Clarification re Joost widgets
One thing perhaps not yet sufficiently clear from the legalese docs is that Joost has an extensions system ("Widgets") that allows viewers to choose - consciously and carefully whether to install little bundles of functionality created by others. They show up in the "My Joost" area alongside the existing clock, chat, news ticker, tools,etc and are built from standard Web technologies such as XML, XHTML, CSS, RDF, Javascript... So a big design choice here was sandboxing:
- should Joost allow these widgets to know anything about what's currently being watched?
- should Joost allow these widgets ways of talking to the outside world?
Given a tentative "yes" on both of these, it is of course important that users understand that they're installing a limited form of 3rd party software and potentially accessing external data services, who will have their own privacy policies. An alternative would be to limit the Widget system so that only Joost-authored widgets were possible, or that they can only access Joost Web services. The current design puts some responsibility in the hands of the Widget-installing viewer, with the hope of creating a rich ecology of Joost Widgets and associated sites. But we're very open to feedback on the best tradeoffs to make here.
I'm posting this from my gmail account, ... but if folk have further thoughts on this, especially on the tradeoffs around 3rd party widgets, drop me a note using danbri-at-joost.com.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
