kent's posterous

make a da world go round

After one day with Netflix in Canada, a review

I watched Mad Men using Netflix in Canada today. It was a good day.

It might not seem fair reviewing Netflix after only a day but here goes.

Overall, I am thrilled. The signup and initial questions were quick and easy, within 2 minutes I was browsing their selections. Also found out I can use either my Nintendo Wii or PS3 to watch Netflix. Haven't tried either yet, but will let you know when I do.

Netflix expertly picked Mad Men for me based on my love of Lost Season 2 and 3 and Arrested Development Season 2. After clicking Play I was prompted to update Silverlight. I was a little surprised, figured it would have been AIR for sure. Quick silverlight install and I was ready for Don Draper. The show loaded very fast over Wi-Fi and didn't hiccup once. The power even went out in my building and it didn't miss a beat, so I guess it does some eager loading.

After watching Mr. Draper sell his soul to a cigarette company I thought I would look for something funnier. I searched for Curb Your Enthusiasm and was so happy to see it show up in the list of search suggestions, however, upon clicking Season 1, I was met with, Currently Unavailable. I am not sure if this means just in Canada or on Netflix at large (do you know? Please tell me if you do) either way it was a bit of a tease / bummer. However, I quickly rebounded when I checked out the documentary section. I love documentaries and have a hard time finding good ones on TV. Netflix suggested Maxed Out based on my love of The Corporation and Bowling for Columbine. I watched Maxed Out and worked at the same time. Even with Netflix streaming in the background I was able to use Photoshop, Illustrator and run a few local Mongrel servers. Not too shabby.

Lastly, I indulged in Trailer Park Boys. This time, Silverlight said I was missing some essential components. Clicked the link and got to the same download page as before. Confused I looked at the browser compatibility list and found that some of the Silverlight features don't work with Chrome. So I popped into Firefox and watched the show without a hitch. Didn't notice any difference in performance and will likely use Firefox for my future Netflixing.

Take home message. Every Canadian with a high speed connection should sign up for Netflix. The first month is free and after that it's $7.99. One Rogers On Demand movie costs $6.99, so it's sort of a no brainer. Not all of your favorite movies / shows are available which sucks but I am confident it will get better over time.

Thank you Netflix for braving the cold and coming up to Canada, I think you might be sort of a big deal.

What do you think?

Is Google preparing for a Tsunami?

Recently, Google announced that it was killing Google Wave.  That's too bad really, I love Google Wave as did many of my clients.

There has been a lot of speculation about why Google might have killed Wave, Dick Wall from the Java Posse threw out the idea that it could have been too much bandwidth compared to any return they were getting.  Maybe it just go too expensive for them.

I find that hard to believe.  I think Google would have done their homework on the costs of servers and made that decision a long time ago.  They gave Google Wave the show at Google I/O 2009 and it just seems weird that they didn't expect a flood of people to use it.  Which brings up the next scenario, maybe they really got it wrong.

Sometimes, even the experts make mistakes and maybe there really wasn't a clear path to market for Google Wave and given all of the pressure from Microsoft, Facebook etc they decided to start focusing on things with a clear revenue path, so Google Wave got the axe.  However, this doesn't seem right either.  Why would they spend so much of their time working on side projects and then kill off one of the coolest ones.  They had clear marketing problems and most people had no idea what to do at the beginning, however, if you used it for more than 5 minutes and invited some of your friends in, you realized pretty quick it was a game changer.  Take it up a notch and invite your co-workers and your boss and you have yourself a fantastic team collaboration app.

I have an idea.  Google is preparing for a Tsunami.

The more time I spent with Google Wave the more I realized it had the chance to become the killer application for small-medium business who already use Google Apps.  For example, being able to collaboratively write emails, documents, spreadsheets etc, are all things that companies do now only the process is inefficient and clumsy.  If this was tied more cohesively into one product that allowed authoring, collaboration, chatting, real time editing, emailing etc, it would become the dashboard for thousands if not millions of people around the world. 

However, Wave is open source.  A lot of what Google does is open source, but nothing really close to the chest is, or at least not all of the pieces.  Since they created wave to be so open, it would be hard for them to develop this kind of product and change Wave at the same time. 

Maybe they killed Wave so that they could focus on creating Tsunami. 

Tsunami = Docs + Email + Wave + Voice

I have been thinking about this for a while and when Google added the Call from Gmail feature, I saw it as more evidence that are building GMail into a place that you NEVER need to leave.  They are transforming their Gmail client into THE productivity application for information workers.

This is pure speculation.  Clearly there are so many factors that go into these kinds apps and decisions, many are over my head but selfishly, I really hope I am right.  In my consulting practice Google Apps is a godsend to clients, but they all keep asking for similar things.  They keep asking for a unified view that marries, Wave, Docs and Email. 

I think Google knows this and if they don't... consider them told.

Start T-ing more

If you like Twitter you have probably RT-ed something meaning "Re-Tweeted".  This is a way of saying, I also think this is cool and I want my friends to see it too.  

However, if you have too many RTs you gotta start T-ing.  Said again.

If you've got more RTs that Ts you aren't being creative enough.

I am all for sharing other people's information and do it quite a bit, but I find it hard to believe that there are so many people that still don't think what they have to say is worth a blog post or worth a T.

It is!  Your voice does matter.  Maybe not to thousands of people yet, but you do have something unique or interesting to share.  So exercise your creativity and start T-ing more than you RT.  

Disclaimer - T something that adds value to you, your friends or the world at large.

Godspeed.

I am a browser polygamist

I use three browsers almost everyday of my life, so I guess I am a browser polygamist since I love all three of them for different reasons.

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There have been some articles today talking about picking one over the other, I guess if you looked at my usage you would find that I use Chrome most, then Firefox and then Safari, however, I don't think Chrome is my favourite... they do different things for me.

Chrome is fast.  I use it for day to day browsing.

Firefox and Safari have amazing Dev tools, I use them while testing and developing.

I love what Firefox stands for and what they have done and continue to do for the web, so I use them when exploring interesting HTML5 stuff and WWC working paper demos.

Safari renders quicktime faster, so I use it when I am watching movie trailers.

Finally, if you couldn't tell from my dock snapshot, I am a software developer.  I use all three browsers, and two more (IE6 and IE8) to test all of my websites.  

Does it frusterate me that IE6 is still being used by so many people, of coure it does, but we can't change that right now.  They are likely behind a corporate firewall or don't have a techie in the house who knows any better.  IE9 is looking really good and I can't wait for Windows to force everyone to download it.  It will bring us to a great place.

Until then, don't pick favourites.  Love each of them for different reasons.  Embrace your polygamy.

 
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