idea, I’ll be visiting there more often i think.