Joost appears to be scaling back its game plan a bit. The Sunday Times reports that the online video platform will focus entirely on distributing content in the US, where it has the largest audience. Up until now, Joost has provided videos globally, although the content you were able to watch was determined by your country of residence.

The company was founded by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, the founders of Skype. The goal was to give users a standalone application for viewing high quality videos over a peer to peer network, rather than spending all day squinting at YouTube style videos embedded in web pages. But while Joost has managed to sign a few major content partners like CBS and Viacom, you can generally find more up to date content from Hulu or the BBC iPlayer.

Joost is also hardly the only name in the game these days. The company faces competition (if you can call it that) from other online video services including Babelgum, Vuze, VeohTV, and Miro. But there's still one major question that needs to be answered: Does anybody actually use any of these services on a regular basis to watch videos, or are they the sort of programs you download once to check out and then maybe remember to launch every few weeks to see if there's anything new?

Do you actually care if Joost shuts down in the UK and other markets? Would it matter to you if they closed up shop in the US too? Let us know in the comments.

Update: It looks like a spokesperson for Joost denies that the company has any plans to layoff employees or go US-only.

[via Mashable]

There was certainly a lot of fanfare when Google announced that they were going to allow people around the world to watch in-season full-length games on Google Video. Well, it seems that Comcast now allows anyone in the US to stream up to 2 live games a day. When Comcast and the NHL first made this announcement, the games were only viewable to Comcast High-Speed Internet customers. This year, anyone in the US can watch the games - even DSL subscribers - via the Comcast Hockey Live site.

Before you get too excited there are a couple of things to keep in mind. Local games are usually blacked out, and to watch the live streams you'll need a PC with Microsoft Windows Media Player 9.x or higher and IE 6+ or a similar generation browser. So Mac users are out of luck (shock).

I just got back from some much needed R & R, and since I left before the most recent Homeland Security PR campaign terror scare, I spent a lot of time on the TSA website the last few days of my vacation trying to figure out the ever-changing array of prohibited items. It wasn't much help. It seemed like they were updating the regs hourly, but the website only every couple of days, and then in English taken from a Chinese takeout menu. "These items are permitted, but to physical inspection" was a particular favorite that seems to have stuck. It's okay, though, TSA love you long time.

Now they seem to have redesigned the site, which was badly in need of an overhaul. Unfortunately, there aren't many changes, and they seem to have given the job to FBI programmers. They certainly haven't made the site more useful to travelers, or anyone else for that matter. It features the same contradictory information--beverages are not permitted except when they are. Unless you're a diabetic who needs juice; then juice is permitted except when it isn't--now in a new, less user-friendly layout. Every single page is now one huge iframe centered in a useless striped gray background, guaranteeing that you will have to scroll not once but twice to access any useful information. Assuming you even notice the information you want has scrolled off the bottom of the iframe. And, of course, the navbar is in the iframe, so it scrolls off the top any time you scroll down the page. Add to that some of the usual Firefox and Safari rendering errors, and you can have the full airport checkpoint experience without ever leaving your keyboard.

There are some improvements, though. We now have a new slogan--"TSA...Vigilant, Effective, Efficient"--some nice pics of mountains to remind us the TSA is "strong" and "formidable," a puppy gallery, and a nice graphic of the layered security model that implies the most important site for security is the airplane cabin. That's right folks. All that fancy new screening is wonderful, but when it comes right down to it, in-flight security is up to the overworked, under-trained flight crew, that woman next to you with the screaming toddler, and "YOU--THE PASSENGER."


[via 27B/6]

Let's face it: Government web site are, as a rule, a pain to navigate. In an effort to remedy that, Google has launched usgov.google.com, a specialized search engine for searching U.S. government web sites. The new site is modeled after Google Personalized Home, and indeed has most of the same features, but with an emphasis on widgets that help you keep track of government updates. For more details, check out the Washington Post's article on the new service.

The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, or USCC, is calling for an investigation into Lenovo, the Chinese company which bought IBM's PC arm last year, before the State Department closes a $13 million deal to buy 15,000 Lenovo PCs. The USCC wants to be assured that the Chinese computers, which are built in Mexico and North Carolina with components manufactured in Taiwan, are not equipped with bugging devices that could be used to spy on the U.S. government. Lenovo exec Jeff Carlisle says the prope is unwarranted, but says Lenovo has "nothing to hide" and the company will cooperate fully.

[Via Engadget]