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NextGuide, now with Amazon and more awesomeness

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NextGuide, my personal favorite TV Guide app (that I built at the company I run), is now updated to include Amazon Prime and Amazon Instant Video alongside live TV, Hulu Plus, iTunes, and Netflix.  It’s really a great experience to browse all providers simultaneously and to search for shows and actually know where they are watchable. You can get the update here on the App Store.

That’s the “big” news (yes, adding a streaming provider with tens of thousands of hours of streamable shows and movies is a big deal IMHO), but we also took the time for a lot of across the board improvements to the app.  Here are some of the highlights:

>> New Gestures – two-finger swipe within showcards, pinch to hide, fullscreen media gallery, and more!

One of my favorite things about a great iPad experience is gestures. One of my favorite favorite things about any app is hidden features. While it’d be fun to document them everywhere, we’ve loaded up the NextGuide experience with many new gestures.  Explore around, let us know what you find and think of them!

>> Enhanced Cast & Crew with 1-click saved searches and Wikipedia biography lookups.

File this under “finally!”  When we shipped the 1.0 version, the cast and crew view just wasn’t that useful.  Now, go to the cast and crew tab for any movie or show, and tap on a person you are interested in.  Want to find more stuff from them?  Tap “add to interests.”

>> New Category Editor with easy drag & drop category setup

While we made removing/hiding categories really easy in the app, it’s always been a pain to add them. Now, push and hold on anywhere in the “Category Bar” to get a slick interface to add genres, custom genres, and trending topics.

>> Channel Setup now part of Initial Setup Wizard

The customer is always right, and lots of ours told us they didn’t like the fact they couldn’t customize their channel lineups until after launching the app.  Now you can.

>> Improved “Your Picks” algorithms

Let’s face it, recommending content is a very hard thing to get right. Our focus is to get beyond the baseline concept of “if you like this then you’ll like that.”  We’re constantly working to improve it, and I think our users will see a lot of progress in this department.

>> Lots of other little new features for you to explore throughout the app

Thanks again to every one of our users, even the 1-star reviews in the App Store – its the best way to learn, and learning is what we’re doing!

ps – sorry about not blogging much, just been working on, you know, everything you just read about.

Introducing NextGuide

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It’s my pleasure to unveil my newest product, NextGuide.  NextGuide is a hyper-personalized TV listings guide designed specifically for the iPad™.  It’s been a six month labor of lots and lots of love, and I’m extremely excited to tell you about it.  In a nutshell?  We went to the drawing board and utterly reinvented the concept of the TV program guide.

If you think about the concept of a “guide” it’s something that’s evolved over 60 years from supporting 3 to 13 to 80 to 500+ channels.  But that’s really all it does, and let’s face it, we no longer live in a 500-channel world.  We live in a 500 channel, plus tens of thousands of hours of streaming content on services like Netflix, huge libraries of video on demand from our cable and satellite companies, as well as iTunes itself.  It’s effectively an infinite content landscape, and having so much content has crippled the formerly easy process of discovering shows to watch.

As an example, in my house at night, we start by browsing our DVR library, don’t see anything we’re in the mood for, then switch over to live TV.  After browsing (painfully) the grid for a while, we give up, turn on the Apple TV, and head to Netflix.  Netflix is great, but I have a tendency to see stuff I already know about – Mad Men, Dexter, Weeds, Breaking Bad, etc – all great shows, but not really anything new that I’m ready to consume.  Part of the problem here is catch-up TV: if I’ve never watched Mad Men before then I’m a good 80+ hours away from catching up to live, and that sounds painful.  Anyhow, after an unsuccessful attempt to find something to stream, I generally end up watching whatever’s on (either Cops, the Shawshank Redemption, or an infomercial), then go to sleep.  Sound familiar at all?

So we invented NextGuide, designed to actually help me discover things I *want* to watch. We do that by tilting the concept of Channels, Times, and Genres on its head a little, and instead focus on Shows, People, and Interests.

Shows – we believe people care more about the show they watch than the channel number or time it airs.  So NextGuide uses beautiful show cover art to make it easy to find things and “escape” the grid view of numbers and times.

People – we believe TV remains a central zeitgeist component to modern society. When was the last time you chatted with any friend about a show you like (or love)?  Probably in the past day or so.  NextGuide makes it ridiculously easy to turn conversations, not to mention Facebook Likes, into easily discoverable shows.

Interests – we believe people care about finding things of interest to them, personally.  We all have interests, from bands to sports, from cities to hobbies, and these interests define so much of our lives. NextGuide connects you to your interests, and finds them all on TV and streaming services, in a seamless, organic way.  Examples of what NextGuide’s found for me over the past few weeks: Bill Murray’s guest appearance on Letterman (seriously, how would I even have known that unless I watch every night??), a live Coldplay concert on Palladium (I didn’t even know the channel was in my lineup), and Bizarre Foods goes to San Francisco (not a show I normally care for, but had to see what Andrew found in my city).

That’s enough writing already, this is one of those apps you just have to experience to get a sense of what we’ve done. It’s a complete paradigm shift for TV viewing, and I’m happy to share it with you.  You can download it from the App Store, or watch our quick intro video below.

Introducing NextGuide from Dijit Media on Vimeo.

I can’t wait for your feedback, thanks so much for trying out the app.  Thanks to Apple for inventing the iPad so we could have such a cool platform to bring something like this to life. Extra special thanks to my family, friends, coworkers and investors who have made the process of inventing something disruptive more fun than I think I really deserve.

We are getting some amazing press so far today, here are some great pieces:

Oh, and here’s the actual announcement on our newly revised site!

My Top 8 iPad Apps of 2011

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On Friday I listed my top iPhone apps that I’m using frequently.  Here’s the list of what I love on my iPad:

Evernote

Evernote is one of my few mobile/iPad/Web/OS X utilities – I use it everywhere.  I have notes, future blog post ideas, libraries (I have virtually every quality “Future of TV” article written archives in a Evernote folder), lists, etc.  I keep copies of everything in my wallet, just in case.  I have an archive of every serial number of all white good appliances in my house (for when I call for service – especially the often-needed repairs – I’m looking at you, Miele and Whirlpool).  Everybody should use Evernote, all the time, for all purposes.  It might just save the world. Free (with paid upgrades for heavy users).

Note: saving the world not guaranteed by myself nor the makers of Evernote.

Jack and the Beanstalk

This “interactive storybook” has kept my 4 year old entranced for months.  It’s a simple retelling of the classic story, with some fun humor, and lots and lots of interactive elements.  There’s a little “golden egg” hidden somewhere on every page, plus tons of other clever little items.  One of my top 2 kids apps.  Paid app.

Doodle Buddy

This is a great sketching tool, useful for me and fun for my kids as well – a very rare combination.  The app has simple tools for drawing and doodling, can import your photos for fun, and has a great “stamp” tool.  Only downside is each new build seems to add some new popup that wants me to pay for something – which I “get” as it’s free, but I’d happily pay them something to get rid of the popups forever.

TowerMadness

This is the best Tower Defense game I’ve seen on the iPad (and I’ve tried most of them so far).  Easy levels are fun, hard levels are challenging, and the “madness” levels are so tough that beating them feels like a real accomplishment.  And unfortunately, I’m not Ender, so killing all these aliens is squarely a waste of time (except that I think everyone should play more video games.  possibly the real way to save the world, since I was definitely wrong about it being Evernote).  Awesome game, and one that the developers continue to improve, which is a major plus for me – one of the few games I’ve played on the iPad that keeps getting enhanced!  Paid app.

iMockups

I do a lot of wireframing work, most of which I do using Balsamiq, one of the few desktop apps I’ve purchased in the past few years (worth every penny).  iMockups is not quite as polished a tool, but gives me the ability to do the same via the iPad.  It could use a few enhancements (search!), and isn’t the most beautiful app I’ve seen, but it’s a solid performer.  Paid.

World of Goo

I’m rarely a big “immersive experience and storyline” gamer – I tend to care about the gameplay, balance, and flow more than anything else.  But World of Goo is the only game I play where I make sure the sound is on and I can get into it for a while.  The game itself is a fun puzzler, it’s perfectly suited for touch, and the storytelling and ambiance is perfect.  I’m hoping for a sequel, but in the mean time keep coming back to finish the OCD levels (don’t call it that!).  Paid.

Toontastic

Parents: go download Toontastic now.  No, seriously, get it.  It’s an animated storybook creator, and the user experience is so great my 4 year old can fully make the animations himself.  And that includes the narration, background effects, character and scene selection, and every other perfectly customizable detail.  It’s really great, and even has tons of online sharing features for those into that kind of stuff (I’m not, but I know everyone else is).  Oh, and not only is it that great, it’s free. Wowza.

Zite

Zite is the only app to make both my iPhone and iPad lists.  It’s my ultimate source of “being informed” on topics I care about.  Yes Flipboard is more popular, and Editions is beautiful (and built by friends of mine but I had already gotten so deep into using Zite that I just couldn’t switch – sorry guys), but Zite just does it for me (and personalized flow of info is a big deal when it comes to news reader type of apps, so I understand why people get so loyal to the ones they start with).  When Zite got acquired by CNN I was pretty happy for the guys behind it, and now, months later, I’m still happy that it hasn’t become the “CNN” of news reading apps.  Love. Free.

And, just like in iPhone, here are the runners up:

  • AppShopper – keep track of when the paid apps I’m interested in go on sale
  • #sworcery - it’s beautiful, I just don’t find myself with the time to play as much as I want
  • NHL Gamecenter – on the plus side, I can watch the Habs play, either in real-time or catch-up.  on the unbelievably pathetic down side, I can rarely watch catch-up without seeing the score in advance, because apparently the NHL doesn’t seem to care about those of us who cannot watch live hockey at 4pm multiple days per week.
  • Sundry Notes - this is an amazing note-taking / scrapbooking style tool.  super powerful, probably awesome for college students.
  • Tilt to Live HD – fun quick action game
  • iSpadez – great spades game, with live multiplayer!
  • Ticket to Ride – perfect adaptation of board game, just wish they’d let me speed up all the animations.
  • Majesty – another fun non-RTS RTS game
  • Dropbox – yup, it’s Dropbox – on the iPad. moving on.
  • Kayak – taking the depth of booking travel and making it work on an iPad is a challenge, and the Kayak app hits it out of the park
  • Waze – great on the iPhone, even greater on the iPad – free turn-by-turn nav!
  • Catan HD – would make my main list, but the app is just too unstable.
  • ColoramaMask – another fun drawing app for kids
  • Fingerzilla – crush, stomp, tap, destroy!!!
  • Pat The Bunny – good kids interactive experience
  • Talking Tom – silly fun
  • IMDB – if you are a movie nerd like me, you probably don’t need to be told about the app…

The most interesting revelation I had whilst writing these two lists is the breakdown of paid vs free apps.  On my iPhone only 2/10 “top” apps were ones I shelled out invisible coins for.  Whereas on the iPad, 5 out of 8 were paid (though if memory serves at least one was a free weekend download, but I could be wrong).  If I was a real reporter I’d go through my transactions to figure out how much money I’ve spent on each platform.  But I’m not, so instead, thus endeth the blog post.

Why the Mac App Store is Game-Changing

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Apple today launched their “Mac App Store”, something I must admit I didn’t fully “get’ at first.  Originally I assumed it was simply a dashboard-like interface for easily porting iOS apps to OS X.  It’s not, it’s far from it.  It’s actually solving one of the biggest problems plaguing “typical” computer users – downloaded and installing software.

This conversation should sound familiar to anyone under the age of 40 who has parents who use computers.

Me: did you try out [[[SOFTWARE]]] yet?

Parent: I couldn’t get it to work.

Me: huh, why not?  it’s pretty simple to use.

Parent: I don’t know, it’s just not on the computer, I don’t know why.

Me: did you install it?

Parent: Yes!

Me: okay, so what’s the problem?

Parent: Not sure, after I went to their website I never could get it to open.

Me: what happens?

Parent: It always tells me its installing.

Me: so you ran the installer?

Parent: yes.

Me: so what’s the problem??

Parent: I have no idea, fix it next time you come over.  How are the kids?

The reality of the world is tons of folks are downloading, but the successful installation and execution of software on computers is an utter mess.  And yes, even on OS X it’s a mess – why would I want to drag into the Applications folder?  Why isn’t that automatically done?  How do things get in the dock?  Etc.  The App store fixes all of this, and fixes it well.

With the latest OS X upgrade, the App Store appears in the dock automatically.  Upon launching the user is required to sign in to their Apple account (probably the worst part of the experience, as it should just pull in iTunes account info), then they can download/install/run new software as effortlessly as they can on an iPhone/iPad.  The new app automatically installs and adds itself to the dock – that’s it.

One other “oh, sweet” moments I had while perusing the App Store?  No, it wasn’t Angry Birds (seriously, yawn much? it’s an okay game, but it’s time to move on.  it’s like after they started airing “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” seven nights a week!).  It was finding iMovie ’11 available for individual purchase.  This is another important move, as Apple is unlocking the previously bundled iLife (and iWork) suites.  Perfect for folks like me who like the features of one ’11 app but not the other (in my case – I don’t want iPhoto ’11 yet).  This creates a lot of opportunity not just for Apple, but for other software vendors seeking to “break up” packages and make incremental additional revenue from the extras.

It’s not perfect, by any means.  There’s still no solid UNinstall, which is a big missing part (try AppZapper – thanks @MG!). For example, I can’t sort by Ratings, there’s no ability to preview apps, etc. The store is so simple that at times it truly feels simplistic. Some categories seem odd (does weather need a whole category?) and others completely under-developed (games? one category for ALL games?).  I’d also like to see screenshots get replaced with screenflows/video demos.  But that’s about the entirety to my complaints at this time, and that ain’t bad all things considered.

Since the original dot-com explosion, the tech industry in general has avoided new consumer-facing software like the plague.  Half (or quarter) baked Web ideas or apps get funding out the wazoo, but tell an investor that there’s downloaded software involved (worse yet – a plug-in), and they run for the hills (well, not really, since they’re probably on Sand Hill already, but that’s just a weird wording thing).  It’s funny that we’ve needed the success of the mobile app market to revitalize the “old fashioned” software market, but that’s exactly what the Mac App store is going to do.

If there’s one thing we can truly say the App store “killed” today, it’s the traditional installer.  And rest in peace, but you won’t be missed.

Would you like to become an infamous blogger?

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Been a big fan of LIVEdigitally for hours/weeks/years?

Have opinions on gadgets, convergence, digital home stuff, or other consumer lifestyle technology?  Or just an opinionated guy/gal?

Want to get on random media mailing lists from big companies, get PR blasts, butthen get questioned when you ask for review units?

Feel like expressing yourself in more than 140 characters at a time?

Enjoy writing opinions months before the “big guys” do, only to see them share the same thought but as front-page headlines?

Like saying “no it’s live digitally, not living digitally or live digital” over and over again?

Want to toil until the wee hours of the night writing stuff, all for no compensation whatsoever?

Then this is the place for you!  Shoot me an email, or leave a comment here and I’ll get in touch!

Introducing Legacy Locker

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It’s with tremendous pride and excitement that I use my first blog post in over a month to announce the launch of Legacy Locker. I’m one of the founders of the site, and I wanted to share a little backstory to where it came from and how it got here.

Two different personal events occured to me in the summer of 2007 that led to the conception of Legacy Locker.  My grandmother unfortunately passed away, but at the age of 94 it’d be hard to say she didn’t live a full life.  She and I used to exchange emails, a pastime of hers she also enjoyed with other friends and family around the world.  My father and I tried to figure out a way to get into her Hotmail account, but had no luck and basically the account is, for all intents and purposes, unavailable.

On a more uplifting side, my wife and I had a son earlier that year, and in the summer sat down with an estate planner to establish a will (did you know in the state of California that if you don’t have a will/estate/trust, probate attorneys will claim 4% of your assets, including your life insurance money?  scam).  Anyhow, after literally hours of discussing my family tree and my various assets (car, 401k, signed Jean Beliveau picture, etc), I had a huge binder: our “estate” (I always pictured something with a mansion).

Last summer on a flight (yup, I remember that well), I had one of those “moments” in life, where I realized that while my physical assets were protected in my estate plan, I had nothing in place to deal with all of my online goods and assets.  My computer’s password, my email accounts (all 5 of them), my Amazon store credit, my wordpress login, etc.  If anything happened to me, virtually all of these assets would become literally inaccessible to my wife (or others), despite the fact that I had a will.  While they were legally protected, in all practical terms they’d become effectively worthless (including the 70+ domains I own through GoDaddy).  Legacy Locker was born.

JT and AdamWhen I returned home, I talked with my wife about the concept, and she completely recognized the need as well.  I went to my business partner Adam, he too thought it made sense.  I talked to a few other friends and close colleagues, and not a one said “nah, dumb idea, what are you thinking?”  So Adam and I raised some money, and hired a team to get things done.

The site is pretty simple to actually use and understand.  Users register, fill out a profile, and assign verifiers (people they trust to confirm their passing).  Next, they create assets and beneficiaries.  An asset is the online account information to a website, basically a username, password, and some notes.  The beneficiary is the person they’d want to receive the asset.  The last feature is called “Legacy Letters”, which are emails that get sent to family, friends, or colleagues with a “goodbye” note (in the future we’ll incorporate video as well).  For more on how it works, click here.

So this morning the site goes live.  The actual working service won’t come online for a few more weeks, as the final touches get put in place.  We’re looking forward to getting everything up and running, collecting feedback, and building a great service.  Our primary goal is to bring Legacy Locker to the attention of willmakers, attorneys, and estate planners who help service the 12.6 million households who have wills in place (and 900,000 new people every year), hence our slightly early launch.

I’ve been building consumer technology, from gadgets to websites, for the past 13 years.  While I’ve worked on some amazing products in my time, this is my first opportunity to use technology in a way to truly help people.  Thinking about loss is hard (which is why not enough people do backups and only 1/3 Americans have wills to protect their families).  Dealing with loss is even harder, and if we can help make that part of life a little easier for some people, I consider that a great accomplishment.

Thanks,
Jeremy

ps – sorry about the no blogging all month thing – I was in the hospital dealing with a nasty combination of appendicitis and Crohn’s disease, but I’m doing much better now thanks!

Firemail iPhone app – Now I'm Typin' Widescreen

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I’ve always detested one (or two) thing(s) about my iphone. My primary moan? Why not make the landscape keyboard more widely available? On a scale from 1 to 10, using a portrait keyboard to type emails on an iPhone is immensely sucky.

Apple made landscape work in Safari; if you’re in the browser and have to type (in the URL, or in a form) the keyboard pops up in landscape mode. This means the keys are bigger, more widely spaced, and significantly easier to tap. This is good usability. In either SMS or email mode, I can only use the portrait keyboard. This is poor usability. Given the fact that the capability exists, I can’t see any reason not to make the functionality universally available.

Lots of people told me that I’d get used to the keyboard if I gave it enough time. They were wrong. It sucks. It sucked a year and a half ago, and it sucks now too. Hence my joy, my excitement, my joie de iPhone that Firemail exists. Firemail is an application available in the App store that lets a user type emails with a landscape keyboard. Lawdy lawdy, I thought the day would never come. The folks at Conceited Software are to thank for this handy piece of code. Let me do so now. Thank you Conceited Software. Try not to let it go to your head. Pun intended.

Now, the mechanics of the thing are not entirely ideal. In order to write these blessedly quick and easy to type emails, you have to load Firemail from your homescreen, not the email app. When the app opens you will be able to compose a subject and message. Once done with your composition you can save a draft (called a bookmark) or send to email. This is great for writing a new email. But what about replying to old emails? That too is possible, here’s how:

  • Open your email app
  • Open an email
  • Hit reply
  • Hit the home button
  • Open Firemail
  • Draft your response
  • Select “Send to Mobile Mail”
  • Boom shaka laka. Your email is now a reply to the email you were reading before.

I didn’t even know you could do this till I read a couple other reviews of this app. iPhone Hacks put a great one together, and so did Ben Boychuck at Macworld. Personally, I think it’s a very strong app, and it has a place on my homescreen. I do wish it integrated a little more seamlessly with the iPhone email, but it’s a very solid app and allows me to do something that’s frustrated me since my very first week with the iPhone.

The app used to be free – it was free when I downloaded it a couple months ago. Now they charge 99 cents for it, and I think it’s definitely worth that fee. It turns iPhone email from something frustrating and terrible into something that’s reasonably not sucky. If I were forced to give Firemail a numeric rating between 1 and 10, I’d call it a 7.

This entry is also posted at 1TO10REVIEWS.

Firemail demo on 12seconds.tv

Holiday TextExpander Giveaway Contest

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You may remember our post showing how to automate Bit.ly using AppleScript
and TextExpander. Since then, TextExpander has been bumped up to version 2.5, and in doing so SmileOnMyMac included our bit.ly URL shortening script in the new release.

To celebrate we’re having a holiday contest and giving away two TextExpander licenses!

Contest the First:

TextExpander has one of the cheekiest registration screens around; it offers up data on how many times you’ve triggered an abbreviation, how many characters have been replaced, and how much time you’ve saved typing. The first license will go to the reader who guesses the number of characters (as of the time of posting) that TextExpander has spared me from typing. The Price is Right rules apply: closest guess (without going over) wins.

TextExpander Register Screen

Contest the Second:

This started off because I came up with a new snippet; now it’s your turn. The second license will go to the reader who suggest the best idea for a new snippet, as judged by the LiveDigitally team. Extra points for contest entries with working code snippets. (You can download the trial version to get started.)

Submit your guesses and ideas in the comments (you can link to a blog post if your idea is too long to fit.) The contest deadline is midnight on Wednesday, December 31st, and we’ll announce the winners in the new year. Good Luck!

Video Recording on my iPhone… or very nearly (thank you 12seconds)

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Disclaimer: We know, love and work with the people from 12seconds.  Impartiality is severely dented, if not discarded outright.

Today 12seconds.tv did a few cool things:

  1. They’ve re-designed their website – cool new look and feel, with a strong focus on video consumption
  2. They’ve concluded their invite-only Alpha phase and opened up in a public Beta where anyone can register and use the site
  3. They’ve had their iPhone application approved and launched in the iTunes App Store (for $0.99)

I’m happy for their progress from Alpha to Beta, and I think the re-design looks great.  But I’m most excited about the iPhone app.  You all know (both of you) ;) that I’m an iPhone user, and one of my few frustrations with the device has always been the lack of a video recorder.  Apple steadfastly refuses to release one, and there’s no third-party video recording application available (unless you choose to jailbreak your phone). This annoys me.

12seconds did not manage to sneak a video recorder through Apple’s QA team.  But they did create about the best possible workaround.  App users will take 3 photos (or choose 3 from their picture library), record twelve seconds of audio, and then post their creation to their 12seconds account (unregistered folks can create an account on the fly, in their phone.)  Somewhere in the cloud, the pics and audio are combined and then spit out as a twelve second video slideshow.  Users can email a link to their video directly from their phone  Each video has it’s own unique URL on 12seconds.tv, and can be emailed, embedded (as HTML) or downloaded onto your hard drive.  Here’s a demo video on how to use the app.

iphone app for 12seconds.tv from Sol Lipman on Vimeo.

One thing I really like about this app is the story telling aspect.  The series of pictures with audio narration really give you that James Earl Jones feeling of comfort.  Also, if you flub the audio and need to re-record, you can do so as many times as you like.  With traditional video, if you blow it, it’s blown.  The moment has passed. Here’s one video I recorded with a trial version of the app.

Cold Cuts – Chinese Food Style on 12seconds.tv

The app is a first draft.  It works, and it’s intuitive, but there are some features I’d like to see added, including wanting better flexibility in choosing photos and saving drafts.  But on the whole I think the app is very usable.  There’s just room to improve.

Kudos to the 12seconds team on a great launch and a cool app.  This is the best solution to the video-recording conundrum that Apple’s created that I’ve seen yet.

Related Posts:

MG Siegler at VentureBeat

Greg Kumparak at MobileCrunch

Rodney Rumford at FaceReviews

This post is also published on 1TO10REVIEWS.

Netflix on the new XBOX 360 Live – disappointing so far

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On a scale from 1 to 10, the Netflix / Xbox experience is slathered in weaksauce.

I have an Xbox 360. When I heard about the new Xbox Live experience (new UI, new architecture, more features, more customization, etc.) I thought it sounded really cool. I’ve always thought it was a neat product, but I also thought there was a better interactive experience waiting to be enjoyed, if only someone would come along and develop it. Last Thursday, November 20, 2008, that experience became available for everyone.

One of the features I was most interested in was the Netflix streaming directly to your Xbox 360. I believe that digital home media have a long way to go. Networked media PC’s are a pain to set up, streaming media servers even more so, and Apple TV (even with Apple’s vaunted user-experience) isn’t an elegant or simple solution. But I have an Xbox 360, a computer (for all intents and purposes,) already hooked up to my television and with an HDMI connection.   Netflix streaming directly onto my TV? Sounds excellent.

I even resurrected a membership for this. I had Netflix a long time ago, and ended up canceling because I just didn’t get enough value from it. I get lots of movies from the Library (I know, laugh all you want, but’s it free) and I felt like I was always forgetting to return the Netflix discs and just throwing money away on the membership. So I canceled. But this Xbox partnership seemed like a good reason to renew the subscription, because of the ease, convneience, and my sheer exuberance at the prospect of streaming it right on to my Xbox. Then reality set in.

I just re-subscribed to Netflix, activated my account on the Xbox, and added (hang on) 39 movies to my queue. Thirty-nine movies. Of those, not one is available to stream the Xbox 360.  Not one.

Now that, my friends, is weaksauce.

And before you retort smartly, let me say that this is not just a bunch of brand new, extra fun movies.  Among others I have indies (Run, Fat Bot, Run – 2007), thrillers (Revolver – 2005), TV (How I Met Your Mother Season 1 – 2005), Action (Blade – 1998), Sci-Fi (Resident Evil: Extinction – 2007), and comedy (Forgetting Sarah Marshall – 2008) to name just a few.  There’s a good blend, in my opinion, of older and newer, hotter and less-hot choices in my list.  And none of them are available to stream.  That’s not acceptable.

After searching diligently I did finally find one movie, National Treasure 2, that was available for streaming to Xbox Live, and I wasn’t wholly opposed to watching it.  It worked flawlessly.  I’ve never watched any of the National Treasure movies, but my wife convinced me that I might like them, so I gave it a shot.  Truthfully, I enjoyed the movie.  Low expectations help a lot, and the history is a lot of fun.  But more importantly, the Netflix experience on the Xbox 360 was fantastic.  Moments after adding the movie to my queue, the Xbox Live page displayed it as available.  I asked to watch the movie, and in 15 seconds it was ready to go.  The picture quality was excellent, and the controls all worked perfectly.  I was REALLY satisfied with the experience of using Netflix.   Unfortunately, there’s not much for me to watch.

Netflix and Xbox have bragged that there’s a library of 12,000 shows to choose from and stream to your Xbox 360.  That’s not real helpful, if I don’t want to watch any of them.  I am sadly unimpressed, and if I were forced to give this a numeric rating between 1 and 10, right now it would get a 4.  I like the idea and the service worked well, but there’s no content I’m interested in seeing.  No bueno.

Some Related Stories & Links:

News 4 Gamers

Gizmodo

CNET News

Tom’s Guide

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Update 11/30/08:

I’ve been thinking about this situation some more.  Jivebotic and Wunder both left very good comments (on 1to10) about what movies are available, and the benefits of the Xbox / Netflix experience.  I agree with both of them.  The way I see it, there are two major problems:

1. There’s still not enough good content available on the Xbox.  Jivebotic pointed out some good movies that I can watch, sure enough.  But they’re still not the ones I want  to watch.  I don’t know why that rubs me the wrong way, but it does.  Out of 40 or so movie titles that I want to watch, I should have been able to find a couple that were available.   For me, there was not one.  

2. Netflix needs to add some kind of serach and identification mechanism, and that right quick.  Currently they do identify their “instant” titles, but there are 4 or 5 different “instant” mechanisms for streaming movies, and not all titles are available for all mechanisms.  I need a way to search for Xbox-compatible films, they need to visibly tag those films with an Xbox logo, and they need to quickly add more titles if they want to keep my business.  

This post is also available on 1to10reviews.

Sonos + Pandora = 42

Posted on 208 by 237

My insufficiently geeky readers probably won’t get the 42 reference, so I’ll assume you read this reference before continuing. Of all the convergence I’ve seen that bridge gadgets with Web services, I think the implementation of Pandora’s free Internet radio service onto the Sonos music system is probably the best.   The single “snag” in the entire system is that you actually need to (1) have a Pandora account, and (2) own a Sonos.  If you don’t, I recommend correcting the situation immediately.

In a nutshell, Pandora works by building “radio stations” based on artists and/or tracks you like.  If you pick Frank Sinatra, boom, you have a Frank Sinatra Radio Station.  Add other artists, and create your Smooth Crooners Radio Station.  If you don’t get it yet, well, go to Pandora and set up an account, it is free after all.  The super delicious part of the story is how well they integrated with Sonos.

On your Sonos, you simply need to add your Pandora username/password, then you have access to virtually all Pandora features.  Key to it is how easy it is to use on the Sonos, including bookmarking content and creating new stations.  One of the softkey (programmable) buttons is labeled “ratings”, the other “Pandora”.

Click “ratings” to rapidly Like, Dislike, or Not hear a song for a month.  Perfectly logical, works just like Pandora on the Web does.  This feature is one of the key parts to how Pandora works – while you can’t specifically pick songs to play, the collaborative filtering system (recommendations) works extremely well.

The “pandora” button allows you to add the given song or artist to your current radio station, or build a new station based on the song/artist.  Again, this implementation is exactly how it should work.  Within minutes I created five different stations, all in different genres, with practically no effort.  You can similarly bookmark content to retrieve later at pandora.com.

I’ve ripped my 800+ CD collection into MP3.  We have access to tons of other streaming Internet content.  I can say without hesitation that 90% of my Sonos listening will now be over Pandora (and my new house has 7 Sonos zones planned).  Amazing job to both companies.  BTW, Sonos also introduced an iPhone app, but since I’m not an iPhone guy I’ll let the pro’s talk about how great that is instead…