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Google+ is officially rad.

Well, official only in the sense that I've deemed it so, for whatever that's worth.

In my increasingly tech filled world, one of the few things I've never been able to fully adopt is the social networking experience. This is mainly due to the abysmal signal to noise ratio that's prevalent within each network, with streams filled with "gearing up for the weekend!" and "look how cute my cat is, he's wearing a tiny hat!" etc. Every time I tried to engage with, say, Facebook, for example, I found it was an awful lot of work to sort through all that data to find the rare kernel of something I was actually interested in. With Google+, the ability to assign friends, acquaintances, and bloggers into circles allows you to focus on the streams that interest you at any given time. This coupled with the ability to post updates to selected groups among your network, the tight integration with Android (as well as other Google services), I've got a workable central hub for my internetty social interactions. Honestly, Google+ may finally be a network I can fulfill my informal pledge to consistently post updates to my friends.

Oh yeah, the interface is pretty slick too.

Netflix new streaming interface is... not good.

It's not so much that it's unattractive (it is), or that it's buggy (it is) it's more about usability, or the lack thereof.

Now, I should first point out that I'm not opposed to redesigns in general. There's always a few cranks that look at a redesign of a popular site and say: "Arrgh I don't like change naaagh!" etc. I am not one of these cranks (at least not in this case). Having said that, my first reaction to the new interface did involve some "arrghs!" and "naaaghs!" not because of what was there, but what wasn't there. In streamlining the interface, they've removed some key features that made searching through their instant catalog a good experience; Sorting by rating, year, etc, and the ability to see previously seen / rated titles> They've also decided to hide the user aggregate ratings (one of their much touted features) behind a hover state, choosing to display as little information as possible to the user. Sure, you can simply hover over the title-less movie cover to reveal this information, but don't click it, unless you want to instantly start downloading a film you know nothing about. All of these changes culminate in a user experience that is not intuitive in the least, making it difficult for the casual user to understand, while also having the added 'benefit' of forcing more advanced users to perform extra clicks, or, in some cases, not have the featured they'd commonly used before. In all cases, it's a ui that doesn't help the new user, and irritates more seasoned users. This along with the juddery implementation of JavaScript to slide the new, massive, dvd cover images, makes the experience jarring as well as useless.

Now you may think that all the absurdities I've outlined above were enough to rankle me into an internet rant, but the thing that really drew me into full on rage (such that it is) was Netflix' reaction to the groundswell of negative feedback they received over the update. Their response was essentially: "We tested this, the complainers are wrong, you'll get used to it, stfu." Now, they never did mention who exactly they tested this with, whether it was a test market of actual users, a focus group, or their own weird arbitrary testing method. I'd be very interested in knowing the specifics of this test, and the actual results of it, but I'm fairly certain we'll never see it.

At the end of the day (but not today) I'm sure I'll get used to the changes, as Netflix helpfully suggested I do, or someone will come along and use the api to make a ui that does what the official ui does not (help you find something worth watching). Already there are browser plugs that simulate the old Netflix instant experience (but those will only work for so long). Right now, however, I'm saddened and angry at the way Netflix has gone from being the golden boy of streaming media, to another company that makes it explicitly clear that they simply don't care about you, nor your opinions.

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