Netflix

Two interesting articles on Netflix this morning:

Phillip Torrone on Engadget argues that Netflix should provide open APIs to its system like Google and Amazon do.

Hacking Netflix talks about Blockbuster's leaked beta test of a Netflix imitator.

My biggest issue with Netflix is that their recommendations don't seem very effective. They're obviously trying to bias the recommendations heavily to the less frequently rented items in the back catalog, but they bias so heavily that the recommendations are never interesting to me.

It's a real shame. If the recommendations were any good, I might be reluctant to switch to a competitor, since I'd lose my nifty recommendations by making the switch. As it is, I don't have much reason to stick with Netflix, especially as they raise prices and appear to be having increasing problems with availability.