But rather than chronicle all the wrong moves Netflix has been making as of late, such as separating their streaming and DVD rental business into two Web sites and now backtracking on that decision (interestingly, in a letter not from CEO Reed Hastings as the other infamous letters were, but just from “Netflix”), let me offer the letter I think Netflix should have written to their customers in light of their recent price hikes.

One could argue the price increases were the wrong decision as well, but I’m not convinced of that.  In fact, I think there’s an argument to be made that Netflix did NOT, in fact, raise their prices.  This point will soon become clear.  Here is the letter:

Dear Netflix Customer,

As you know, Netflix’s streaming service has grown by leaps and bounds over the past two years, and we now currently offer thousands of movies and TV shows that you can stream instantly to almost every device in your household.  From the iPhone to the big screen TV, Netflix built in to hundreds of devices that make using our streaming service so convenient.

As a company we continue to invest in our streaming service, and we strongly believe streaming is the way most customers prefer to consume their entertainment.  However, in order to continue to invest in expanding the number of titles and overall quality of our streaming services, we have decided to adjust our pricing model.  In most cases, the new prices will not change how much you pay on a monthly basis for Netflix.

You may have noticed that our streaming service has grown tremendously in the past few years.  In fact, on a plan-by-plan basis, the average customer now consumes [INSERT % HERE] more total titles today than three years ago.  The number of titles available, the convenience and the high quality our streaming offers are a testament to that.  As you can imagine, while the number of customers streaming content has grown considerably, those who receive DVDs by mail are holding on to them longer.  Given the choice, our customers have demonstrated to us that they prefer to stream rather than wait for a DVD.

So, in order to continue to invest in and expand on our streaming services, we are going to adjust our pricing model.  In essence, we are leaving our prices the same, but reducing the number of DVDs out at a time on your account by one.  In other words, if you had a streaming plus 3 DVDs out at a time subscription, you will be switched to a streaming plus 2 DVDs out at a time.  Your monthly rate will not change.

Of course, if you prefer to only receive DVDs by mail and not stream any content, there will be no changes to your account and you will continue to pay the same rate.  We also have streaming-only options for those who prefer that option as well.

We believe these changes reflect the value we’ve added to the Netflix streaming service over the past few years, and will allow us to continue to invest in and add further value.

We sincerely appreciate your business and I invite you to write back with any comments, feedback or questions you might have about these changes.  I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Reed Hastings
CEO and co-founder, Netflix

* Note: The pricing changes suggested in this letter reflect the pricing changes Netflix actually made; they’re simply presented in a different light.

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But darn it, I was pretty sure I had clicked the ‘Add to Wish List’ button. On the other hand, I found it difficult to contemplate how Amazon could make an error like that. I figured it was user error, and I went back and retraced my steps to figure it out.  Here’s what I discovered:

Upon first loading the page, the ordering box looked like image you see at the right. Now, I’m pretty fast with my mouse and am very familiar with the Amazon site, so I quickly went over to click the ‘Add to Wish List’ button, and then moved my eyes to another open window and thought that was the end of it.

So how did it the ‘Buy now with 1-Click’ button get clicked? It turns out that the image above is only part of the story; shortly after the page is fully downloaded into the browser (I’m using Chrome on Windows 7), some more options appear in the right-hand ordering box, notably a ‘Get it:’ option (shown at right) with the ability to select between Saturday delivery or Tuesday delivery.

I love this ability to choose shipping options just before clicking the 1-Click ordering.  It’s pretty convenient.  However, because this portion of the page doesn’t load until the rest of the page loads, it actually pushes the content below it down a few pixels.  Enough pixels, in fact, that the time between when I saw and meant to click ‘Add to Wish List’ and when I actually clicked and moved on to other things, the ‘Buy now with 1-Click’ button had moved under its place and that was the button that was actually clicked.

The image shown to the right of this paragraph illustrates what that order box part of the page looks like before and after the page is fully rendered.  Comparing the two side-by-side, you can clearly see that the ‘1-Click’ button has moved down to exactly the part of the page where the ‘Add to Wish List’ button is in the image above it. Viola! I figured out what happened.

So let that be a UI design lesson for all you developers out there. Or perhaps it’s a lesson for me to stop surfing the ‘net like a maniac.

Either way, designers should  be on the lookout for how a page loads in real time, behaves over time, and how that impacts the user experience. You don’t want to accidentally be buying stuff on behalf of your customers.

But I’ve learned a lot so far about what works, and I’m sure there’s plenty more to do. Most importantly, I’m realizing the need to create mobile-friendly versions of my shows.

I’ve set up my shows on a Wordpress Blog using Blubrry’s PowerPress plug-in, which is terrific. It’s saved me an enormous amount of development time and allowed me to focus on creating content. One of the services Blubrry provides is a measurement tool that shows how many downloads my shows have received, including what form people are downloading them.

I’ve produced twenty episodes of The Movie Film Show, and I finally have enough data to draw some conclusions. But first, the facts:

Few people listen on the Web. Only 7% listen through the Web site’s flash player tool. The rest are people downloading the shows through iTunes and on their mobile devices.  In fact, 53% of downloads come from applications like iTunes, and the remaining 40% are from mobile devices.

I was amazed at the number from mobile devices, especially considering I don’t currently have a mobile-friendly version of my shows.  It makes sense, though.  Audio podcasts are best listened to on the go, whether in the car or at the gym, and Smart Phones are a great way to grab such content while out and about.

I’ve concluded that enhancing the mobile experience is my top priority. Here are three action points I will begin to execute and want to share with my fellow audio-podcasters:

1. Create a mobile-friendly site. If the current version of your site is mobile friendly, that’s great. But if you have things like a Flash player and what not, they will not work on devices like the iPhone.
2. Create a ‘download MP3’ link for each show. Most mobile devices can download and play these files just fine. That means all listeners have to do is visit your URL and click on the latest show download link to listen. Get rid of any links or features that don’t work on a mobile device (like Flash players).
3. Make sure the file size of your MP3s doesn’t exceed mobile download limits. Some ISPs, like AT&T, limit downloads on mobile to devices to files sizes less than 20 megabytes each. Make sure your shows are under that limit. If they are longer, split them into multiple files on the mobile version of your site, if possible.

Related Article: Why I Prefer Audio Podcasts

Why are we so scared about that?

Americans, I think, are rightly concerned about “big brother” watching what we do, and many equate corporations watching our behavior and tracking our interests as impeding on our privacy.  But there is a fundamental difference between the real “big brother,” i.e., government, impeding on our privacy and a company supposedly doing so.

When we interact with a company or another person, it is on a voluntary basis.  We chose to go to Whole Foods or Ralphs or visit Google or Facebook.  We do not have such a choice when it comes to the government.  Any corporation, no matter what the size, cannot force us to do anything.  It can’t force us to buy their products, use their services, or visit their Web sites.  Only the government can do this; it can, and does.  For starters, it forces us to pay taxes, get our car smogged, and buy health insurance.

Since government’s proper function is to protect individual rights, when it comes knocking on our door and asking for information that could only be used to violate our rights, clearly fears of “big brother” are justified.

How much money do you make?  What is your ethnicity?  What are your religious beliefs?  Such questions are none of the government’s business, yet when and if required by law, we have to provide such information to the government.  That is not the case with a company.

The purpose of a company is to make money.  It is to offer us value in exchange for money.  It is not to destroy value.  So when an advertising company wants to know our income, our age, our interests, our buying habits, etc., this information is used by the company to potentially provide us with better value in the future.  It uses this information for the purpose of better their product and marketing efforts to reach the right buyers, i.e., the people who want to buy their product the most.  Maybe it’s you.  Maybe it’s not.

The smarter advertising technology, the happier I am.  If I never see an ad for ESPN again in my life, that’s a good thing, because ESPN should know that the only game I like is Badminton.  Yet when Badminton is being played on the Olympics, perhaps NBC could send me an e-mail alert telling me where to go watch it and when.

That’s a good thing for ESPN and for me: They won’t waste their time trying to reach me and I don’t’ have to sort through ESPN spam.  It’s also a good thing for NBC and me: They can target me specifically—someone who actually may be interested in their product—and I probably would have forgotten to even look for it in the first place, but once reminded gone and watched it.

Am I giving up my privacy?  In a small sense, yes, but there is no harm to me and, in fact, only value to be gained.  “Giving up” your privacy is not necessarily a bad thing.  You do it every time you introduce yourself to someone: “Hello, my name is Sean.”  Now you know my name.  You didn’t before.  This allows you to engage with me in some way—or even avoid me in the future if you don’t want to deal with me.

Of course, companies and other people can and do violate rights.  But this is the exception, not the norm.  And such violations should (and generally are) illegal and individuals should be protected against those who do violate their rights by force—which is the proper function of government.

So the next time you’re worried that Best Buy may be watching your behavior as you walk through their store, or a Facebook is tracking how you use their social network, or the supermarket asks you to sign up for a loyalty program, know that in all likelihood, they are doing so for the purpose of improving their product or to better reach or communicate with you about things you actually may want to buy in the future.

Often times we get “junk mail,” whether electronic or via snail mail, and we cry for privacy laws because they are a hassle to sort through and throw away.  But when we get or see content we actually want, we don’t think of it that way.  It just feels like our friends at Bed Bath & Beyond were kind enough to send us another twenty percent off coupon, and we don’t cry about our privacy.

This isn’t a problem if I stick to a single device (I use Twitterriffic), since it keeps the screen on the last tweets I’ve read whenever I load the program. I find myself avoiding looking at Twitter on anything other than my iPhone, because then I have to figure out what the last thing I read was, or scan through a bunch of posts I’ve already read when jumping between devices.

With a “last read” or “bookmark” feature implemented into their API, software developers such as Twitterrific, TweetDeck, etc., could use this to sync the last message read, and thus only display the messages one hasn’t read yet (or mark that point with some visual indicator). Twitter could implement the same feature on their site by visually displaying this mark at the appropriate place and jumping to that point on the screen.

(As a side note, it would be nice to read tweets from oldest to newest on the site as well. I tend to read from the bottom to the top, and that’s a little clunky.)

How would this work? Every time a user downloaded a batch of tweets successfully, Twitter would update the “last read” indicator for that user, so the next time a request for tweets is received (even if from a different device), this information would be passed along to the application and dealt with properly.

This would save everyone valuable time when consuming their tweets across multiple devices.

If Twitter doesn’t implement this in their API, I would switch to any software that did internally. There are versions of Twitterrific and Tweetdeck for iPhone and iPad, so if I had to stay in one ecosystem to achieve this, I would.

Why not? Netflix has invested millions of dollars into their movie-matching engine, helping customers find movies they’ll love. That same technology used to guess what you’ll rate a movie you haven’t seen could just as easily be applied to matchmaking.

Dating sites like Match.com and eHarmony.com have their own algorithms for helping their users find the perfect mate. Such matching algorithms require you to fill out long questionnaires about your values, interests and tastes and use that as a basis for matching you up with Mr. or Mrs. Right.

Such systems are far from perfect and, in my single days, I tried out such services with little success. But using movies as a basis for mating customers is intriguing, to say the least.

Ayn Rand defined art as “a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist’s metaphysical value-judgments…. [B]y means of a selective re-creation, [art] concretizes man’s fundamental view of himself and of existence. It tells man, in effect, which aspects of his experience are to be regarded as essential, significant, important.” (From “Art and Cognition” in The Romantic Manifesto)

The beauty of using art (and in this case, movies) is that you get at a person’s fundamental view of the world, and matching two similar approaches to life is a recipe for romantic success.

Because we’re talking about one’s reaction to art, you get at issues of one’s personality that are nearly impossible to quantify in a typical questionnaire—issues such as sense of humor, one’s implicit sense of life and implicit philosophy. Matching people by their taste in movies skips the step of need to make explicit one’s philosophy and sense of life on a system like Match.com, which many have difficulty articulating even their own minds.

Taste in movies can’t measure things like physical attraction (which is important in any romantic relationship, and what profile pictures are for). But like all dating and matching services, these are tools, a mere starting off point to help narrow the playing field and increase one’s chances of finding their soul mate.

Whether Netflix decides to enter the dating business is to be seen. But their movie matching engine is an untapped asset in the field of relationship matching. If they don’t pursue creating such a service (or license their technology for someone else to do it), I hope someone else will create such a service. I would definitely use it—if I wasn’t already married.

Foursquare

On this front, I’ve recently become addicted to Barcode Hero for the iPhone, a new app from Kima Labs and founded by a couple of friends of mine, Blake Scholl and Jason Crawford.  These are smart guys and the first version of their app is all the proof you’ll need to see they are seasoned pros.

Barcode Hero brings a new innovation to the “check in” world, applying it—not to places—but to things.  You can scan anything that has a standard barcode with your iPhone camera, whether it be things you own in your home to items at the store, and share it with your friends.  From Best Buy to the supermarket, Barcode Hero will likely have it in their database, and you earn points for scanning items, marking them as “owned” or writing reviews or comments on the items you’ve scanned and share them with your friends.

If you have the most points in a given category, you will be deemed the “King” or “Queen” of that category.  Since I started using the app very early on, I quickly became the “King” of sheet music, DVDs, books, Objectivism (from scanning all my Ayn Rand related literature), among many others.  I’ve been dethroned in several of these categories since, a good sign the app is rapidly acquiring new users.

In addition to this, you can follow your friends like on any social network, and see what they’re scanning and buying.  It’s also much more useful than Foursquare, as when you scan something you can instantly see where you can purchase the product online from a variety of major online vendors.

It does require an iPhone, though a Droid version is planned, according to their Web site, as well as a Facebook account to log in (hopefully they will allow non-Facebook users to use the app in the future as well).  Also lacking is a fully integrated Web presence, but I’m sure this is on the way.  The few bugs I found at launch have been quickly remedied, and it feels like a solid and mature app.

Unlike many other social media apps, this one has a clear practical application: scan a bar code and instantly connect you to online vendors for the best deal.  That means it has a solid business model out of the gate, a very promising sign for this new startup.

I wish Blake, Jason and all those involved with Kima Labs much success and am happy to see such a solid concept so well executed in the growing social media space.  It’s a winner.

Many in the tech industry advocate Net Neutrality, which is the idea that all traffic transferred over the Internet should be treated equally with all other traffic. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) such as Comcast, AT&T and Time Warner are most people’s conduits to the Internet. Net Neutrality would force ISPs from throttling or prioritizing traffic through their networks. For example, some ISPs have slowed down or blocked certain types of traffic (or even prioritized other types of traffic), such as heavy users or traffic transferred by certain applications such as those involved in illegal file sharing or voice over IP data transferred by applications like Skype.

Before you jump in and say whether that’s good or bad for customers, consider that these companies own these networks and as such, it is their right to set the terms for their service. If customers do not receive the quality or quantity of service they want, they are free to select another provider (or no provider). They do not have the right to dictate how ISPs must run their service.

Google has advocated Net Neutrality, according to the article, because they believe the lack of Net Neutrality will hurt their business. But now they are under fire on a new front but up against the very principle they have been advocating. Some now want to regulate search results on the Internet, and dictate how Google must rank their search results.

Why? Google has “too much power,” the argument goes, with respect to sending traffic to sites on the Web. They determine who gets placed and how high up Web sites are shown in search results. A small change in search engine positioning can make or break a business, and an entire industry has been borne around search engine optimization (SEO) by businesses in order to exploit the value Google has created for Web publishers.

But it is Google that has created the value of search in the first place, and to dictate how they must run their business is a violation of their rights and an attempt to expropriate the value they did not earn by that which they did not create.

Google commands such “power” because it has won customers over in terms of the value of their search engine. From recipes to song lyrics to news articles to photographs, Google will help you find the most relevant content on the Web in the most convenient way possible to you. That is their purpose and that is the core of their business, and they have won customers over by being the best at it and, as a result, earned the position of the dominant player in the market.

But to force Google to modify their search results by force will destroy this value, and that is exactly what proponents of “Search Neutrality” desire. They want to make Google give results to customers according to their standards and whims, and determine how search should be optimized, not by the free choice of customers (such as by creating a competing search engine that is better than Google that customers want to use), but at the point of a gun. How did Google gain the dominant position in the marketplace? Blank out. They just are, and they want a piece of it–a piece they did not earn and cannot win legitimately.

That same threat is currently being faced by ISPs by telling them how they must run their business. Google had better wise up to the principle involved here and defend ISPs rights and oppose Net Neutrality, or they won’t have a moral foundation to stand on when regulators come after them as their next target.

For some background, Google drives around the country in vehicles on public roads and snaps pictures of the roads and surrounding buildings and identifies Wi-Fi locations that extend out to the roads. It uses the images for its Google Maps application and the Wi-Fi location in its services to quickly and automatically identify a customer’s location (such as in an application used for directions or displaying a map). (As an aside, Apple has a similar feature built into its iPhone and iTouch devices.)

In order to identify the wireless router, Google scans the data it is transmitting. But it can only read data being transmitted on non-secure, i.e., fully open to the public, networks.

Earlier this year, Google discovered and then disclosed that it had inadvertently stored the data being transmitted over these open, non-secure, non-password protected Wi-Fi networks. Google asserts that it never used any of this collected data in any of its products, and it fully intends to destroy the data. The only reason they have not done so already is due to various regulations, as they must dispose of the data legally, navigating myriad laws in dozens of countries in which this occurred.

Many in the media, tech industry, so-called privacy advocates, and now several government agencies (foreign and domestic) are investigating the matter, shouting bloody murder and pointing fingers at Google for “violating” people’s privacy.

This is absurd. Google collected data from public networks, i.e., wireless networks that individuals chose not to secure and, further, from computers that individuals also chose not to secure, which transmitted its data over a wireless network which they also knew (or should have known) was not secure. Securing a wireless router or network is a relatively simple task, and given that wireless signals can and do easily transmit beyond the person or company’s property, it is up to those that own a wireless router to secure their network, if they so desire.

If private, confidential data was transmitted over these unsecured networks, the primary finger of blame should be pointed at the person transmitting private data over an usecured network, not the person picking it up.

That does not stop the media and various groups and government from making sensationalist claims that Google “snatched passwords” and “private e-mail message.” While this may be factually correct, it is dishonest and misleading.

The “snatched passwords” and “private e-mail messages” were transmitted, unsecured, over an unsecured, public network (yes, both the network AND the computer that does the transmitting were not secured—a double whammy—and, yes, it is possible to transmit these things securely—even over an unsecured network—if you set up your e-mail and other applications on your computer to do just that. For example, any data transmitted to a URL starting with https:// —often used on Web sites when entering credit card information—is deemed secure even if you visit that site on a non-secure Wi-Fi network).

Some may argue that, just because one may leave the front door to one’s house unlocked—and wide open—doesn’t mean you have a right to enter the house and take what’s inside. But the metaphor is not quite accurate; it is more like someone left all their furniture on the sidewalk. That still does not mean, the argument may continue, that you have a right to take the furniture, since you don’t know whether it is intended to be given away (maybe the homeowner is simply replacing his carpets that day, and doesn’t want to damage his landscaping, or is in the process of moving).

Of course, the metaphor does not apply here exactly, as Google collected copies of people’s data. But it did not “steal” or “snoop” on people’s “private” data. It looked at it, while it was there, out in the open, in plain, clear view. Nor is Google exploiting the data, using it to blackmail people who accidentally did not secure their wireless networks and computers, or is otherwise exploiting the data (which would be wrong). They did not want it in the first place, and now want to throw it away. In other words, they have not harmed anyone in any way whatsoever.

As a property owner, you have a right to set the terms for the use of your property. When it comes to wireless networks, you do this by setting a password on your Wi-Fi router—or not—depending on your purpose. It is up to the owner of the wireless network to determine, and it is his responsibility to do so.

In short, Google did not violate anyone’s privacy, and it did not harm or violate anyone’s rights. Further, they should be praised for being transparent about the issue, and about their intended use (or, in this case, destruction) of the collected data. Morally, they did not have to announce this—just deleting the data would have been fine—and probably had to do so because of regulations in various countries (which has caused them undeserved scathing from the media, and likely expensive legal fees navigating the matter).

If anything, we should be alarmed at those advocating further government regulations or that Google hand over the collected data to anyone. And, we should all be taking responsibility for securing our privacy for those things which we wish to keep private.

Reasonable measures can and should be taken by any person transmitting data, especially over wireless networks. And these measures are nearly as simple as closing your front door (let alone locking it) and make clear your intentions with regard to your privacy.

Adding an option where you can attach a note to each item in your queue would remind you why you put it there in the first place. When you get that e-mail telling you such-and-such a movie has just been mailed, it will include your note. You could write anything you want in there, such as:

“Don said this was good, call him after and discuss fight sequence.”

—Following up with friends is always a value.

“Movie torturous, hilarious with Rifftrax.”
—Don’t forget about it later when it finally arrives.

“Wife wanted this one.”

—Time to schedule a night in and prepare the snacks.

“Jessica Biel. 1 hour, 3 minutes, 15 seconds.”
—Are you beginning to see the value here?

Hopefully Netflix will add Facebook and Twitter integration soon, too. The notes feature would work well here. I might tweet: “Just added ‘Talk of the Town’ to my #Netflix queue as part of my legal-themed movies marathon.” Please, Netflix, allow us to attach little notes to the movies in our queues. It will make using your service that much more valuable, useful and rewarding.