There are products that make it and products that don’t. And then there are a few that exist in a vaporous limbo. The latter seems to be the case for Jook, a tiny and somewhat promising proximity-limited music sharing gadget with social networking ties. It debuted at CES 2009 – yes, more than two and a half years ago. An initiative of gaming peripheral maker Razer,.Jook’s Web site is still intact – frozen in time without any update or explanation as to whether it has been subject to extended gestation or cancelled.
Perhaps the company was concerned about legal action from the RIAA. But a similar product did come to market – the i2i Stream from Aerielle that allowed someone to share audio with people up to 30 feet away. Or perhaps the company figured that the illuminated Jook would have trouble competing with a simple headphone splitter cable.