Dear Netflix: You're doing it wrong
lylemckeany.com
lylemckeany.com
Also, it appears the law currently prevents Netflix from integrating the Facebook button as it requires "informed written consent of the consumer given at the time the disclosure is sought."
The bill would change this to "informed, written consent (including through an electronic means using the Internet) in a form distinct and separate from any form setting forth other legal or financial obligations of the consumer given at one or both of the following times; (i) the time the disclosure is sought; and (ii) in advance for a set period of time or until consent is withdrawn by such consumer."
I think people ought to be able to make these choices for themselves. I realize some people will forget to disable the feature, enable it inadvertently, not understand it, etc. But how is this fundamentally different from Spotify or Last.fm integration?
[1] Pub. L. 100-618, 120 Stat. 3195 (1988) (codified at 18 U.S.C. §2710 (2006)).
Uh-oh. Ten bucks says half the comments are about the theme and everyone's opinions of it, the blogger, and svbtle.
Comments
Yessss.
/edit: Moreso, if everyone has a free Netflix account to rate films, then they're already used to your site when you push for sign-ups.
Not just for the heck of it, it makes sense, they're in a perfect position to build last.fm for movies/tv. They could even run an open video scrobbler and lure in pirates little by little.
I honestly don't know if that even still exists, and netflix.com seems to be giving me errors tonight so I can't check. Now that TVs and game consoles can get there and I no longer have a disc plan at all, I rarely visit the site in a browser. The various set-top-box clients I've used don't expose that functionality at all, so it may be gone or relegated solely to the browser, which at this point feels like the backwater of the Netflix experience.
Edit: Would be great to have the social media element be integrated into the TV and console apps. I to love these apps, and would love to find and follow other similar users and friends on the Netflix network.
I sent a tweet (https://twitter.com/lylemckeany/status/253688832501874689) to Dustin early asking about it. He kindly asked me to change my theme and I will in the next couple of days when I can get around to it. I thought/hoped that the Gravity on Mars developer(s) had his permission to create it, but that is definitely not the case.
That said, I'm not a big fan of stealing someone's design pixel for pixel. It definitely hurts the Svbtle brand when people mistake WP-Svbtle for Svbtle itself. I wonder what Dustin Curtis thinks.
I may not be much of a Svbtle fan, but I'm also not a fan of ripping-off a brand's design just because you can.
As far as the wp-svbtle theme goes, I like it for the simplicity. I won't deny that it's a complete rip-off of Dustin's Svbtle. I pointed it out to him on Twitter once and he only favorited my tweet. Maybe he will try to do something about it at a later time, who knows.
http://github.com/gravityonmars/wp-svbtle
From the github readme:
> Isn't this unoriginal?
> Yes, in the same way svbtle is unoriginal. See the original "inspiration" for svbtle. (link: http://drawar.com/)
At that, I raise an eyebrow. Yes, dcurtis' svbtle does look like it may have been inspired by drawar, or any other blog theme with a persistent left-hand column. It's certainly not nearly as original as it is simply well-executed.
But wp-svbtle copied the style & spacing of svbtle down to just about the pixel-level. Legal or not, it's pretty blatantly ripping-off the brand dcurtis is trying to establish, and that leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Contrast this with the WP theme and an actual Svtle blog:
Svbtle: http://dcurt.is/
Svbtle WP: http://www.lylemckeany.com/
If you alt-tab between the two, most of the page is exactly the same. The Svbtle-WP theme is not "inspired" by Svbtle, it is a direct copy.
Because if you're really just interested in a clean blog design, it's really not that hard to make your own.
(I say that as someone who doesn't really like the Svbtle "elitism", though I give Dustin Curtis credit for picking great writers in general)
It is probably easier for Netflix to ask for authorization for all sharing and then actually have users select what they want to share. No one knows until they build it.
Edit: Turns out this feature isn't on the American version of Netflix...
You can watch youtube videos while doing group video chat. Anyone on the chat can pause, push a button to speak over the audio, etc. It' great for sharing videos with people and having the "sitting next to you on the couch" feel simulated.
For example, I could see myself using a Netflix version of this feature to watch a few episodes of a TV show each week with someone if we'd started watching the series in college while rooming together, but went our separate ways without finishing the series.
Cough Netflix you also need to work on navigation of xbox live with JUST voice commands. I use the Kinect over a controller for a reason - it's faster. But I'd like to be able to read the description of something before I watch it, I'd also enjoy having the option of turning preview play off; it turns on and my Kinect can't hear me!
No! More social buttons is never the answer.