TVSquad

Ever want to take the AppleTV interface for a spin without spending $299 to actually buy a little white box? Flash developer Paul Yanez has come up with the next best thing to actually giving Apple your money. Not AppleTV mimics the AppleTV interface, but instead of iTunes videos, you can browse a selection of videos from online video sites like YouTube, Break, and the NSFW Pornotube.

Yanez is the same guy who developed the Flash-based Joost clone we told you about last month. He also has a Babelgum version.

We can't imagine that Joost, Babelgum, or Apple aren't going to come after this guy at some point and force him to shut down the sites. While he's not taking any video content from their respective services, his designs probably violate their intellectual property.

That said, it would be great if one of these companies would hire Yanez to develop a web interface for their products. It'd be great if you could install Joost on your home computer but access your account over the web using any browser. It would be even more exciting if you could access content stored on your AppleTV over the web using an interface like Not AppleTV.

[via TechCrunch]

Kind of the whole idea behind internet television platform Joost is that there's a better way to watch internet video than using a web browser. But developer Paul Yanez tells NewTeeVee he was frustrated that every time Joost issued a new beta release he had to download a new application. So he decided to build a Flash-based Joost clone that would run inside of a web browser. He can push out any updates he likes and you'll never have to download a thing.

Of course, he doesn't have permission from Joost to use their graphics. Nor does he have access to the same content Joost uses. But he's done a pretty good job of replicating the Joost interface using web video from sites like YouTube, MySpace, and iFilm.

The interface isn't perfect. For example you can't use your keyboard to navigate the menus, you'll need a mouse. Given that an independent developer was able to put this together in less than a month, it'd be nice to see Joost come out with something similar. Because while the idea of a standalone full screen video player is nice, the truth is people do spend a lot of time sitting in front of a computer with a web browser open. It'd be nice to give them a better way to slack off at the office.