CES 2008 CoverageBosco - January 6, 2008
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What is Jook?
Jook, launching in 2008, is a universal standard for creating music player accessories that lets everyone, regardless of the music player being used, broadcast their songs to the people around them. The girl with an iPod™ becomes the DJ for the guy sitting across from her on the bus listening to his Zune™. Four friends jogging together in Central Park can all do so in tune to one person’s music player, regardless of if any of them are using an iPod, a Zune, or even a mobile phone.
What is the purpose of Jook?
Jook devices will allow users to store a small profile of information about themselves that is transmitted to connecting transceivers along with their music in Us mode. The profiles allows people to share a little more about themselves along with their music, maybe to promote their band’s webpage as they walk around town broadcasting their songs. The broadcaster can then also see whoever connected and listened in to their Jook device.
Jook’s interface will identify each song the user hears and allow the listener to store the song’s title, artist, and so forth on to the listener’s device by allowing the listener to “tag” songs that they like. The listener can later review and identify the songs they heard and then choose to purchase the song from their preferred online song vendor.
When a song is rated this way, the rating and profile of the listener will also be beamed back to the broadcaster. A broadcaster showing off his own musical creations - be it a band or a DJ’s newest mix - can see what people think about his music. The same is true of temporary, amateur DJs just broadcasting the songs they happen to have on their personal music device. Alternatively, the broadcaster can see what others think of their taste in songs or lineup of music.
We were shown a prototype of the Jook device and its software.
We were told that there are several OEMs that Jook has partnered with, but which ones weren't divulged. It seems like a really neat concept if it becomes widespread enough (the fact that it aims to be non-device specific should really help).