Thursday, October 9, 2008

You-mazon-tunes

Ok, so what's odd about the YouTube pic on the left? Hint: look at the tabs on the very bottom. Yup, YouTube has launched a click-to-buy program with Amazon's MP3 Store and Apple's iTunes.

This is pretty cool 'cause I'm always looking for music videos on YouTube — so I guess now I can buy them when I find them. Although truthfully, this isn't exactly a feature I was dying for and I'm not sure I'll use it a lot. So far this Kate Perry video is the only one I could find with the links. I think this could get messy though 'cause YouTube always has more than one video for the same song. For example, the above Kate Perry link has the Amazon/iTunes tabs, but this one doesn't. See what I mean? Ahh, good old YouTube.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Netflix Watch Instantly: Needs more content

So last week the folks at Netflix announced they were adding new content to their "Watch Instantly" library (1,000 titles to be exact) thanks to a partnership with Starz Play. I was pretty psyched when I heard the news 'cause the last time I checked out their library, there weren't that many good titles. So I logged in this week expecting to find a nice selection of new movies and boy was I disappointed. They did add a few popular (not good, but popular) titles like 30 Days of Night, Superbad, Ratatouille, and The Pursuit of Happyness, but scroll a little deeper and you're left with "hits" like Ernest Goes to School and Guy X. Huge disappointment.

What's even more disappointing is that there's still no Mac (or Firefox) support. They said Mac support will arrive before the end of the year, but um, they also said that back in August of 2007. Don't get me wrong, I like Netflix and it's cool this is a free option for most members, but they need to bulk up their Watch Instantly library badly.