Netflix feature requests and parental controls

We get Netflix now.  The kids are loving Netflix streaming on the Wii.  We haven't watched as many big people movies as I had expected.  But, overall, it is a neat service.  And the value per entertainment dollar spent is fantastic.

But I'm a software guy.  And Netflix is a software service.  So, of course, I have ideas on how to improve it.

I've scoured Netflix's website and I cannot find any way to submit a feature request or give unstructured feedback.  This is a mistake, both for their business model and the software itself.  Companies today have to engage clients and digest the feedback.  They have a blog, and comments are allowed.  But there is no way to contact anyone directly or engage with the company.

I'll link this blog post in the comments of their latest blog posts.  I'm also going to post it on their wall on Facebook.  But I doubt it will get noticed.

With that all said, I've got two feature requests/suggestions for Netflix.

1. A General Feedback Mechanism
Duh!  There are thousands of users out there who have ideas they would like to share.  Just listening to their ideas makes your brand more engaging and sticky.  Some percentage of those ideas are good or great.  Those ideas will genuinely make your service better.

As a baby-step you can just implement one of the general-purpose feedback websites, like Suggestionbox.com.  (Suggestionbox created that site for them as a teaser to try to engage Netflix.  Netflix isn't actively using it yet.  I have no affiliation with Suggestionbox.)

But you already have a platform where you are engaging with people.  So I would suggest that you build a 'Netflix feature queue' right into your service.  Give people the ability to write up feature requests (like this one) and place them in the queue.  Let others read and prioritize those features.  I'm sure that you have an agile development team (or three).  Put their scrum backlog in there and let clients interact with it.

You will have to moderate the content, obviously.  You will have tons of 'I got a DVD of Teen Wolf 2 that was scratched.'  Some of your customer service people will have to review every incoming post and filter out the stuff that doesn't fit.  And they will have to merge similar requests.

But when you build a feature that was customer-designed you should scream it from the rooftops.  Send someone out to get a picture of the person who wrote up the idea.  Give them a free month of service and a shirt.


2. Granular Parental Controls
I haven't seen anything from Netflix that suggests they want people to sign up for more than one account per household.  That means parents and children are sharing queues and streaming devices.  We have 4 kids--a large-ish family by modern American standards.  But I would suggest that our usage patterns are probably fairly typical.

In our house this means that the 'Suggested for Randy' queue is:
* Clifford
* Angelina Ballerina
* Se7en
* Salt
* Ben-10
* The Shawshank Redemption
* Blues Clues
* Dexter
* Cake Boss
* Shaun the Sheep
* The Blues Brothers
* Enter the Dragon
* Zombieland

This is disconcerting for me as a parent, because so many of my shows appear at the top of the queue when my kids are picking shows.  I don't need my kids watching even a few minutes of Se7en or Dexter while they know that I'm busy doing something else.

We have a Wii with Netflix streaming on our main TV.  We have Netflix streaming on the adult's computers, but we don't want to watch movies at our desks.  Everyone basically shares the main TV for Netflix.

We have 2 preschoolers (who can navigate the Netflix menu on the Wii and pick their shows.)  We have a 9 year old, a 13 year old, and two adults.  In a perfect world that's 5 separate instant queues on this device.  In reality, though, if each of the big kids got a personal queue then both of the little ones would demand their own queues, too.  So that's 6 separate instant queues on the Wii.

Each queue needs an optional password.

When I'm in a queue, I need to see the name of the queue at the top of the screen.  (On the Wii, the queues should each have a Mii.)

If I have several streaming devices (Wii, iPad, computer, streaming Blue-Ray player, etc.), then I should be able to pick which queues appear on which devices  The default should be for all queues to appear as options on all devices.  Some devices won't be able to handle multiple queues, especially at first, so they will have to default to just the first queue.

Each queue needs to have it's own settings for what's allowed.

There is a sticky problem on content that is not rated--old movies and TV shows.  So I would base the parental controls on a combination of Common Sense ratings and MPAA ratings.  And for the shows that are not rated by either service, I would control by genre.

So my parental control options would look like this:

---

Little Jenny's queue allows:
* All shows
* R and below
* PG-13 and below
* PG and below
* G and below

For shows that are not rated by the MPAA, allow:
* All shows
* Common Sense age 17 and below
* Common Sense age 14 and below
* Common Sense age 11 and below
* Common Sense age 8 and below
* Common Sense age 4 and below
* No shows not rated by the MPAA 

For shows that are not rated by the MPAA or Common Sense, allow:
# Action & Adventure
# Anime & Animation
# Children & Family
# Classics
# Comedy
# Documentary
# Drama
# Faith & Spirituality
# Foreign
# Gay & Lesbian
# Horror
# Independent
# Music & Musicals
# Romance
# Sci-Fi & Fantasy
# Special Interest
# Sports & Fitness
# Television
# Thrillers

---

For that last category the interface is checkboxes, not a single select.  A movie that is categorized as both 'Documentary' and 'Gay & Lesbian' would be blocked unless both categories are checked here.

Few parents are going to select 'Gay & Lesbian' or 'Horror', but the control settings should simply include all genres for simplicity's sake.  Any new genre that gets added to the system should show up here, and be unchecked for everyone who has already set up their parental controls.

Kids say the darndest things

Lincoln decided that he wanted to write a letter the other day.  He got out paper and then made Christy take dictation.  After they finished the first letter he made her write another.  Then he colored in some pictures to fill in the "blind" parts--the parts where there was nothing to see.

Laura and Rachel are two of our cousins that we see regularly.  Lincoln is 4.  I don't think he meant 'like' in the Junior High sense of the word.

Good men

I found a new website the other day.  It's a new magazine called 'The Good Man Project'.  It's focused on the positive and uplifting aspects of manliness.  Honor, integrity, strength, respect.  No lingerie photos.  No pro sports talk.

What does it take to be a good man?
son?
husband?
father?
employee?
boss?
neighbor?
citizen?

There is something of a liberal slant.  It's not religious at all.  But real men should feel right at home.

I have a few half-finished blog posts that I am thinking about submitting there instead of posting here.

Yes, I write on most days.  When you don't see a new post here it's because I couldn't finish the article I was writing.  I have no deadlines or goals other than my own need to produce and eye for quality, so I only publish a post when I feel it is done enough.

The human animal is complicated

Grab a few tissues and watch this video.







I found this on Fark, proving once and for all that Fark is not only a cesspool of stupidity.  Carly's website is here.

Drowning

You need to read this.  Apparently drowning doesn't look like you think it does.  Don't wait for them to wave or call for help.

Facebook versus MySpace

I joined both yesterday.  I spent the day today on Facebook.  I've found tons of people on Facebook.  I found only a handful of people on MySpace.

I'm trying to get an application working in Facebook to display my blog posts there.

This is even a bigger productivity drain than I had feared.  Hopefully I will get caught up, and then be able to get back to doing some work.  :-)

Miller family update

I just joined Facebook and MySpace, because the job search books tell me that I am supposed to.  I decided that I needed to try them both out, at least, before I finished those questions on theHiringSurvey.

I didn't really think this through, though.  It turns out that once you join you start reconnecting with old friends.  It's not that I don't want to reconnect.  I just didn't work that into my writing schedule, which is already behind.

So here's a short catch-up on the Miller family, for all of my old friends from Graham, ETBU, NOBTS, New Orleans, and beyond.